It is for historians to discern the origins of the most momentous event in post-war European history. But the path to the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago today will surely lead through the election of Karol Wojtyla, Archbishop of Krakow, as Pope in 1978 and the emergence in Poland of Solidarity under Lech Walesa. In Russia, Mikhail Gorbachev introduced glasnost (opennness) and perestroika (restructuring) after coming to power in 1985. Four years later, liberalisation gathered an unstoppable momentum. The opening of Hungary's border with Austria from May onwards allowed hundreds of East Germans to escape to the West, the most notable instance being the Pan-European Picnic, a peace demonstration held in August under the patronage of Otto von Habsburg. Within four months the wall was breached, a watershed from which flowed the collapse of Communism in Europe, the re-unification of Germany and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
Two decades on, former Communist countries account for over 40 per cent of Nato members and all of them have contributed troops to the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. Ten of them have joined the European Union, and two more are candidates for membership. Separated from half of the Continent by Stalin's brutal diktat, they have come in from the cold. That historic process has not been without grave setbacks. The unravelling of Yugoslavia was accompanied by the hideous practice of ethnic cleansing, culminating, at Srebrenica in 1995, in the largest mass murder in Europe since the Second World War. Today, of the republics which made up the old federation, only Slovenia is a member of both Nato and the EU. In Russia, the freewheeling chaos of the Yeltsin era has given way under Vladimir Putin to a nasty combination of nationalism, crony capitalism and scant regard for human rights. And the former Soviet satellites have been hit particularly hard by the current economic recession, the average estimated fall in their GDP this year being 6.2 per cent.
Yet those setbacks cannot disguise the immense advance of freedom in Europe over the past 20 years, freedom not just to elect or dismiss a government but also to have access to an incomparably wider range of goods and services (see the graphic image of East Berliners sitting behind the wheels of BMWs cited in today's newspaper by Adrian Bridge). Yesterday we remembered the men and women who have given their lives, from the Somme to Helmand, in defence of our democratic values. Their sacrifice reminds us that freedom should never be taken for granted. It is not a static concept, rather one which constantly ebbs and flows and demands unceasing vigilance.
Talking about the consequences of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, I must agree that a New Europe has been born, but it might not be the kind of Europe you would expect.
Today, Japan is asking for the complete withdrawal of American Forces from Japan, mostly based at the moment on the Island of Okinawa.
The day is not faraway when Germany will ask for the complete withdrawal of American Forces from Germany and will re-evalue its NATO membership that goes against German economic interests.
The New Europe will be defined more by economic realities than by political interests. This is why Sarkozy has not been very successful in attracting Angela Merkel and Angela Merkel is more interested in looking for closer cooperation with Russia.
The melting of the North Polar Cap is not merely an environmental issue. It is a gate to suspected gigantic oil and gas deposits in the Artic. It also means new shipping lanes for trade and commerce and the Russian pipeline via Finland and the Baltic Sea is on its way.
The New Europe is being defined by energy and energy is the great economics moving force.
The Berlin Wall is no more, the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union are no more and now is the turn of NATO to be history.
We need new relationships based on Trust and Cooperation, Trade and Commerce. Perhaps the present troubles in the USA are merely the forerunner of a True New World Order.
In Africa and in Asia, China is making inroads and has closer links with countries like Argentina.
Latin America is no longer the backyard of the United States and new realities are emerging.
All this will also be part of a re-defined Europe or, as you call it, a New Europe.
Freedom?
Yes - for the crooks, the prostitues and the illegals from the east.
No - for us in the UK caught in the clutches of the EU (and the crooks, prostitutes and illegals) from which we cannot escape.
In 1918, Germany was defeated, and Woodrow Wilson made sure that industrialization would never again occur in Germany. WWI was hailed as "the war to end all wars."
In 1945, Germany was soundly defeated and split up, never to rise to power again.
In 2009, Germany is once again the most powerful nation in Europe.
The new Russian Empire can fight it out with the new European (German) Empire.
But wait . . . All Putin has to do is shut off the natural gas, a piece of cake for him to do, and all of Europe will either do what Putin wants, or freeze to death. Mate and checkmate.
It is sad indeed to see the small minded political grovellings of the Obama administration in sending Clinton to Berlin on the anniversary of a great event in the advance of freedom in order to distort history.
