Berlin '89: When the Impossible Became Real

I was in Berlin 20 years ago this week. I saw the impossible first-hand: the people of Germany taking down the Wall.

I was then working on the professional staff of the House Armed Services Committee. We were on a staff tour of NATO military bases and arrived in Berlin during this critical week by pure coincidence. When our delegation took off from Andrews Air Force base outside of Washington the Warsaw Pact was alive and apparently formidable. By the time we landed in Europe, it was falling apart.

It is amazing how quickly structures, paradigms, and ideologies that experts believe unchangeable can change. Forces can build undetected for decades, then explode in rapid, transformational movement.

I arrived in Berlin a couple of days after November 9. I was one of the last people to walk through the famous Checkpoint Charlie border crossing. When I passed through in the morning, East German guards were still checking passports. When I strolled back down Unter den Linden, after having a scotch with some Cubans in an East Berlin bar, marveling at the Ishtar Gate from Babylon in the Pergamon Museum, examining World War II bullet holes still peppering some buildings, and joining a student protest over required courses in Marxism-Leninism, the guards were gone. The checkpoint was open for free passage in both directions. As far as I know it never re-opened. Today, it is a tourist attraction.

At a German NATO base we got the standard briefing on NATO military strategy. But when the map went up showing how NATO forces would react to an offensive lead by East German tank divisions, we just looked at each other. We asked the general briefing us what the strategy was now, that the Eastern European forces would not be part of a Soviet offensive. He couldn't answer. We didn't know.

It took years for the West to understand that the events of 1989 were not a fraud or a feint. David Hoffman describes in this new book, The Dead Hand, how President George H.W. Bush "lost" the year 1989.

The fall of the wall was a European earthquake, but in Washington and Moscow, miscommunication and suspicion meant the leaders were badly out of sync. While Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was eager to move on cutting nuclear arsenals, President George H.W. Bush was cautious and uncertain, and a promising moment slipped away.

We cannot let another policy moment slip away. Twenty years after, we are at another historic point, ripe with transformational possibility. Domestically, we see it in issues like health care. Internationally, we see it in potentially profound changes in nuclear forces and policies, and in the very structure of global relations.

The transformation will be resisted. The forces of reaction are strong, as they were in 1989, arguing against change, clinging to the tired policies and weapons of the past. They tell us now, as they did before November 9, that change is impossible, that we are naïve to question the Cold War weapons and strategies, that diplomacy is appeasement, that they are the realists and we, the idealists.

But I have seen the impossible happen. I have a chunk of the wall in my bookcase to prove it. I have seen what the determined action of millions of people can do. I have seen decades of history change in days. These moments are not flukes; they are more the norm than we acknowledge.

We are in such a moment now. We must, like the Berliners of 1989, make the most of it.

 

Follow Joe Cirincione on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Cirincione

Comments

[Independent1969]

East Germany freed itself from communism after Poland, Hungary and possibly the Czech Republic which would make it about 3rd or 4th in line. East Germany is incorrectly given credit for ending the Cold War. That's definitely not what happened.

The Cold War was over when the Polish people, with the help of Pope John Paul and the Solidarity Party fought for more rights and free elections and got them both. Once they got their elections on June 4th 1989 they voted out the Communists from power. That was the beggining of the end for Communism in Europe. If you want to know how to make huge changes in government then study what happened in Poland during this time.

Poland's victory inspired other Communist countries to fight for their own freedom and to use Poland's strategy as a template. It worked. Within a few months of Poland's victory most of Europe was free from Communism and the Soviet Union was soon gone.

If it weren't for Poland's success it's very possible that the Soviet Union might still exist today and Central and Eastern Europe still Communist nations. Scary.

So for the sake of historical accuracy let's tell the real story and give credit where credit is due.

Solidarnosc!

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090906/FOREIGN/709059925/0/GLOBALBRIEFING

[Wedjat]

We were stationed in Berlin in the years just before the wall "came down".

I had also beeen a tour guide for both West and East Berlin and spent a lot of time going back and forth between both sides of the city...each time going through the East German checkpoint. (Charlie)
My husband was in the USAF.

I wish I had been there when all this happened. The first thing I would have done would have been to go to "Charlie" and shake the hands of the guards. Oddly enough, I had made peace with those guards during the years that we were there. I had my job to do and they had theirs. We seemed to have settled into a sort of an understanding in those last years of the "cold war".

I had the same access on Museum Island in the East, and even in the soviet War Museum. I think perhaps they were simply tired of the status quo and preferred to have trust between those of us who worked back and forth.

A.D. Hamilton

[eileenflemingWAWA]

A wall twice as high and five times as long as the one that fell in Berlin, is close to completion in the West Bank.

One of the chants I learned during one of my four visits to the agricultural village of Bilin, was "The wall will fall in Bilin; the wall will fall like in Berlin".

In Bilin, the Green Line is five miles from the separation barrier and for the last five years every Friday afternoon after prayers at the mosque, Palestinians and growing numbers of Israelis and Internationals have been waging a nonviolent solidarity march in resistance to the route of the construction of Israel's Wall-which in Bilin is twenty feet high of wire fencing that denies the farmers access to their olive groves.

