20 years after: The world, a wall, the Cold War and triumph of will
Activities marking the fall of the Berlin Wall, the symbol of the Cold War era, will peak on Monday, the 20th anniversary of the triumph of will over human-erected obstacles. Today, a generation of Germans (and all of humanity) hardly remembers the Berlin Wall that came to represent the fierce contending forces of an era better forgotten, write Francis Obinor and Wole Oyebade with agency reports.
THE three old men did not say everything swirling in their heads when they met last week in Berlin, Germany, ahead of the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Instead of praising their efforts that culminated in the fall of the symbol of stiff rivalry that the Wall became known for nearly three decades, they gave the credit to the "ordinary people" who were behind the peaceful revolution of 1989 that brought down the Wall.
The three elder statesmen are United States (U.S.) former President
George W. H. Bush, former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev and former West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. The Three Musketeers for their individual roles caused the Wall to be dismantled and eventually, the fall of the then second Super Power, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). It was therefore an emotional event in Berlin last Saturday when they met to relive the bloodless revolution of November 9, 1989 that ended the Cold War. About 1,800 people attended the event.
"We Germans don't have very much in our history to be proud of," said Kohl, 79, who was Chancellor of West Germany and then united Germany from 1982-98. "But we've got every reason to be proud about German reunification."
The reunion in Berlin of the three leaders at the centre of the whirlwind of events kicked off a week of celebrations in the German capital marking the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall.
Bush, U.S. president from 1989-93, paid tribute in his speech to the thousands of courageous East Germans who risked persecution by attending mass protests to demand reform in the months leading up to the Wall's peaceful collapse.
"It's a joy to be here with my former colleagues," said Bush during the two-hour long event in a theatre on Friedrichstrasse just east of where the Berlin Wall stood until 1989.
"The point needs to be made that the historic events we are gathered to celebrate were set in motion not in Bonn, or Moscow or Washington but rather in the hearts and minds of the people who had too long been deprived of their God-given rights.
"The Wall could never erase your dream, our dream of one Germany, a free Germany, a proud Germany," said Bush, now 85.
The three former leaders clearly enjoyed each other's company at their first reunion in many years - even though Kohl was in a wheelchair and had difficulty speaking while Bush relied on the help of a walking stick to move about.
After the opening of the Wall, the two Germanys were reunited 11 months later. Researchers said at least 136 people were killed trying to cross to the West.
Gorbachev, president of the Soviet Union at the time who was later awarded the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize, said the opening of the Wall and end of the Cold War was the culmination of a long process of post-World War II rapprochement.
"The people were the heroes," said Gorbachev, 78, who remains hugely popular in Germany for his pivotal role in late 1989. "The three of us don't want to take credit for the accomplishments of the previous generations."
Gorbachev, who went out of his way to say he thought "it's a good thing he (President Barack Obama) won the Nobel Peace Prize" this year despite misgivings in the U.S., also offered his unsolicited thoughts on Bush's predecessor, Ronald Reagan.
Bush had initially been criticised in some U.S. circles in 1989 for not rushing to Berlin to celebrate the opening of the Wall. By contrast, Reagan had delivered a hard-hitting speech just west of the Berlin Wall two years earlier in 1987.
"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall," Reagan had said.
Gorbachev added: "We've got to understand that the European project cannot be completed, that there won't be any triumph if it's built upon an anti-Russian or anti-American sentiment."
Bush was full of praises for Gorbachev on Saturday. "I have no doubt, zero, that historians will recognise Mikhail for his rare vision and unfailing commitment to reform and openness despite the efforts of those who would resist change and ignore the call of history," he said.
"Today, we have a fuller appreciation of the tremendous pressure Mikhail faced in that pivotal time. And through it all he stood firm, which is why he'll also stand tall when the history of our time in office is finally written".
Gorbachev said the Kremlin could have started World War III in 1989 had it used troops to crush the demonstrations that preceded the collapse of the huge barrier.
He is hailed in the West for ignoring hardliners who advised him to guarantee the Soviet Union's future by crushing a growing wave of dissent in Eastern bloc countries which led to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
When asked why he did not use force to halt the demonstrations, Gorbachev said it would have sparked a catastrophic set of events and even a world war.
"If the Soviet Union had wished, there would have been nothing of the sort (the fall of the Wall) and no German unification. But what would have happened? A catastrophe or World War III," Gorbachev said.
"My policy was open and sincere, a policy aimed at using democracy and not spilling blood. But this cost me very dearly, I can tell you that," he said.
