Posted on 10/22/2009 2:54:34 PM PDT by neverdem
Twenty years later, historians still can't figure out why the West won.
The Year That Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall, by Michael Meyer, New York: Scribner, 272 pages, $26
The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War, by James Mann, New York: Viking, 416 pages, $27.95
We don’t know the exact hierarchy of motives, but it is certain that Chris Gueffroy was willing to leave his family and friends to avoid conscription into the army. Considering the associated risks, it’s likely that the 20-year-old was also strongly motivated to escape the stultifying sameness, the needless poverty, the cultural black hole that was his homeland. In his passport photo, he wore a small hoop earring, an act of nonconformity in a country that prized conformity above all else. But Gueffroy’s passport was yet another worthless possession, for he had the great misfortune of being born into a walled nation, a country that brutally enforced a ban on travel to “nonfraternal” states.
On February 6, 1989, Gueffroy and a friend attempted to escape from East Berlin by scaling die Mauer—the wall that separated communist east from capitalist west. They didn’t make it far. After tripping an alarm, Gueffroy was shot 10 times by border guards and died instantly. His accomplice was shot in the foot but survived, only to be put on trial and sentenced to three years in prison for “attempted illegal border-crossing in the first degree.”
Twenty years ago this month, and nine months after the murder of Gueffroy, the Berlin Wall, that monument to the barbarism of the Soviet experiment, was finally breached. The countries held captive by Moscow began their long road to economic and cultural recovery, and to reunification with liberal...
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
“Twenty years later, historians still can’t figure out why the West won.”
No sarc tag?
No, they just can't figure out a way of making it look like Reagan had little or nothing to do with it.
I remember calling my dad that night and telling him to watch CNN, because this was one of the reasons we fought in Vietnam. While Democrats and the Left thought won a huge victory by their allies conquering Vietnam and Cambodia, and managing to slaughter 2,000,000 brown-skinned people, that war was simply a battle in the larger Cold War- by fighting the Soviet Union in SE Asia, it stretched their resources, which were broken by Ronald Reagan in the 1980's.
There are three myths that the West should have never subscribed to:
1. The cold war is over.
2. The West defeated the USSR.
3. The POTUS is the most powerful man in the world.
In this Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) political stalemate the most powerful man is the one who can reach for the nuclear button the fastest. It is more likely that the president of Russia is more powerful than the POTUS simply because the former does not have his hands tied by a wishy-washy Congress.
Besides, would anyone want Obama to be the most powerful man in the world? Isn’t it bad enough that a potential foreigner holds the key to our nuclear arsenal and that an American Congress stands idly by?
"The Cold War is already at an end."
-Margaret Thatcher, November 28,1988
Reagan's 4th and final summit with the Soviets tool place May 29 - June 1, 1988, where he and Gorbachev exchanged instruments of ratification of the INF treaty.The joint statement relaeased by the two leaders stated, for all purposes, exactly that the Cold War was over.
The key line: both countries were determined "to prevent any war between the United States and Soviet Union, whether nuclear or conventional."
BUMP!
I've been saying #1 for a long time.
What a crock. Traveling to East Berlin, the showcase of communism, was like traveling back to the time of Scrooge. Dirty, nasty, communist architecture only a Democrat could love, and watchers everywhere.
The day after The Wall came down I was at the East/West German border at Helmstedt waiting for clearance to travel the highway corridor to West Berlin. There were four of us coming back from Hahn AB at the French border. At Helmstedt there were East German cars, Trabants, as far as the eye could see, waiting patiently on the other side of the autobahn to LEAVE East Germany.
Just for giggles I measured the distance of the line of Trabbis from the checkpoint to the back of the line. Twenty-six kilometers long was how big it was.
Up until the anti-climactic end to the country, those of us in the military in West Berlin were convinced several East German units were NOT going to behave if/when East Germany started her death throes. I think if the border had opened ANY other way than the way it did, accidentally, there would have been blood in the streets.
Thanks for the recollections. The day the Wall came down was one of history's most significant moments.
As I recall, the Soviets didn't build that Wall to keep Westerners out, did they?
One only had to tour East Berlin to see what a cruddy place it was.
No, they did not... Neither is there a lengthy list of Westerners who were shot dead by soldiers armed with automatic weapons in an attempt to cross said wall going East...
the infowarrior
Oh, sure. It’s reactionaries like your self that deign the dignity of people’s collective paradises of Cuba, North Korea, Boston.....
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