The fall of the Berlin Wall: A personal story

November 16, 2009 by Dean Dupalo 

Reunification of Germany still reason for celebration

Forty-two years ago last week, under the sharp watch of armed Russian and East German troops, my parents drove with my brother and me deep into the heart of Communist East Germany.

We drove through the West German border crossing known as Checkpoint Alpha at Helmstedt and past the daunting and heavily guarded Inner German Border barriers to Berlin.

My father, a U.S. Army ranger, held official “movement orders” printed in Russian, French and English – each of the occupying countries’ languages – the entire time.

He carefully approached Checkpoint Bravo – another Russian guard, another set of questions in broken English and another brisk stamp on the official orders.

We had officially arrived. We entered the American sector of Berlin through the 96-mile, machine gun-equipped, mine-laden ring known as the Berlin Wall. My parents were relieved.

A 6th-generation Berliner, my mother was finally home. She was anxious to visit her mother’s new grave.

On Nov. 9, 1989 the Berlin Wall, which came to represent much of the Cold War, came tumbling down at the hands of the German people.

It effectively signaled the end of a dark period of Communist oppression in East Germany and many other Eastern European countries.

During the Cold War tens of millions of people had been trapped behind the so-called Iron Curtain of the Soviet empire, and for many decades they suffered in innumerable ways politically, socially and economically.

This is why the destruction of the hated Berlin Wall was still reason for celebration this week, marking such an important and historical anniversary.

The destruction of the Berlin Wall was the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Warsaw Pact countries were no longer satellites of the Soviet Union. The fall of the U.S.S.R. quickly followed in 1991, signaling even greater freedoms.

History was being made by the bold and waited for none. With the end of the Cold War, the United States enjoyed – albeit all too briefly – a peace dividend, as it sliced a third of its own military away. It delayed my own entry as an officer into the U.S. Air Force.

Some four decades earlier, the taking of Berlin was the short-term trophy for the victors of the second World War, as the Russians, British, French and Americans divided both the country and capital of Germany into sectors.

Soon however, the American, British and French sectors evolved into the Federal Republic of Germany or West Germany sans barriers. Meanwhile, the Russians erected ever-increasing artificial barriers reflecting the difference in political ideology and reinforcing it through physical means, essentially forging East Germany, or the inaptly named German Democratic Republic.

It was never democratic other than in name. Nestled deep in East Germany, Berlin too was divided, artificially separating the German people street by street, halving churches and unceremoniously cutting through centuries-old squares.

By 1961, the Berlin Wall had replaced wire and guards, effectively sealing an internal border around the Allied sectors of Berlin. My mother, who had received her first candy bar from a Russian soldier, lived blocks away in the American sector.

A divided Berlin was ground zero for many of the contentious events during the Cold War.

The first Cold War crisis was the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49, a U.S.-led effort to thwart the Russians’ attempt to starve the encircled Berliners – including my then 7-year-old mother, and grandmother.

Only a few years prior, the U.S. military that was locked in mortal combat with Germany was now staving off starvation and saving them, including my mother, with around-the-clock food shipments – about 200,000 in all.

Great Britain, France and other Western allies provided crucial additional support for this effort.

Checkpoint Charlie was another of the many public faces of Berlin that the public witnessed, where the Russian and American tanks faced each others’ gun turrets, seemingly ready to engage at the slightest provocation.

And for others, it was the stream of East Germans seeking freedom, challenging guards with strict “shoot to kill” orders, who were often subsequently killed trying to cross the heavily guarded Berlin Wall.

It was the battlefield where military strategists believed World War II would occur, where my father served in the Berlin Brigade and guarded Spandau prison – where my parents married and where my brother was born – all under the shadow of the Berlin Wall.

Soon after, it was in West Germany where my family lived under the specter of all things Cold War related until 1974.

Western leaders assailed the barriers relentlessly. The November of 1989 was different from prior brutal Soviet crackdowns, most notably in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968).

The factors that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall were numerous and a long time coming. Since Sir Winston Churchill coined the phrase “the Iron Curtain” in his 1946 Sinews of Peace address, efforts to destabilize and defeat Soviet communism continued on every continent.

The final confluence of events that exacerbated the fall of the Berlin Wall were set in motion by former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev and his new twin policies of “Glasnost” – openness, and “Perestroika” – government restructuring.

There was also relentless military pressure and political commitment by then-president Ronald Reagan, who publicly and dramatically demanded to “tear down that wall” in June of 1987.

By 1990, East and West Germany had accomplished what no other country had in the last century – reunification.

While it marked a significant point for world geopolitics, for millions like my family, it heralded a more personal triumph.

The Berlin Wall, perhaps more than any other single object or event, embodied the Cold War. The Cold War in many ways started in Berlin and ended after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Last week, we marked a significant event and celebrated freedom from oppression for millions.