All Fall Down

In Review: The Fall of the Berlin Wall, by William F. Buckley, Jr. (John Wiley & Sons, 212 pages, $19.95)

Right around the corner as you make your way through the front door of the Spectator's Arlington offices is a brown particleboard bookcase. Its function is to display the last year or so's worth of magazines so that staff can quickly get at back issues. A few times a week, I find myself in front of this bookcase, thumbing through issues of this unwonted publication. I sometimes pause, mid-pageturn, to eyeball a curious artifact on the fourth shelf from the top. Inside a Plexiglas container rests a chunk of mortar mixed with brick about the size of a mandarin orange. A length of rusted over barbed wire runs from one end of the plastic case to the other -- for effect, I think. A small typed notice advertises this as a piece of what used to be the Berlin Wall.

William F. Buckley's new book is intended as a history of that wall, from its conception as a way for the Soviet Union to staunch the flow of East German refugees and East Europeans generally, who preferred freedom over purges and famines, to its audacious construction in the late summer of 1961 to its collapse, at the hands of thousands of ordinary Germans on both sides of the divide, in 1989. It was the last Great Moment in European history.

But of course some truly dark moments preceded its dismantling. On the evening of August 12, 1961, officers of the East German army sealed off what had been lenient, almost Canadian-like check points, and began stringing the barbed wire. Over the next several days, they finished the outline of what would be built into a wall 13 feet high with dogs, guard towers, and a "dead zone," the space in which many a person was shot and left to bleed to death while making a break for it.

We know now that the East German forces were under strict orders from the Kremlin: (a) by all means, lay down the wire; but (b) if the Western forces advance, cease construction and fall back -- under no circumstances were they to fire the first shot. But the three other Western nations in charge of Berlin after the Second World War (the U.S., England, and France) didn't know of these orders, were caught entirely off guard by the closure, and, in the confusion, didn't wish to risk a hot war with the cold-blooded, shoe-pounding Nikita Khrushchev.

As a consequence, the wall was bluffed into existence by madmen holding a pair of two's. Buckley relates the story of the nightclubbers in West Berlin who filed out onto the streets to see "militiamen with jackhammers and crowbars [tearing] up the paving stones on major streets, making them impassable by ordinary vehicles," while others unrolled the wires, guarded by officers with tommy guns. Wait till the Americans get here! taunted some of the braver bar hoppers, who were soon to be disappointed.

The U.S. did indeed dispatch Gen. Lucius Clay, the man who had engineered the Berlin airlift in 1948 and saved the city from being swallowed whole by the Soviet Union, and he began to live up to his reputation. Clay walked into East Germany himself and, on a few occasions, marched troops and civilians in and out of the border stations, in effect taunting the Soviets and the East German satellite government. This defiant spirit was not, alas, the decisive one. For reasons of expedience and geopolitics, the U.S. government soon accepted the wall as an unbreachable barrier, the Iron Curtain set in stone.

John F. Kennedy comes off particularly bad in this tale of woe. The youthful president might have cut a dashing figure and wowed the Europeans with his style and rhetoric, but he proved to be weak, distracted, and ultimately a poor decision maker. In foreign policy, his administration seems almost an inversion of what should have been. The hawks won the fights that they should've lost (send armed insurgents into Cuba, start feeling out Vietnam) and the doves had a habit of yanking defeat out of an easy victory's jaws (don't provide air support, accept a Soviet presence in Cuba so long as they don't have nukes, don't risk a confrontation over the partition of Berlin).

In the first few days of construction, tanks could have rolled over the barbed wire and reasserted international law, codified under the Four Powers Agreements, that England, France, and the U.S. were to have a say in all of Berlin, not just the West. But the U.S. government under JFK's leadership made crystal clear that it "was not going to choose this time and place to pay any price, bear any burden."

FOR A BOOK titled The Fall of the Berlin Wall, I expected more about, well, the actual physical fall of the Berlin Wall. The penultimate chapter "The Wall Came Tumbling Down" does give a rough sketch of how it happened. Riots and protests all over the Soviet satellite nations forced changes in the respective regimes, include a shuffling of the leadership deck, and the new leaders proved more liberal than their predecessors.

