Comments about ‘Lessons from the Berlin Wall’

I remember the wall, shocked when it went up, horrified as the machine guns quickly tore into desperate people risking life to dare to dash to freedom on the other side. My childhood was filled with watching footage of people daring to run for their lives hoping to reach freedom before guards in the towers would notice - rapid fire bullets took their lives again and again as they risked all rather than live under Soviet oppression! Americans how soon we forget - and propaganda covers the horror to modern youth unaware of the past. The dead do not repeat the truth from their history!

Your comment was very moving and thought provoking, most Americans don't really remember or understand the signaficance of the Berlin wall or it's demise. In this day and age when our way of life is being threatened by terrorists (and polititicians)we sadly take our freedoms so much for granted.

Ah! The USSR is no more, apparently. Or perhaps it is being reassembled in Obama's USSA.

His administration is seeking to control the economy more than ever (since Roosevelt' Thirties regime)with a takeover of the auto industry (minus an independent Ford) and the planned takeover of the health care industry.

They seek to have a unified "Pravda" or, in Orwellian terms, a "Ministry of Truth" with the strenuous efforts to exclude Fox News, the only dissident voice among the networks, and daily venom spewed at conservative Talk Radio.

They will lose with the efforts of the people and, perhaps, a providential tide of events. I hope the USA survives; the USA, not the U.S.S.A.

indeed a big day. and it's quite american-centric to believe that pres. reagan's speech at the wall in 87 was the most important reason it fell. a full view of that time clearly shows that while his speech was powerful, the real heroes behind the fall were gorbachev, the solidarity movement in poland, and the quiet work a hungarian reformers who saw the folly of communisim and were making sure it came to an end while they had the support of gorby.

JFK said about the wall; "Ich bin ein Berliner". A Berliner is a cream filled bun.

Reagan said; Mr. Gorbachev, tear don that wall.

"By now it seems clear President Ronald Reagan played perhaps the biggest role, with help from British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher..." Actually it's not clear at all. Without a doubt the western arms buildup was a factor in Soviet transformation, but it was one among many. The west essentially gave up trying to understand Russia and China with the communist takeovers. This is tragic, because these societies have been in a constant state of evolution, not all of it good. Present day Russian capitalism is every bit as corrupt as Soviet communism it its closing years. So, does our ideology explain what has transpired? Moreover, explain if you can how it is that the recently super-communist Chinese are whipping us at our own capitalist game? My point is that there is a great, great deal we do not understand about the ongoing transformation of the east, and simple sound bites don't help much.

Good editorial but it underestimates the role of
Gorbachev. He recognized that communism had failed and allowed the Berlin Wall for fall. I hope history will give him due credit.

Deseret News editors are still apparently under the spell of the Reagan mystique. I was at one time, too, so I know how it feels. Eventually, though, the truth of the matter comes through, and it takes persistence to ignore it. One free-market economist visted the USSR in the early 1980's and returned with this comment: “We have nothing to worry about; the place is one big Department of Motor Vehicles.”

The demise of the Soviet Union was inevitable, regardless of who was president at the time. The fall was from the inside out, not from outside forces, unless you call Afghanistan an outside force. It was, at its root, an internal rotting of the system. No empire can long exist that bases its economy on debt and irredeemable paper money. The USSR was bankrupt. Sound familiar?

The main lesson I learned from Berlin is... NO nation, economy or political system is TOO BIG, or TOO IMPORTANT to fall.

Lew Jeppson | 9:57 a.m. and Earl

You guys just CAN'T STAND to give any of the credit to Ronald Reagan, can you?

Of course it wasn't all him, but if you could pull your head out of your partisan political sand for just a moment... You'd have to admit that his policies and leadership had a lot to do with it.

How? I am an old man old enough to remember the wall going up and coming down as the first poster so movingly wrote about but I do not think Reagan played no role but how exactly do you justify giving Reagan so much credit while giving no credit to the rest of the world, previous presidents and the force time coupled with of a world community that differed so much from the reality that many in these oppressive societies experienced? I think it is great that the republicans have a sense of pride in Reagan but I am not convinced this praise for his effect on the fall of the wall is not misguided.

It was Reagan, Kinda... (but more the people of the East) I had the unique honor of talking to the Secretary of State of the DDR (East Germany). He said that there was a protest of 300,000 people in Berlin that night, and they planned on storming the wall. The government told all guards to open fire on anyone trying to cross. Word got to the Amis, British and French that they were planning on slaughtering that many people that night, and Reagan and the coalition said if that happens, open fire on the guards to save the people. Right before WWIII happened, the East told the the guards to stand down. That's why on all the news footage you see coalition forces that close to the wall. They traditionally were farther back. Just imagine if the East German guards HAD opened fire!