To make a lengthy speech that mentions Obama several times and not once President Reagan is truly sickening.
Two years ago when we first became aware of Obama I made a prediction he could be as bad as Jimmy Carter,I now revise that.
He is far worse.
Eastern Europe was freed from an oppressor when the Berlon Wall fell. Now they, and us, are controlled by another oppressor - the Hitler,sorry, European Union. We are all now controlled by a corrupt organisation run by a bunch of unelected, unaccountable politicians feathering their own nests at our expense. The sooner the Brussels edifice comes tumbling down the better.
The Wall came down to allow freedom for all those on the wrong side of it but now OUR freedoms have been given away to a "government" we cannot call to account, sack and which spies on us all.
"Europe has gained the freedom not just to elect or dismiss a government ... "
... and now, after just 20 years, we've lost it.
This is an impressive editorial
by the Telegraph View narrating
some of the historical marks
and defining moments of the
Berlin Wall which came down
twenty years ago as the 20th
anniversary was celebrated by
world leaders; including British
Prime Minister Gordon Brown,
Russian President Dimitry
Medvedev, the Soviet leader who
made it possible: Mikhail
Grobachev and the host and
current leader of the country it united, who was just a chemist in then East German when the Wall fell, Angela Merkel. She proclaimed it's the happiest day in Germany.
The Wall was the ugly symbol of
communism and the Cold War it
represented, which finally came
down on November 9, 1989.
Construction for the Wall
started August 16, 1961. Wall was about 3.5 meters high--about 12 feet, stretching about 96 miles; 27 miles through the city of Berlin, 3 miles through
residential areas, according to
www.u-s history.com.
About 3.5 million people defied
communist immigration and human-
rights restrictions of the
Eastern Bloc and escaped to
Western Europe by all means.
The Berlin Wall was designed
to restrict the flow of people
from the impoverished Eastern
communist Block to the more
affluent Western Europe. Of the
5,000 attempts to scale the wall and seek freedom on the
western side, 136 resulted in
fatalities, according to Dave
Graham in his article published in Reuters November 9 online
edition.
Throughout the existence of the
Wall: 1961-1989, and before
then, Europe teethered at the
brink of war between the Soviet
Empire and American-supported
Western Europe. Europe survived
the horrors of imperialist
Nazism, only for part of it to be subjected to harsh Soviet imperialism and domination, and
the rest, the specter of the
Cold War, which could have
erupted into full-scale war.
It's inconceivable how people
managed to leave near the Wall
with full understanding that
there were thousands of combat-
ready tanks ready to blitz
through soft concealed areas of
the Wall at short notice in any
outbreak of East-West War that
has now abated. Now, people
could fully appreciate and
understand the importance and symbolism of the fall of the Wall.
President Barack Obama who should have been there, but,
couldn't due to urgent domestic
emergencies, sent a video
message to celebrants. The fall
of the Berlin Wall was one of
the greatest event of the
20 century. It, also, triggered
some cascade of freedom around the world; notably the fall of aparthied in South Africa.
Igonikon Jack, USA
The peaceful fall of the Wall was a miraculous moment in a savage century � a healing of the scars of war, a tribute to the heroic freedom struggle of the enslaved peoples of Eastern Europe and a restoration of dignity to the exemplary democracy built by West Germany.
Yet German reunification was bitterly opposed by that dismal duo, Francois Mitterand and Margaret Thatcher. Mitterand is easier to understand: he was a fellow-traveller of the Third Reich, an opportunistic meddler thereafter and devoid of vision. But Thatcher�s attitude can only be explained by lousy advice from colleagues, the poor judgment that put her on the wrong side of most issues of the age � whether Zimbabwe (handed over to Mugabe), South Africa (Mandela the �terrorist�), Hong Kong (betrayed to the tyrants of Beijing) or Ireland (starve them to death) � and sheer meanness of spirit.
Today is a day of rejoicing, not for us in the older democracies but for the Russians, the Americans and, above all, those admirable citizens of our great continent, the Germans.
I see no reason to celebrate the fall of the Berlin wall, who actually benefited from this event and how?
Perhaps in the near future we will be coerced into celebrating the fall of European national boundaries, cultures and identity too and again who has benefited from this event?
