Reagan Hits East Bloc, Urges United Germany

President Reagan warned 10,000 cheering German young people today of the threat “on the other side of the wall” and called for the reunification of Germany.

“Europe today--divided by concrete walls, by electrified barbed wire and by mined and manicured fields, killing fields--is a living portrait of the most compelling truth of our time: the future belongs to the free,” Reagan told the invited young people gathered at Hambach Castle.

The 11th-Century castle, called “the cradle of German democracy” where 30,000 Germans gathered in 1882 for the nation’s first call for democracy, was the last in a list of carefully chosen symbols on a state visit that included the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and the German war cemetery in Bitburg.

30 Interruptions

“Those first patriots cried out for a free, democratic and united Germany,” Reagan said. “We do so again today.”

The cheering crowd interrupted Reagan’s speech about 30 times and often shouted, “Ronnie! Ronnie! Reagan! Reagan!”

Reagan aimed his criticism at the communist states of Eastern Europe, with references to the Berlin Wall that divides the former German capital and with a pledge of “solidarity with the freedom fighters in Poland.”

With West German sharpshooters manning the ramparts of the castle, Reagan told the German youths that they must be realistic about the need for a strong defense against the Soviet Union.

‘Survival of Liberty’

“Unless and until there is a changing by the other side, the United States must fulfill a commitment of its own--to the survival of liberty,” he said.

“The first frontier of European liberty begins in Berlin, and I assure you that America will stand by you in Europe, and America will stand by you in Berlin,” Reagan said to repeated cheers.

Reagan’s support for the reunification of Germany was certain to anger the Kremlin, which considers the borders agreed on at the end of World War II to be inviolable--especially the division of Germany so it can never again be a military threat.

Instead, Reagan emphasized that West Germany is a democratic member of NATO aligned against the Soviet forces who imposed communist governments on Eastern Europe.

Pitch for ‘Star Wars’

The President also made a pitch for his space-based “Star Wars” anti-missile defense plan, calling it a “non-nuclear defense not to harm people, but to prevent missiles from reaching our soil.”

Urging the students to pursue careers in high technology, Reagan said “technology developed by your generation could render nuclear weapons obsolete.”

He pledged that the United States will “never stop praying, never stop working, never stop striving” until an agreement is reached with the Soviet Union to “rid the Earth of nuclear weapons forever.”

Bitburg visit, Page 4.