|
Post by fauxmaha on Nov 10, 2014 8:24:27 GMT -5
I'm a bit surprised that the 25th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall wasn't a bigger story.
|
|
|
Post by theevan on Nov 10, 2014 8:26:38 GMT -5
It collapsed? Yeah, I never heard that either.
|
|
|
Post by Doug on Nov 10, 2014 8:28:53 GMT -5
Not a good idea for a big story. Someone might start wondering why in 25 yrs we haven't removed all of our troops from Europe and withdrawn from NATO. Who's reason for existence ended 25 yrs ago.
|
|
|
Post by mnhermit on Nov 10, 2014 8:29:30 GMT -5
old news and we didn't have anything to do with it, bet it was celebrated in Germany
|
|
|
Post by Marshall on Nov 10, 2014 9:10:49 GMT -5
There were blurbs on the news. Nice stories. Interviews with former guards and East Germans who danced on top the wall. A big balloon celebration in Germany with a "balloon wall" that was released skyward one by one.
What planet do you live on, Jeff?
|
|
|
Post by fauxmaha on Nov 10, 2014 9:22:56 GMT -5
What planet do you live on rock do you live under, Jeff? Fixedit for you. Seriously, I would have expected a bigger response here in the US. Something along he lines of what we have for major anniversaries of D-Day. The fall of the Berlin Wall is the closest we have to a singular moment defining the end of the Cold War.
|
|
|
Post by dickt on Nov 10, 2014 9:31:05 GMT -5
What planet do you live on rock do you live under, Jeff? Fixedit for you. Seriously, I would have expected a bigger response here in the US. Something along he lines of what we have for major anniversaries of D-Day. The fall of the Berlin Wall is the closest we have to a singular moment defining the end of the Cold War. So what celebrations did the U.S. have on June 6 1969? I don't remember any.
|
|
|
Post by Village Idiot on Nov 10, 2014 9:31:15 GMT -5
Come to think of it, I didn't hear a word about it until this thread.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Nov 10, 2014 9:43:18 GMT -5
We didn't? Really?
I was stationed in Germany at the time, and got to go to Berlin in February of 1990. It gave me great pleasure to look through the holes in the wall at an East German border guard on the other side. By that time, Hungary had opened its borders, and Ossies were pouring into Germany through Czechoslovakia and Austria.
I had just finished another month patrolling the Czech/West German border the previous August, and even then we knew things were changing quickly. Heady times indeed, and I can't say I like what's replaced them, even though I know I am looking back through rose colored glasses.
As I get older, I am increasingly consumed with the thought that folks should "be nice to other folks and just leave damn well enough alone."
|
|
|
Post by RickW on Nov 10, 2014 9:46:34 GMT -5
Neither the dems nor the GOP could figure out a way to point out the opposing party's failures around it, so nothing was said.
It just doesn't sit with the US imagination any more, I don't think. Perhaps because there was no great drama out of any of is, no battles, it was simply the economic collapse of the Soviets. Driven by a lot of what the west was doing, of course.
And to Doug's point, yes, why are they there? Other than wanting to keep bases from a military point of view, and keeping all that cash flowing through the old military industrial complex, which is still a big machine that requires feeding.
|
|
|
Post by Cosmic Wonder on Nov 10, 2014 9:49:20 GMT -5
What planet do you live on rock do you live under, Jeff? Fixedit for you. Seriously, I would have expected a bigger response here in the US. Something along he lines of what we have for major anniversaries of D-Day. The fall of the Berlin Wall is the closest we have to a singular moment defining the end of the Cold War. Perhaps you haven't noticed, but the Cold War is not exactly over. Mike
|
|
|
Post by Marshall on Nov 10, 2014 9:56:04 GMT -5
Come to think of it, I didn't hear a word about it until this thread. We know what rock you live under. (a nice one)
|
|
|
Post by dradtke on Nov 10, 2014 10:56:46 GMT -5
There was an interview on the radio this morning with an East German woman who was finally given an exit visa for a future date, which turned out to be the date the wall fell. She showed up with her kids that morning, was processed through, and later that day they opened it up.
