Berlin Wall Didn’t Fall; It Was Pushed

Twice in the last week I have read the claim or the implication -- one by a 23-year-old resident of the former East Germany and in a letter from M.J. Johnson (April 14) -- that the Berlin Wall came down solely as the result of peaceful Germans engaged in a nonviolent uprising. While such a statement might be literally true, it nonetheless betrays a breathtaking, not to say appalling, ignorance of history. The Germans could do what they did only because American power had broken the might of the Soviet Union and there were no longer any Red Army tank divisions to prop up the communist East German regime.

Besides, if bringing down the Berlin Wall was all that easy, why did the Germans wait 30 years to do it? It couldn’t possibly have been that they were justifiably afraid that they’d be shot, would it?

Harold J. Sweet

History Instructor

University of La Verne