Most Russians loathe Gorbachev for his weakness in allowing the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of Moscow's global empire. A poll last year found that 60 per cent of Russians still viewed the demise of the Soviet Union as a "tragedy."
Thousands of East Germans crossed to West Berlin in November 1989 after the Soviet-backed authorities unexpectedly ordered the opening of tightly guarded border crossings in the Wall.
Gorbachev, who could have used about half a million Soviet troops stationed in East Germany to crush the rebellion, said that he had "a good night's sleep" after the Wall was opened.
"I am very proud of the decision we made," he said. "The Wall did not simply fall - it was destroyed just as the Soviet Union was destroyed."
The fall of the Berlin Wall was one of the nails in the coffin of the Soviet Union, which collapsed at the end of 1991.
After becoming Soviet leader in 1985, Gorbachev - then just 54 - battled against the conservative wing of the Communist Party of his country to push through reforms that dismantled the one-party system, freed the press and ended restrictions on religion.
The father of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) said he had not wished to preside over the collapse of the Soviet Union, adding that it was destroyed by internal discord.
The fall of the Soviet Union also signaled the end of Gorbachev's own political career. Despite winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, he never won elected office afterwards and nowadays appears much more often abroad than in Russia.
But Gorbachev warned that the West had also made mistakes, missing an opportunity to build lasting peace in Europe by being over-triumphant after the Soviet collapse.
"The West and above all the U.S. thought that they had a full monopoly in their hands...Their triumphal complex cost a fair amount: A lot could have been resolved and wars avoided in Europe," he said.
"They now need their own perestroika," he said, adding that he was glad Obama had won the U.S. presidential election.
"The lesson from the Berlin Wall is not to divide up the world again. We must live peacefully in the European house together with all its windows and doors," said Gorbachev.
Mrs. Angela Merkel, the first leader of reunited Germany to grow up under communist rule, has worked as chancellor to warm up ties with the U.S. - a country she could not travel to until she was in her mid-30s.
The former East German physicist, also the first woman to lead her country, restored cordiality to ties strained over the Iraq war while firmly but diplomatically acknowledging political differences.
Her address to U.S. Congress Tuesday came weeks after she won a new four-year term at the head of a new centre-right coalition.
When she came to power in 2005, Merkel inherited chilly relations with the administration of George W. Bush, who was irked by predecessor Gerhard Schroeder's strident criticism of the Iraq invasion.
Merkel, 55, has praised the U.S.'s contribution to making her country "reunited, a partner in Europe and in the trans-Atlantic community."
She says she enjoys "close cooperation" with Obama and that Germany is a "reliable and intensive partner" for America, with which it works closely on issues such as Iran's nuclear programme.
Still, there is potential for tension. Germany has some 4,000 troops in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) mission in Afghanistan, which is unpopular at home. A parliamentary mandate allows for a maximum of 4,500 soldiers, and that appears unlikely to increase in the near future.
Berlin is lukewarm at best about Moslem Turkey's bid for membership of the European Union (EU); Washington is a strong supporter of Turkey's EU aspirations.
Merkel is the daughter of a Protestant pastor who moved his family to the east when she was very young. She told U. S. Congress Tuesday that America "was simply unreachable to me" until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.
"The wall, barbed wire and orders to shoot limited my access to the free world," she said, adding that films and books smuggled in by relatives from the west helped form her picture of the U.S.
"I was enthusiastic for the American dream - the opportunity for everyone to be successful, to become something through their own efforts," she added.
Merkel said she flew to the U.S. for the first time in 1990.
THE Berlin Wall was erected by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, also called East Germany) completely encircling West Berlin, separating it from East Germany, including East Berlin. The longer Inner German Border (the IGB) demarcated the border between East and West Germany. Both borders came to symbolize the Iron Curtain between Western Europe and the Eastern bloc. Prior to the Wall's erection, 3.5 million East Germans had avoided Eastern bloc emigration restrictions to escape into West Germany, many over the border between East and West Berlin. During its existence from 1961 to 1989, the Wall stopped almost all such emigration and separated East Germany from West Germany. The Wall included guard towers lining large concrete walls circumscribing a wide area (later known as the "death strip") containing anti-vehicle trenches, "fakir beds" and other defences. After its erection, around 5,000 people attempted to escape circumventing the wall, with estimates of the resulting death toll varying between 100 and 200.