At a press conference on the night of November 9, 1989, East German party chief Günter Schabowski announced that freedom of movement had been reinstated. The Volk took to the streets in celebration. By midnight, hundreds of Germans were dancing atop the Brandenburg Gate. The next day "hundreds of Berliners, West and East, were there with real chisels and claw hammers and screwdrivers and sledgehammers to pry loose their own piece of the wall." These being Germans, they made quick work of it.

The physical destruction of the wall is related in rapid fire fashion -- less than three pages, all told -- because it was almost anticlimactic, and because Buckley has bigger fish to harpoon. The inflexible ideology that built the wall and kept it in place began to tumble long before it did. Granted, the West gave Karl Marx's legacy the decisive push, but it was already teetering and frail, straining under the weight of its own inhumanity.

"In the first few days of construction, tanks could have rolled over the barbed wire and reasserted international law, codified under the Four Powers Agreements, that England, France, and the U.S. were to have a say in all of Berlin, not just the West. But the U.S. government under JFK's leadership made crystal clear that it "was not going to choose this time and place to pay any price, bear any burden." "

Yes, the sappers were ready, the US Commandant was willing, the Berliners were waiting . . .

But JFK's State Dept. advised Kennedy NOT to resist the wall!!! They opined: having free access to West Berlin allows too many to emigrate from E to W Germany; there will soon not be enough ethnic Germans left in the East . . .

(as if they actually cared . . . other than mouthing the East German Gov't line).

IOW, OUR government under Kennedy DECIDED that it was better for those hundreds of thousands who were voting with their feet by leaving the East, to STAY there so that there were enough of them and enough with appropriate skills to make a VIABLE East Germany . . . playing God with those other people's lives. . .

The inate illogic of the East German regime could have been up in 1961; the reason they put the wall UP was to stop the flood of emigrees to the West! Instead, the Wall permitted the East German State to survive another 30 years.

JFK's inaction was not due to fear or the calculus of starting a hot war -- but to a POLICY DECISION to keep the ethnic Germans in East Germany.

That is why Kennedy's much-publicized "I am a Berliner" speech rings so hollow with me. It was all PR -- after he could actually have done something. The beautiful irony is, that he actually said, I am a jelly donut, instead of I am (a) Berliner. The joke stands today, and I laugh along with it. Of course the Berliners knew what he meant, and were graciously grateful for any sign of support from the American government at that point.

Sad, that day in Aug. of '61 . . .

That is why Kennedy's much-publicized "I am a Berliner" speech rings so hollow with me. It was all PR -- after he could actually have done something. The beautiful irony is, that he actually said, I am a jelly donut, instead of I am (a) Berliner. The joke stands today, and I laugh along with it.

Thanks for the reminder! You won't see that mentioned anywhere in the New York Times, or the Washington Post, let alone the Minneapolis Star. And often the blithering idiots at Urban Legends would flail away at trying to 'debunk' it.

Anyways, since you got me thinking about jelly donuts....you have heard of the Jelly Roll Diet? And while it is a major digression, I thought you would appreciate this little apocryphal parable about a jelly donut...

The Parable of the Jelly Donut

by Hermotimus Boukephalos

Once upon a time a man was minding his own business when a Great Man approached him and handed him a jelly donut.

Now, the man wasn't hungry, and he didn't particularly want a jelly donut - he certainly hadn't asked the Great Man for the jelly donut (had he been asking, he would've asked for a chocolate donut). But people said the Great Man knew what you really wanted and needed, even if you didn't (he was, after all, "the Great Man" on all matters, including that), and so the man meekly accepted the gift. "Thank you for this jelly donut, great Man," he said.

The man went on about his way, carrying the jelly donut. People who claimed to be Authorities on the Great Man said to him that he should be grateful for the donut bestowed on him by the Great Man. "I did say 'thank you,'" the man replied.

"Did you say, 'Thank you, Great Man, for the rich red raspberry filling'?" they asked.

"Uh, no, not specifically."

"Did you say, 'Thank you, Great Man, for the beautiful pink icing and the colorful sprinkles on top'?"

"Um… no," the man answered. "You know, honestly, I don't care for sprinkles on a donut. They don't really have any flavor, and sometimes they get stuck between my teeth. And the icing is beginning to melt and run all over my fingers."

"Oh, you wicked, ungrateful man!" shouted the Authorities. "The jelly donut is a gift from the Great Man, and it is your responsibility to take care of it!"

"'Take care of it'?" the man asked. "I was going to eat it."