For the last five years of Friday's, locals, internationals and Israelis of conscience endure tear gas, rubber bullets, sound bombs and other means of 'crowd dispersal' inflicted upon them by Israeli forces in ever escalating force.

During my initial visit in 2006, the Israeli forces targeted only the activists who ran down the hill along side of the fence, but in June 2009, just as the front of the crowd neared the area of descent, another gate and more barbed wire had been erected in front of it and the Israeli forces assaulted us immediately with tear gas as we approached.

http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1481&Itemid=226

[JimRinX]

I know how you felt - I've always wanted to return, as an adult, to Berlin; as we arrived (I was 2 1/2) just in time for the Soviet tanks to start rolling into Prague, in 1967-68.
I want to find the spot where I stood - as a child still barely taller than the Concertina Wire, and starred in wide eyed wonder at the Soviet Tanks on either side of the Brandenburg Gate; then I want to walk through it!!!
Gut Nicht, Deutchlanders!

[Felix99]

From what I understand, the tearing down of the wall was preceded by some high-level deal-making between the US and the Soviets. The Soviets would not interfere with the wall bit, and would eventually withdraw from Germany if the US promised not to move NATO further east. But, the US broke that promise, so I don't think we should expect too much cooperation from the Russians in the future.

And, always that damn health bill. If government-run health care is good enough for the military, why is it not good enough for the general population.

[Waltfl]

There was no deal. Gorbatchev clearly explained why the Soviets refused to step in. US intelligence agencies were totally clueless, so were the West German Verfassungsschutz and BND. Kohl, the German chancellor, wasn't even in the country when it happened.

The East German government was also totally dumbfounded. For a long time Honnecker, the leader of the DDR, and Mielke, didn't want to believe what was going on. They were fed doctored reports by their aides, because none of the commanders and generals dared to admit that they had lost control of the streets.

Once the wall was open there was disbelief. I remember the scene where the 80 year old Army General Erich Mielke, the commander of the border patrol and of the East German intelligence & secret police stood in front of the parliament. Members started booing. He was totally bent out of shape, and said "Comrads, don't you know me, don't you know, I love you all".

I've personally seen a copy of the document where the commander of the border posts in Berlin-Mitte asked General Mileke in writing, what to do? Open fire or let the people pass. Mielke wrote: "Fire". Then the paper came back. The East German major or colonel explained: "but my men have only 15 rounds in their rifles, but there are 200.000 people standing in front of me. Then Mielke scratched his handwritten order out, and wrote: Let them pass". That's how close it came to a blood bath.

[websmith]

You actually do have to go back to the fall of the Berlin wall and the resulting collapse of the Soviet Union to experience a time when real change took place. People were suddenly freed and they took to the market places in response. In a burst of economic freedom and capitalism, they took the small amounts of money that they had and bought things from the West and sold them for more. Streets and stores were overflowing with things that the Eastern population had never seen in real life. Then , as the governments reorganized, it didn't take long for them to get this influx of freedom and prosperity under control. Today, the life of the Eastern European is not much different than it was behind the Wall.

This health care bill is not change. It is more of the same government intervention and control that continues to destroy our economic prosperity and personal freedom. If it survives the Senate and becomes law, prices will shoot up and we will be cheated out of technological advancements that would have made our lives longer, healthier, and more enjoyable. As with all things government, we will end up with less for more. http://bit.ly/2oN5PB

[overd0g1]

Yeah. Ironically, though the west saw the wall coming down as a triumph of freedom, it actually just released the dam that was holding back the tide of communism. Now it's victory is almost complete with the defeat of limited government in the U.S.

[Waltfl]

I was in Berlin too, 20 years ago, and remember these days well. The difference is, there were several hundred thousand of people marching in the East, in Berlin, Dresden, and Leipzig, voting with their feet. THose people had it, and they raise from their living rooms and went out on the streets. Even the Communist regime didn't dare to gun them down. They thought about it, as handwritten notes from Army General Mielke, the head of the East German State Security prove.
What are we doing? We sit in front of our computers and TVs, while people like Lieberman openly threaten to singlehandedly block health care reform. Let 200.000 Americans line up in front of Lieberman's home, and chant "we want health care, we want health care". Then, it may pass.

[Polly Keary]

True this!!!!

[LizM]

"...we are at another historic point, ripe with transformational possibility. Domestically, we see it in issues like health care. Internationally, we see it in potentially profound changes in nuclear forces and policies, and in the very structure of global relations."

Indeed!

Let's just hope that President Obama decides upon a new strategy for Afghanista­n-Pakistan and the wider region that doesn't define AND doom his presidency...and squander all of the transformational possibilities in the process.

If we see an escalation in Afghanistan - or worse, a half-assed escalation - then we can pretty much kiss any transformational possibilities good-bye.

[overd0g1]

Yes. Our transformation into East Germany is almost complete.

[dresdengirl]

As someone who escaped from East Germany, let me assure you, you have no idea what you are talking about.