Ivory Dome

It was twenty years ago today that Ronald Reagan gave his now famous “Tear Down This Wall!” speech at the West Berlin side of the Brandenburg Gate.  Who would have dared to believe that barely two years later, that infamous Wall of Shame would indeed come down.  The events that followed, in the fall of 1989, marked the greatest paradigm shift in my lifetime.

When I was born in March of 1950, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) were just a few months old, and the Iron Curtain was the new post-World War II political reality.  When I was eleven years old, the Berlin Wall was erected to stanch the hemorrhaging of East Germans from the tyranny of communism to freedom in West Berlin. 

Eleven years later, I joined the U.S. Army and served three tours of duty in Germany in military intelligence.  During that time, I learned from Department of the Army civilians about the days just prior to the erection of the Wall, when the brightest and best of East Germany were defecting in droves across the soft underbelly of the Iron Curtain that was Berlin.  These defections provided a bonanza to the intelligence community until that fateful day in August 1961.

In the late 1970’s, I remember talking to a fellow strategic debriefer of Polish extraction who imagined that someday, under the right circumstances, Poland might be able to escape from the Warsaw Pact and at least attain neutral status.  At the time, I thought that this was a totally unrealistic pipe dream; the divide that ran through central Europe was immutable, at least through my lifetime.

During my time in Germany, I visited Berlin twice.  Both times, I was able to briefly visit East Berlin, albeit in uniform, in accordance with the Status of Forces Agreement (Berlin was still considered an occupied city for military purposes).  Despite the fact that money was pumped into East Berlin to create a showcase for communism, the differences between the two parts of the city couldn’t have been starker.

I returned to the states in late 1986, so I had to experience Reagan’s speech and the fall of communism from this side of the Atlantic.  After I retired from the Army in 1992, I returned to Europe as a lecturer at the Teachers College of English at the University of Szczecin, Poland, something that would have been unthinkable just a few short years before.  Since Szczecin is in the northwest corner of Poland, Berlin was just a short train ride away.  As a result, I ended up visiting the reunited Berlin several times.  I can’t describe the feeling of standing in the middle of the Brandenburg Gate, which prior to 1989 was located in no-man’s land.  Two summers ago, I finally returned to Berlin, and Berlin looked even more unified than it had 13 years before.

Today, we’re faced with an entirely different political reality.  The divide is no longer between Capitalism and Communism, with clearly defined international boundaries delineating that divide.  The current divide, between cultures and religions, pre-dates the Cold War.  At 57, I’m doubtful that I’ll ever seen another paradigm shift in my lifetime.  But then again, I was as doubtful at 37 that I’d ever see communism fall. 

One can only hope for another President with the vision and courage of Ronald Reagan.