"Oh no! The gift of the jelly donut is in itself proof of what a Great Man the Great Man is, and it belongs to Him to decide what to do with it. You must not give in to your lustful appetites and wantonly consume the gift! You must take care of it and hold it up as an example of His greatness!"

So the man listened to the Authorities, and carried around the jelly donut as a sign of the Great Man's great generosity. The Authorities showed up from time to time to remind him that he must repeatedly say "Thank you, Great Man" for the gift of the jelly donut.

Naturally, the jelly donut began to go stale after a few days. The pink icing got all runny and dribbled, not only all over his fingers, but onto other people the man was in contact with. When the man asked the Authorities about the problem of the runny icing, he was told it was part of the Great Man's plan, and that the fact that ordinary people couldn't see the wonder and good of runny icing didn't mean that it wasn't a Great thing - it must be Great - it came from the Great Man. Still, other people didn't see the runny icing as a wonderful thing, part of the gift, when it dribbled on their carpet and stained their furniture - they became angry at the man for dribbling sticky icing on their things.

And the Great Man did a strange thing from time to time: He would come upon the man, walking along, carrying his jelly donut, and would sprinkle ants on the donut. The man took the ant-infested donut to the Authorities. "The Great Man surely intends that I throw away the donut, now" he said. "Look, He has put ants on it."

"The ants are just the Great Man's way of testing you, to see how much you cherish the magnificent gift He has presented you. Don't you dare show your disregard for the jelly donut - pick off the ants."

So, taking care of the jelly donut soon began to take all of the man's time - picking ants off the icing, trying to poke the now-rancid raspberry jelly back in, where it had oozed out of holes eaten by the ants, retrieving sprinkles that had fallen off the donut. Once, the Great man stuck out a foot as the man walked by, tripping him. The man picked up the jelly donut, cried a bit, then said, "Thank you, Great Man, for the gift of this jelly donut," as he brushed off the gravel and dust from the donut and continued on his way. Still, despite his best efforts, the donut was really becoming disgusting.

Searching for an understanding of this all-consuming task, the man went to listen to the Authorities.

"Donut-care is a life of woe," said the Authorities. "Praise be to the Great Man who gives us these donuts." The Authorities recognized that, eventually, every donut would rot, or perhaps the Great Man would come take it back. But they differed about what happened after that. Some said that a person simply had a peaceful time, free of the cares of donut ownership. Some said that people who properly cared for their donuts eventually got to go to a pastry shop, where all the donuts were fresh and delicious. Still other Authorities said that a person was just given another donut, but if the person had done a good job taking care of this donut, then the next donut would be a better one.

One day, the man's donut simply fell apart. Maggots had long since consumed the jelly filling, and the hard dry shell of pastry crumbled into dust and sifted through his fingers. Ants scurried away with the last little bits of colored sprinkles. The man was sitting on the ground, staring at his empty, sticky hand, when the Great Man approached.

"Oh, Great Man, thank you again for the gift of the jelly donut," said the man.

"You're welcome," said the Great Man.

"But… may I ask a question? Why is it such a burden to carry a donut and care for it, only to have it rot in my hand?"

"I've been wondering about that, myself," said the Great Man. "Why on earth were you carrying that rotting donut around all these weeks?"

"The Authorities told me it was a gift from you, that I was obliged to take care of it for you until you took it back."

"Uh... yeah. It was a GIFT. I GAVE it to you. It was YOURS. To give it away, to throw it away, to say 'Thanks but no thanks.' To EAT it, for God's sake! I can't think of a more stupid thing to do with something perishable than to carry it around, trying to make it last as long as possible, instead of enjoying it while it's fresh and, if it gets stale before you finish it, to discard it." The Great Man looked disgusted.

"But the Authorities told me the donut really belonged to you, that I was just a steward of your gift," said the man, looking distraught.

"That's another thing. You go around thanking me all the time for this donut. If it belongs to me, and you're taking care of it for me, shouldn't I be the one thanking you? I mean, if I go out of town for a few days and ask my neighbor to feed the cat for me, I don't expect the neighbor to send me a 'Thank You' card for it."

"But how was I to know it was alright for me to discard the donut?" The man was almost frantic now at the thought of all the pointless effort.

"Well, you could begin with common sense. And it's not like I didn't try to help you get rid of the donut - I sprinkled ants on it! I tripped you and made you drop it in the dirt! What does it take for you to get the hint and just let go of it?"

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.