The Cold War divided the world from the end of World War II until 1989, when the Soviet Union crumbled and the Berlin Wall fell, reuniting Germany’s democratic and communist halves.
Thirty years ago this weekend, Western news broadcasts breathlessly reported the lifting of restrictions on travel between East and West Berlin, followed by film footage of ordinary citizens taking sledgehammers and smaller mallets to chip away the concrete barrier between the Soviet-controlled East and the largely democratic West.
Craig Shirley, a biographer of U.S. President Ronald Reagan and an instructor at the University of Virginia’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, argues that the fall of the Berlin Wall should be recognized as one of the greatest events in the 20th century, and credits Reagan, working with others, with bringing down the Soviet Union.
Manuela Achilles, a UVA professor of German and history, said the end of the Cold War and the Berlin Wall are complicated for Germany, generating great happiness and high hopes, but also new divisions and as-yet-unfulfilled promises.
Achilles was nearby when protesters started bringing the wall down.
“I was in Berlin at the time, and only learned about it the next day,” she said. “I went to some areas where the wall was, and I remember these places as extremely crowded. The people were joyful and excited, but I was also afraid because there were so many people everywhere. That was quite something.
“I remember, too, that later on everyone was chiseling away at the wall. Some people were putting their hand through holes. I never did that. I was full of anxiety over it; I would not put my hand through that wall. Who knows what is on the other side?”
The dominant political narrative of the second half of the 20th century, the Cold War between the capitalist West and the communist Soviet Union defined international relations and influenced domestic politics. The American-led West and the Soviet-led East battled proxy wars, competed for the allegiance of “non-aligned” nations and vied for the hearts and minds of the other side.
When the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, the government of the German Democratic Republic, commonly known as East Germany, dubbed it the “Anti-Fascist Protection Wall.”
“The wall, according to the GDR ideology, was not about keeping the people in. It was about keeping allegedly bad forces, such as capitalism and aggressive imperialism, out,” Achilles said. “According to the state official view of the situation, the wall was to protect the creation of a new communist society that was to make everything better for everybody. The wall was built also to prevent interference from the West, to isolate the people from the consumerist influence of West Germany.”
Shirley said post-war U.S. presidents did a careful dance with the Soviet Union, as the policy toward it evolved from President Harry S. Truman’s “containment” strategy to a more wary “coexistence.”
“Reagan is the first who says, ‘We’re not going to coexist with the Soviet Union, we’re going to defeat the Soviet Union,’” said Shirley, whose recent books include “Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan.”
“He hastened the victory over the Soviet Union by 20 years, because he did several things that previous presidents hadn’t done. He used the bully pulpit for eight years of railing against Soviet expansionism and Soviet communism.”
Shirley described Reagan and President John F. Kennedy as kindred spirits in opposing communism, two presidents whose terms bookmarked the Berlin Wall, built during Kennedy’s truncated term and collapsing just after Reagan’s two terms. In 1963, Kennedy traveled to West Berlin and addressed its citizens in what is considered a landmark speech against communism, declaring in German, “Ich bin ein Berliner” – “I am a Berliner.”
“Kennedy’s ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ speech scared the Soviets,” Shirley said.
Upon entering office in 1981, Reagan had three goals: restoring American morale, restarting the economy and defeating the Soviet Union, Shirley said. To do so, he used the economy, the bully pulpit and diplomacy. Reagan also had allies in the form of conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, a Pole (born Karol Józef Wojtyła) who understood the perils of communism firsthand.
“For one priceless moment, the three of the four most important pulpits on the world stage were dedicated to the defeat of the Soviet Union, and they would do something about it,” Shirley said.
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