During a revolutionary wave sweeping across the Eastern bloc, the East German government announced on November 9, 1989, after several weeks of civil unrest, that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans climbed onto and crossed the wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere.
Over the next few weeks, parts of the wall were chipped away by a euphoric public and by souvenir hunters; cranes were later used to remove almost all of the rest. The fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for German reunification, which was formally concluded on October 3, 1990.
After the end of World War II in Europe, what remained of Nazi Germany west of the Oder-Neisse line was divided into four occupation zones (per the Potsdam Agreement), each one controlled by one of the four occupying Allied powers: The Americans, British, French and the Soviet Union. The capital, Berlin, as the seat of the Allied Control Council, was similarly subdivided into four sectors despite the city lying deep inside the Soviet zone. Within two years, divisions occurred between the Soviets and the other occupying powers, including the Soviets' refusal to agree to reconstruction plans making post-war Germany self-sufficient and a detailed accounting of the industrial plants, goods infrastructure already removed by the Soviets.
Britain, France, the U.S. and the Benelux countries later met to combine the non-Soviet zones of the country into one zone for reconstruction and approve the extension of the Marshall Plan for European reconstruction to Germany.
Following World War II, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin built up a protective belt of Soviet controlled nations on his Western border, the Eastern bloc, that then included Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, which he wished to maintain alongside a weakened Soviet-controlled Germany. As early as 1945, Stalin revealed to German communist leaders that he expected to slowly undermine the British position within the British occupation zone, that the U.S. would withdraw within a year or two and that nothing then would stand in the way of a united Germany under communist control within the Soviet orbit. The major task of the ruling communist party in the Soviet zone was to channel Soviet orders down to both the administrative apparatus and the other bloc parties pretending that these were initiatives of its own.
Property and industry were nationalized in the East German zone. If statements or decisions deviated from the described line, reprimands and, sometimes, punishment would ensue, such as imprisonment, torture and even death. Indoctrination of Marxism-Leninism became a compulsory part of school curricula, sending professors and students fleeing to the west. An elaborate political police apparatus kept the population under close surveillance, including Soviet secret police.
In 1948, following disagreements regarding reconstruction and a new German currency, Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade, preventing food, materials and supplies from arriving in West Berlin. The U.S., Britain, France, Canada, Australia and several other countries began a massive "Berlin airlift", supplying West Berlin with food and other supplies. The Soviets mounted a public relations campaign against the western policy change and communists attempted to disrupt the elections of 1948 preceding large losses therein, while 300,000 Berliners demonstrated for the international airlift to continue. In May 1949, Stalin lifted the blockade, permitting the resumption of Western shipments to Berlin.
The GDR was declared on October 7, 1949, within which the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs accorded the East German state administrative authority, but not autonomy, with an unlimited Soviet exercise of the occupation regime and Soviet penetration of administrative, military and secret police structures. East Germany differed from West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany), which developed into a Western capitalist country with a social market economy and a democratic parliamentary government. Continual economic growth starting in the 1950s fuelled a 20-year "economic miracle". As West Germany's economy grew and its standard of living continually improved, many East Germans wanted to move to West Germany.
After Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, the majority of those living in the newly acquired areas of the Eastern Bloc aspired to independence and wanted the Soviets to leave.
Taking advantage of the zonal border between occupied zones in Germany, the number of GDR citizens moving to West Germany totaled 197,000 in 1950, 165,000 in 1951, 182,000 in 1952 and 331,000 in 1953. One reason for the sharp 1953 increase was fear of potential further Sovietization with the increasingly paranoid actions of Stalin in late 1952 and early 1953. About 226,000 had fled in just the first six months of 1953.
By the early 1950s, the Soviet approach to controlling national movement, restricting emigration, was emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern bloc, including East Germany. The restrictions presented a quandary for some Eastern bloc states that had been more economically advanced and open than the Soviet Union, such that crossing borders seemed more natural - especially where no prior border existed between East and West Germany.
Up until 1952, the lines between East Germany and the western occupied zones could be easily crossed in most places.
On April 1, 1952, East German leaders met Stalin in Moscow; during the discussions Stalin's Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov proposed that the East Germans should "introduce a system of passes for visits of West Berlin residents to the territory of East Berlin (so as to stop) free movement of Western agents" in the GDR. Stalin agreed, calling the situation "intolerable". He advised the East Germans to build up their border defences, telling them that "the demarcation line between East and West Germany should be considered a border - and not just any border, but a dangerous one...The Germans will guard the line of defence with their lives."
Consequently, the IGB between the two German states was closed, and a barbed-wire fence erected.