To 12:35: I'm happy to give Reagan credit where he deserves it. Like I said, I was a Reagan idolizer at one time, but I believe I have things a bit more in perspective now. You have to understand that I don't have a "favorite" president. Some did less damage than others, but just about all of them did their part to lower the standards of the country. About the only half-decent presidents were Presidents Harding and Coolidge. It goes downhill from there. But to give credit to Reagan for Soviet ineptitude is going too far. They shot themselves in the foot. He just happened to be president when their empire imploded.

It happened because the people in eastern Europe believed Reagan when he talked tough and stood with them. He did what he could and that gave them courage to do what they could. Not like the guy we have now who is more interested in being liked by Putin than having free nations in eastern Europe.

Thank you for your comments. We oppose propaganda from other regimes. But our nation seems to love American propaganda and take it as the truth.
Catholic used to paint John Paul II as the USSR's nemesis. Republicans loved to think that Reagan was the one behind the fall of the Berlin Wall. However, if we read history we can see that an empire as complex and corrupt as the Soviet Union was bound to fell from within and it did.
Mr. Reagan will be remembered for other things, like Grenada, Iran-Contra. The destabilization of Central America which generated the largest illegal immigration into the U.S. His trickle down economic system that created the largest economic deficit in the history of the U.S. until that time. George W. Bush attempted the same thing were worse results. There are other things for which Mr. Reagan will be remembered, the fall of the Berlin Wall shouldn’t be one of them. Before becoming an LDS I was impressed by a Mormon slogan I heard. “Only when we are not afraid of the truth we can find it” (free translation) It seems there is a lot of fear in Utah.

I see a LOT of straw man potshots being taken on here...nobody I see is saying that Reagan deserves "all" of the credit, and I see nobody denying that other factors were critical in the fall of the Soviet Union. But to deny that Reagan and Thatcher weren't at the VERY least instrumental in hastening the inevitable downfall of Russian/Eastern Bloc Communism is practicing revisionist history.

Also, I love it when some leftie in love with his own thoughts tries to say - again - that Reagan's "trickle-down economics" created the late 80's deficit. The truth is, if Congress had passed Reagan's budget cuts along with his politically popular tax cuts, the deficit would have been much, much smaller and possibly even have disappeared. His tax cuts were actually a critical catalyst to the largest peacetime economic boom in recorded US history.

I know aaaaall the leftist arguments against this, and they aaaaall can be show down easily with facts. With time, I have faith that the angry anti-Reagan left will fade and unbiased historians will recognize his contribution, which is already happening to some extent.

While I agree that Solidarity and persistent opposition within the Evil Empire had a great effect in winning public support for the cause of freedom, something else was needed. The Soviet Union could easily squash resistance within their sphere of influence, and they did time and again.

The Soviets were vulnerable, however, to world opinion and the no nonsense acts and words of two powerful leaders of the West.

Reagan, the Great Communicator, scared the innards empty of Gorbachev when he (Reagan) said "Tear Down That Wall!".

These weren't empty words. Ron Reagan's "Strategic Iniative" took the nuclear wind out of Soviet sails. Now the West could not only launch its nuclear warheads as well as their Communist enemies (USSR and China) but could intercept theirs.

With all due respect to others who fought long and hard it was the strength of Reagan's resolve, after a procession of soft words and big sticks wielded by the indecisive and half-hearted Containers and Appeasers formerly in the White House and the State Department, that broke the resolve and changed the strategy of the Communist nuclear powers.

As an interesting aside, I was listening to NPR this PM. The writer being interviewed illustrated how the historical record gets manipulated to suit political argument. Regarding Margaret Thatcher, she made clear to Brent Skowcroft that she, to put it mildly, had no interest in a reunified Germany (no doubt the memory of what Germany did to the UK was fresh in her mind). The Soviet Union was changing just as much from events within as from external pressure which, as this anecdote makes clear, was a lot more ambiguous than the Deseret News implies.

Regarding President Reagan I admit to having some positive feelings about him when he was president, but, good grief, the adulation of the right has risen to personality cult.

Overall, however, I think he was one of our most gifted presidents in terms of his sheer political ability. I admit this even though I disagreed with him most of the time.

My gaud!

Why don't the republicans just dig Ronald up, put him in a chair and run him as president.

The 80's were not that great. I was there.

"Overall, however, I think he was one of our most gifted presidents in terms of his sheer political ability. I admit this even though I disagreed with him most of the time."

Even today, the Reagan Administration holds the all time record for federal convictions.

"With all due respect to others who fought long and hard it was the strength of Reagan's resolve,..."

He cut and he ran from Beirut and sold arms to Iran while Reagan was having our CIA train Osama Ben Laden.

Why let facts interest with your delusions.