Answers on a postcard please.
Murder comes to mind.
The fall of the wall really means the decline of the western civilization.
Now we have an unelected socialist prime minister (who cannot even write or add up properly)it may as well be the Soviet Union. Not even they got into 1.7 billion debt.
Doz Vidanyeh comrade brown.
How incredibly silly and grumpy you all seem to be. Twenty years after communism collapsed, and I live and work in Prague, and there are very few people who here who would subscribe to your ridiculous gangrenous fantasies. Blaming the EU for the lack of a written constitution in the UK, or for the fact that you have probably the least democratic polity in Europe, is moving into the territory of Matthew 7.5. "You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye".
As for the statement that "In the UK, we now face arrest for not sorting rubbish, for placing bins or cars more than a certain distance from fixed objects. We have more CCTV, more laws, more restrictions, more intrusion, not least the awful and ineffective Criminal Records Bureau checks which soon we will all be required to take, just to go swimmiing in a public swimming pool. [This is not an exaggeration, merely a logical extension of parents being banned from a skateboard park recently unless they were CRB checked as there were under-18s present.]", the EU did NOT do this to you, you allowed your own to stick it to you. Grow up and take responsibility for your own mess.
"Appointed" leadership hardly indicates a democratic system - we are descending into the pit occupied by many African dictatorships.
The Crooked Cross of Germany...
What exactly is the NWO and as New Zealand has embraced the political system of MMP (once in force in Germany) are we Downunder next on the list of
coming under NWO eventually.?
The British Commonwealth must be on an agenda somewhere or either...especially as our Queen Elizabeth signed a document for EU (perhaps not reading the small print).
Isabel Witty NZ
PS: Remember the Ukraine a food-basket of a former USSR...
"Something smells, not only in the State of Denmark" (Shakespeare)
Telegraph,FREEDOM? We as a nation have just begun the fight back for the freedom of Britain from this new evil Marxist state.We will NEVER accept anyone other than Her Majesty as our lawful Head of State.God Save the Queen!
War rarely has anything to do with freedom. WWI and WWII were both influenced by many factors but the main purpose of both was to push the masses - especially those of Europe and the USA - into accepting more centralised power.
Without these wars there would have been no League of Nations and no UN and no EU.
The EU has a communist structure to it and we have been led into it bit by bit without realising what was happening. It is not too late to stop the bandwagon.
I would not deny any ones freedom and it is great that many were set free. However, that said from a british point of view, are we a safer and better country since the iron curtain fell - I think not.
We have virtually lost all our democracy. And for those that think we still are one, are deluded. A democracy makes up its own laws, regulations etc. In a democracy politicians are held accountable by the people....Both our Parliament and that lot in brussels are no longer accountable.
Power has been handed over by parliament - without the peole's wishes. Illegal, yes!
We can get out of this, but voting Liblabcon is a wasted vote. It is a vote to accept totalitarism. look around you folks, look at the britain these three parties have created.
Everyone I speak to feel there is something very wrong with this country. It is no accident, this has been done deliberately!!! Wake up and smell the rat, we have all been betrayed!
Homogeneity of goods and services is not necessarily a boon.
I used to like Europe when each country was different.
Freedom?
It must be the way you tell 'em!
Surely some mistake.
This freedomfest celebration could become as big as the non-existent 'Winter of Discontent.'
'Liberty' last refuge of the scoundrel.
Rose - or fell?
Last week, Pravda of all newspapers, lauded the completion of the Lisbon Treaty ratification as the moment when the EUSSR came to fruition.
The balance of power in Europe leans increasingly to the East, and given the lack of any real democracy behind the layers and layers of fa�ade, it is no surprise that Moscow leader-writers see the EU for what it is, very much as the sort of thing they once set up across eastern Europe.
Has anyone thought about the long game, the finessing of the West, which Gorbachev started in 1989 when he let the Wall fall, the eastern states secede from USSR satellite status?
40% of NATO Members, and what percentage of the EU, by state, by citizens? I look to that great barometer of European politics, the Eurovision Song Contest - where Britain received NO points at the height of Iraq, and which Russia (in Europe?) recently won.
What is the EU about? It is not a trading club. It is a putative political union. A monstrous polyglot confection by stealth of nation states with a common history of fighting each other. Is subjugation of that ability to squabble the one aim of this vast enterprise?