On August 23, 1989, Hungary removed its physical border defences with Austria, and in September more than 13,000 East German tourists in Hungary escaped to Austria. This set up a chain of events.
The Hungarians prevented many more East Germans from crossing the border and returned them to Budapest. These East Germans flooded the West German embassy and refused to return to East Germany. The East German government responded by disallowing any further travel to Hungary, but allowed those already there to return. This triggered a similar incident in neighboring Czechoslovakia. On this occasion, the East German authorities allowed them to leave, providing that they used a train which transited East Germany on the way. This was followed by mass demonstrations within East Germany itself. The longtime leader of East Germany, Erich Honecker, resigned on October 18, 1989, and was replaced by Egon Krenz a few days later. Honecker had predicted in January of that year that the wall would stand for a "100 more years" if the conditions which had caused its construction did not change.
Protest demonstrations broke out all over East Germany in September 1989. Initially, they were of people wanting to leave to the West, chanting Wir wollen raus! (We want out!). Then protestors began to chant Wir bleiben hier, (we're staying here!).
By November 4, the protests had swelled significantly, with a million people gathered that day in Alexanderplatz in East Berlin.
Meanwhile, the wave of refugees leaving East Germany for the West had increased and had found its way through Czechoslovakia, tolerated by the new Krenz government and in agreement with the communist Czechoslovak government. To ease the complications, the politburo led by Krenz decided on November 9, to allow refugees to exit directly through crossing points between East Germany and West Germany, including West Berlin. On the same day, the administration modified the proposal to include private travel. The new regulations were to take effect on November 17, 1989.
Spokesperson for the politburo, GŸnter Schabowski, had the task of announcing this. However he had not been involved in the discussions about the new regulations and had not been fully updated. Shortly before a press conference on November 9, he was handed a note that said that East Berliners would be allowed to cross the border with proper permission but given no further instructions on how to handle the information. These regulations had only been completed a few hours earlier and were to take effect the following day, so as to allow time to inform the border guards - however, nobody had informed Schabowski. He read the note out loud at the end of the conference and when asked when the regulations would come into effect, he assumed it would be the same day based on the wording of the note and replied: "As far as I know effective immediately, without delay". After further questions from journalists he confirmed that the regulations included the border crossings towards West Berlin, which he had not mentioned until then.
After the press conference, East Germans began gathering at the wall, demanding that border guards immediately open the gates. The surprised and overwhelmed guards made many frantic telephone calls to their superiors, but it became clear that there was no one among the East German authorities who would dare to take personal responsibility for issuing orders to use lethal force, so there was no way for the vastly outnumbered soldiers to hold back the huge crowd of East German citizens. In face of the growing crowd, the guards finally yielded, opening the checkpoints and allowing people through with little or no identity checking. Ecstatic East Berliners were soon greeted by West Berliners on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. November 9 is thus considered the date the Wall fell. In the days and weeks that followed, people came to the wall with sledgehammers to chip off souvenirs, demolishing lengthy parts of it in the process. These people were nicknamed "wall woodpeckers".
The East German regime announced the opening of 10 new border crossings the following weekend, including some in symbolic locations. Crowds on both sides waited there for hours, cheering at the bulldozers who took parts of the Wall away to reinstate old roads.
New border crossings continued to be opened through the middle of 1990, including the Brandenburg Gate on December 22, 1989.
On December 25, 1989, Leonard Bernstein gave a concert in Berlin celebrating the end of the Wall, including Beethoven's ninth symphony (Ode to Joy) with the word "Joy" (Freude) changed to "Freedom" (Freiheit) in the text sung. The orchestra and choir were drawn from East and West Germany, as well as the United Kingdom, France, the Soviet Union, and the U.S.
Over the years there has been repeatedly a controversial debate whether November 9 would have made a suitable German national holiday, often initiated by former members of political opposition in East Germany like Werner Schulz. Besides the emotional apogee of East Germany's peaceful revolution November 9 is also the date of the end of the Revolution of 1848 and the date of the declaration of the first German republic, the Weimar Republic, in 1918. However, November 9 is also the anniversary of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch and the infamous Kristallnacht pogroms of 1938 and, therefore, October 3 was chosen instead.
In the U.S., the German Embassy is coordinating a public diplomacy campaign with the motto "Freedom Without Walls" to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall. The campaign is focused on promoting awareness among current university students, and students at over 20 universities will participate in "Freedom Without Walls" events in late 2009.
