I know this is not directly related to motorcycling but motorcycling is an expression of freedom and this time in our history certainly speaks to freedom. For those of us of the Duck-and-Cover generation, the twenty-five year anniversary of the downing of the Berlin Wall is significant. We spent many a time on the playground as jets overhead issued a sonic boom, shaking us in our Buster Browns. Some of our parents built bomb shelters (even if it was a basement room without windows), fathers looked distracted and very distressed during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Rod Serlings Twilight Zone episodes further underscored our tenuous future. If we werent being rounded up and sent off into outer space to be used as food, space creatures were landing here to eat us in our bedrooms. When Germany was defeated in 1945, four Allied powers continued occupying Berlin: the UK, France, the US and the Soviet Union. Back home ranch houses and babies were being built, but it wasn’t long before difficulties arose between the Soviets and the other three. As a result, the zones occupied by the US, the UK and France became merged into one zone, with the Soviets occupying the other. This also became a confrontation between democracy and communism, eventually leading to the Cold War and the McCarthy witchhunts. In Berlin, the two political systems were paralleled by the economic systems: West Germany developed as a democracy with a capitalist economic system; East Germany was part of the communist Eastern Bloc with the same socialist system. In 1952 Josef Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, declared “The demarcation line between East and West Germany should be considered a border—and not just any border, but a dangerous one ... The Germans will guard the line of defence with their lives. The borders were guarded and barb wired placed Movement was only possible with special passes, rarely given. Movement between the two was possible but at midnight on August 12, 1961, the border to West Berlin was closed. The streets adjacent to the border were ripped up, barbed wire entanglements were placed and fences were erected. On August 17 construction of the concrete and block wall began. Armed soldiers stood by with orders to shoot anyone who attempted to defect. In addition, fences, minefields and other obstacles were installed along the length of the East German border with West Germany. August 1961 Berlin Wall construction begins. Can you imagine waking up one morning and finding your city separated by a cement wall? Families were sliced in two. Lovers were separated. Your job may have been on the other side, your school, your friends. The East German government justified erection of the wall as an “anti-fascist protective rampart. Many East Germans sought to escape by going over, under and through the wall. They were shot. Numerous detection and security features were built into the wall and its surrounds but approximately 5,000 persons still made it to the West; 136 were killed in the attempts. Defectors utilised tunnels, sewers, hot air balloons, ultralights and cars driven at speed through checkpoints. Movies of the time depicted these events, further freaking out us kids. In a speech in 1987 at the Brandenburg Gate on the occasion of the 750th birthday of Berlin, Ronald Reagan made his famous call to Gorbachev to “tear down this wall”: The wall had been the subject of comment much earlier by John F Kennedy in his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in 1963: Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect. But we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in—to prevent them from leaving us. . . . On 9 November 1989 it did come down. So, what do you think? Were you around then?
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 02:15:07 +0000
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