Prince Charles spoke of descending into *grey sludge* were nanobots, as conceived, to function and escape into the wild: surely that is exactly what the EU is doing to a whole series of vibrant old world states - homogenising them into lifeless grey sludge? Politicians who have acquiesced in the acceleration of this process on a *never mind the quality feel the width* basis as eastern states queued up to collect their pay cheques, might like to reassess how we got to this from the EEC and who drove us there...
"Sense of freedom"? Is that really what this feels like to you and me?
..."freedom not just to elect or dismiss a government..." ????
That is precisely what we have LOST in the last 20 years!
Is Peter Mandelson now writing Telegraph Opinion?
There is no freedom within the EU. It's like living in East Germany, or Stalin's Russia. Why, only the other week my husband and I were complaining about Gordon Brown at a dinner party thrown by friends. Little did we know that one of the six people sat at the table was a government informant.
The following morning my husband was arrested on trumped up charges and taken to a holding facility miles from where we live, where he was beaten and tortured into naming all his friends and relatives who feel the same way about Gordon Brown. Our house has been taken off us, and my husband will be sewing mailbags for the next fifteen years in a former concentration camp on the outskirts of London.
My telephone is now bugged, and there are secret cameras throughout the house. Friends of ours who work for the local council have been told they will lose their jobs if they don't cut off all ties to us immediately.
When several people in our area complained about Gordon Brown's totalitarianism, he cut off all food supplies, thereby ensuring that some 3,000,000 people in Norwich alone will die from malnutrition. Survivors will be taken off to the wastes of Cumbria to work as slave labour building a railway in the arctic cold.
Freedom, indeed!
I predict that the next 'wall' the EU builds will be round the internet. They will not continue to allow people to comment freely on the EU in a negative manner.
The EU Thought Police won't be long in coming.
So the trap has snapped shut. It was somehow apt that the politician who finally let the EU get the constitution it has craved so long should have been President Vaclav Klaus, the veteran anti-Communist who predicted, just before the Czech Republic joined the EU in 2004, that it would mean the end of his country as "an independent sovereign state". And what a delightful irony that Pravda, of all newspapers, greeted the news last week with the headline:
"Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the EU is now a reincarnation of the Soviet Union".
Christopher Booker,
The Daily Telegraph, 7 November 2009
Alan
8-45 am
In total agreement with you.
Thank you.
We now have an invisible wall between our unelected European masters in Brussels who rule without a mandate from anyone.
Sir, Please can you substantiate your claim that there have been the "immense advance of freedom in Europe".
Sitting here in the UK, I contend that we do not have the right to elect our Government. No voter had the opportunity in this country, or indeed many European country, to vote on our current form of government or the President who will sit atop this pile of self-important vermin. Those given the chance of voting were bribed or coerced and required to vote again (and presumably again and again) until they returned the desired outcome. No individual voter has ever been given the chance to elect the European Commission, a body which, it appears from practice, to be unsackable individually or collectively, even in the face of conclusive evidence of criminal actions or incompetence.
In the UK, we now face arrest for not sorting rubbish, for placing bins or cars more than a certain distance from fixed objects. We have more CCTV, more laws, more restrictions, more intrusion, not least the awful and ineffective Criminal Records Bureau checks which soon we will all be required to take, just to go swimmiing in a public swimming pool. [This is not an exaggeration, merely a logical extension of parents being banned from a skateboard park recently unless they were CRB checked as there were under-18s present.]
As I see it, one form of unelected tyranny has been replaced by a far more sinister form of unelected tyranny.
How ironic! The old USSR has fallen and a Western version, the EU, has risen in its place.
The enabling Lisbon Treaty will hasten the process of Gleichschaltung across Europe.
I think Telgraph you are a bit mixed up and not reading your own paper,Where is the freedom you are talking aboutwhen we were lied to for years by both the parties and we have never been given the opportunity to say what we think of the EEC?,we are Govened by an unelected Prime Minister who has destroyed this Country and now the Lisbon Treaty is sewn up we are now going to have to follow the laws and regulations set by some faceless unelected Eurocrats in Brussels whom we are told if we criticise them it will be against the law,noTelegraph,we do not have freedom we have dictatorship.