|
|
|
Post by millring on Nov 10, 2014 11:04:54 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Chesapeake on Nov 10, 2014 11:12:59 GMT -5
I heard enough about the anniversary - just about the right amount of media, I thought. I was a young trooper stationed at U.S. Army Northern Area Command HQ in Frankfurt soon after the wall went up. I wasn't supposed to be traveling into Berlin because I carried a NATO Secret clearance (one step away from Cosmic Top Secret), but I finagled to get a flight into Templehof to spend a couple of days seeing the sights. Murphy's law being what it is, I almost immediately wound up on the wrong side of the wall. In those days it was possible to travel on the U-bahn - the underground rail - through all four sectors (U.S., British, French and Russian) without papers being routinely checked. As I later found out, the East Germans screened passengers as they came and went through their above-ground stations; but occasionally they would board a car to randomly check papers. The thing is, NOBODY TOLD ME THE DAMNED THING WENT THROUGH THE EAST SECTOR. The first clue I had that something was amiss was when the train pulled up to a station decorated with sprays of Russian flags and huge photos of Nikita Khrushchev, who was visiting the city around that time. I was in civvies, thankfully, though American clothing tended to be a dead giveaway that you weren't from there. A West German teenager who had boarded with me noticed the perplexed look on my face - for all I knew we were headed straight for Moscow - and whispered to me in broken English to stay put, everything would be all right in a while. I had no choice but to trust him - though I briefly considered getting off the train, jumping the tracks, and catching one going back the other way. Rational thinking prevailed, and sure enough after another stop or two I got off unmolested, and walked away from the experience without having triggered some kind of cold-war crisis. Which certainly would not have done my military career any good. (Postscript: despite my high level of security clearance, I wasn't carrying any secrets, unless you want to count league standings among Army ball teams. I was the sports editor of the Northern Area Command Chronicle.)
|
|
|
Post by epaul on Nov 10, 2014 11:15:11 GMT -5
Some of us remembered.
When clock ticked one tick past midnight, we reenacted the event at the Hobo Haus. The Mackie boys stood side by side and were the wall, and the rest of us jumped on them and wrestled them to the ground. Then together, in the spirit of renewed and revived harmony and freedom, we back to drinking.
.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Nov 10, 2014 11:45:53 GMT -5
I picked this piece up in 1990. It says March, so I guess that's when we went. It was probably late February/Early March.
|
|
|
Post by dradtke on Nov 10, 2014 12:14:19 GMT -5
Some of us remembered. When clock ticked one tick past midnight, we reenacted the event at the Hobo Haus. The Mackie boys stood side by side and were the wall, and the rest of us jumped on them and wrestled them to the ground. Then together, in the spirit of renewed and revived harmony and freedom, we back to drinking. And that's different from every other night how?
|
|
|
Post by fauxmaha on Nov 10, 2014 13:11:10 GMT -5
I picked this piece up in 1990. It says March, so I guess that's when we went. It was probably late February/Early March. That's cool right there. Part of my reaction to this is a general sense that we have become somewhat soft-headed when it comes to the horrors and abject human misery that existed under communism. My views are heavily influenced by a former classmate from college who escaped from Poland. Escaped is quite the correct word. He and a friend traveled on foot, night after night, hiding during the day, from Poland and eventually made their way to West Germany. The stories he told of life under communism were chilling. It wasn't just the ongoing material deprivations (although they were many). It was mostly the soul-crushing oppression of the mind. The enforced conformity. The ever present, dehumanizing reality that the wrong thoughts, if accidentally expressed in a forbidden way, would result in harsh repercussions. As I get older, I am increasingly consumed with the thought that folks should "be nice to other folks and just leave damn well enough alone." 'zactly.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Nov 10, 2014 13:25:29 GMT -5
Jeff,
There is a nostalgia in parts of Eastern Europe for those days, especially in Russia. I guess the only thing worse than communist oppression is the sense that "I coulda been a contender! I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum."
I'm pretty sure those folks have forgotten the bad bits, especially since the folks in charge now were part of the KGB then. Remember the KGB? Smashingly charming people.
I've been to several communist countries, to include Laos in the 1990s. It's anything but a people's system, and I hate commie hypocrisy as much as our own versions.
I'm left with an unbending sense that people, by nature, are rewards based beings. Trying to "level the playing field" so "everyone gets a share" is not going to work in the long run. That's why, among other reasons, the USSR failed. There was no incentive to BE anything other than alive, and even that pretty much sucked for a lot of people.
|
|