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P.J. O’Rourke on the Fall of the Berlin Wall
One of the best essays I have ever read is P.J. O’Rourke’s “The Death of Communism: Berlin, November 1989” from his essay collection Give War a Chance. O’Rourke was the foreign correspondent for Rolling Stone in the late 1980s and early 90s and reported from many Cold War hotspots. In this essay, O’Rourke writes poignantly and humorously about the collapse of the Berlin Wall. First, he contrasts the free Germans of West Berlin with their communist brethren on the other side of the wall:
West Germans are tall, pink, pert and orthodontically corrected. With hands, teeth and hair as clean as their clothes and clothes as sharp as their looks. Except for the fact that they all speak English pretty well, they’re indistinguishable from Americans. East Germans seem to have been hunching over cave fires a lot. They’re short and thick with sallow, lardy fat, and they have Khrushchev warts. There’s something about Marxism that brings out warts–the only kind of growth this economic system encourages.
Upon seeing an East German border guard ask for a piece of the wall that was being torn down, O’Rourke writes:
I looked at that and I began to cry.
I really didn’t understand before that moment, I didn’t realize until just then–we won. The Free World won the Cold War. The fight against life-hating, soul-denying, slavish communism–which had shaped the world’s politics this whole wretched century–was over.
And the best thing about our victory was the way we did it–not just with ICBMs and Green Berets and aid to the contras. Those things were important, but in the end we beat them with Levi 501 jeans. Seventy-two years of communist indoctrination and propaganda was drowned out by a three-ounce Sony Walkman. A huge totalitarian system with all its tanks and guns, gulag camps and secret police had been brought to its knees because nobody wants to wear Bulgarian shoes.
I am beginning to wonder if the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was America’s peak. Nearly all Americans, left and right alike, could agree in 1989 that the American experiment was a righteous project worth defending and advancing. There was near-universal agreement that communism was not only an abject failure but also a great moral evil. The whole world knew that the good guys won the Cold War and that the United States led this global effort. Freedom beat totalitarianism and all Americans were justly proud of this victory.
I fear that too many of us have lost self-confidence and belief in the great American value of liberty. We have very short historical memories, and many in our society who should know better are now willing to champion totalitarian ideologies which have proven so destructive in the past. Our media and many elites indulge and promote the historically illiterate who think that capitalism and microaggressions constitute real oppression. Many of our political elites openly despise American values and the American people. These same arrogant fools think that increased centralization of political power and a command economy can somehow bring about the utopia that communism failed to create.
The Berlin Wall has fallen, but the totalitarian temptation remains more tempting than ever.
Published in Foreign Policy
Remember the play of the day segment on CNN? The thing I will never forget is, some Americans put up a big sign on one of the pillars for Fred Hickman at CNN: Hey Fred! Play of The day!
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Cold War Conversations is an excellent podcast. fyi
There are still people who downplay the role of Ronald Reagan. I tend to agree that we and he didn’t defeat communism, but I certainly wouldn’t give credit to the courage and foresight of Gorbachev, either. Soviet communism collapsed mostly of its own failures. What was different about Reagan was that he didn’t use our resources to prop up the dying hulk. His military program probably gets some credit for speeding up the process, and it was helpful that he was honest about Soviet failures and brutality.
In the 80s a colleague at another university who I never got to know as well as I would have liked got to the United States from East Germany by traveling to Czechoslovakia and then swimming across a river. It was still a dangerous activity. I had always wondered about that so just now looked at a Google Maps. I see there is one short stretch of the Elbe River that serves as the border between Germany and Czechia. Any other waterways that serve as a border seem to be small brooks.
He told me that his parents would soon reach retirement age, and then East Germany would be glad to let them go to the west to join him. Until then, no.
When events at the Berlin border were starting to get interesting he and I talked about them briefly, but that was the last time I ever got to talk to him about anything political, and later our jobs didn’t bring us together at conferences and meetings any more.
Indeed. Gorbachev did not intend to end communism but rather to preserve it by instituting sufficient reforms to make function well enough to avoid collapse. The people who have told me that otherwise were longtime communists and sympathizers who had always made excuses and justifications for the Soviets and other communist tyrannies.
Personally, I find it really fun to look at the Wikipedia entries of the various communist governments and leaders. What a ridiculous system and way to live.
Right at the end, East Germany was trying to borrow money from West Germany.
Some of those Soviets survived both World War II and crazy purges. I think if you have crazy purges you are doing it wrong.
When I was in the AF I was stationed in San Antonio. Rented a house from another officer from 1988 to 90 who was being transferred to Berlin to run the massive listening post in Berlin
I used to wonder what it was like to be there and hear the panicked intercepts going back and forth between the Soviet forces in Germany and the Soviet Union as the Cold War ended….
“Dear Commandante”
I just heard something about this. Putin was a low level KGB guy in Germany because he spoke excellent German. He was in some personal jeopardy when the wall went down and he was scarred for life when they told him they weren’t sending help. After that, he strictly looked out for number one over and over until he got to the top.
You aren’t giving him nearly enough credit. The “Holy Trinity” of Reagan, Thatcher and Pope John Paul did a massive amount to topple the Soviet Union. The Saudi’s also played a key roll.
It was Reagans military buildup and Star Wars program, combined with economic pressure on the USSR intensified by the Saudis pumping oil and depressing the price of crude oil, the USSR’s only source of hard currency that finally convinced them they could neither defeat us or even compete. That triggered the attempted “reforms” under Gorbachov that resulted in the chain of events that kicked over the rotten edifice of the USSR and it’s satellites .
Ol’ Splotch-Top was merely sitting in the first car of the roller coaster. That is how much control he had.
Absolutely agree.
Let’s not forget that the television show Dallas is credited with toppling Ceaușescu in Romania.
One of the few Western shows he allowed to expose greedy Capitalists. Instead, the Citizens thought, “I want that Life!”
Kerry never saw a communist derriere that he wouldn’t kiss…
The other one is Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. I don’t know who the woman is.
Just with the western hemisphere needs, more cartels and Commies. Look around. That’s what they want.