Bye, Bye, Berlin Wall

On August 13, 1961, the citizens of Berlin awoke to the sound of Soviet tanks approaching the Brandenburg gate in support of construction workers who were about to build one of the most palpable symbols of communist repression yet seen. The wall was built to stem the tide of freedom-loving Germans in the Soviet sector fleeing to freedom in the West.

On August 13, 2011, fifty years after the Soviet tanks, soldiers and wall-builders arrived, Germans and international visitors rallied at the Brandenburg Gate to memorialize the 136 Germans who died attempting to circumvent, tunnel under or climb over the wall to the freedom of West Berlin. One of the prices of freedom is having to put up with the lunatic fringe. During the minute of silence being observed during the ceremonies, German leftists who long for the days of communist repression, noisily disturbed the peace.

Like the language-twisting leftists in the West, the Soviets were also very good at using words that hide the truth. The East German police and the Soviet occupiers called the Wall "the anti-fascist protection rampart." A wall is generally built to keep people out, but there was no mad rush of "fascists" attempting to flee to the worker's paradise in the East. The escapes all went one way--West.

Until the wall was built, the choke-point at the Brandenburg Gate and the nearby environs were the path to freedom for 144,000 freedom-seekers in 1949 alone. In 1960, the year before the wall went up, the number was 199,000. In the final year of 1961, before the wall finally stopped the flow, over 207,000 made the perilous journey.

East Berlin looked very much like it did right after the second world war was concluded. Hundreds of thousands of Germans lived in the ruins and Soviet-style blockhouses put up after the war. But the work was in the West. When the Wall went up, many German families were left without their jobs to which they commuted each day. If life was bad before the Wall, it became unbearable after. Starvation was at the door nearly every day for thousands of families.

Meanwhile in the West, the rubble was removed, and all-new houses, apartments, shops, and office buildings sprang up like mushrooms. Growing wealth and freedom were everywhere in the western part of the city, and the East Berliners could see it. It was a constant reminder of their miserable, enslaved existence, and many chose to risk their lives rather than live like rats in a cage.

As amazing as it may seem, Germany's Left Party holds 76 of the 622 seats in the Reichstag. Nothing will deter their socialist dreams. They are blind to history, reality and plain common sense. The deaths of brave young men and women risking everything to get to the West means nothing to them. Left Party co-chair Gesine Lotzsch said the Wall was a logical consequence of Germany's attack on Russia, ignoring the fact that the Wall went up six years after the war was over, twenty years after Hitler invaded Russia, and during a time when Germany had no serious military of its own to attack anyone.

Like those in the United States who are convinced that warmonger Ronald Reagan was maneuvered into peace by democrat Mikhail Gorbachev, Left Party members believe that the Wall prevented a war between the Soviet Union and the United States. And all of the party's members agree that World War II and Germany's expansionism justified the securing of the borders of the East German Soviet puppet state. What we saw as a blight on the human environmental landscape, they see in fond remembrance as an island of Stalinesque tranquility.

Fortunately that is by far the minority view in Germany. The majority view is well-stated by Jurgen Litfin in Der Spiegel. "The deaths of the martyrs who tried to escape to freedom show that we are not defenseless in the face of tyranny, and that freedom is one of the most valuable things that we possess." Not quite as stirring as Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall," but equally meaningful.