50 Years Ago the Rise of the Berlin Wall Showed the Evil of Soviet Tyranny

Today is the 50th anniversary of the erection of the Berlin Wall. The Wall eventually became a barrier of concrete, barbed wire, land mines, and towers filled with uniformed men with orders to shoot anyone who crossed.

The Berlin Wall was erected to plug a hole in the Iron Curtain. West Berlin, which was the part of the German capital than had been occupied by the United States, Great Britain, and France after World War II, was free territory and was still defended in 1961 by troops of the three allied powers. East Berlin, the then capital of East Germany, was the part that had been occupied by the Red Army. Before the Berlin Wall was erected, the border between East and West Berlin was a highway where East Germans and other East Europeans could travel from tyranny to freedom. The Wall closed off that highway.

The Berlin Wall was yet another embarrassment for the young presidency of John F. Kennedy, already reeling from accusations of weakness and foreign policy incompetence since the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Kennedy would not risk a war to take down the Wall. But he did travel to Berlin, eventually, and made his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in June 1963. The speech was, for practical purposes, a futile gesture. No words Kennedy could speak would bring the Wall down.

That honor would rest with another president, twenty four years later. President Ronald Reagan stood before the Berlin Wall and challenged then Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”

November 9, 1989, is a date that will live in celebration. It was the date that Reagan’s demand was met. The Berlin Wall garrison was withdrawn, throwing up the border between East and West Germany for the first time in nearly a generation. The sight of people standing on top of the Wall in celebration, dancing, playing musical instruments, attacking the concrete with picks and hammers, was something almost no one living in the shadow of the Cold War could have imagined happening.

The Berlin Wall stopped the flow of refugees. But it did so at a grievous cost to the Soviet Empire. No starker symbol of the sterile evil of Soviet tyranny could have been erected had Western propagandist had tried. The concrete and barbed wire structure was ugly beyond the grasp of human imagination. No one looking upon it could ever argue that what lay beyond it was good or humane. It was a scar that lay between freedom and tyranny, which only hid the pus laden reality of the people who conceived of it and built it. It’s construction heralded the end of the illusion that there could be compromise with the Soviet Empire. Its fall heralded the end of the Soviet Union.

Sources: Germany Marks Construction of the Berlin Wall, Associated Press, August 13, 2011

Ich bin ein Berliner Speech, John F. Kennedy, American Rhetoric, June 26, 1963

Tear Down this Wall Speech, Ronald Reagan, The History Place, June 12, 1987

How the Berlin Wall Came Tumbling Down, Mark R. Whittington, November 9, 2009


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