How faaabulous is socialism/communism? Short history of Berlin, 1945 to 1989
There is a type of person on this planet who wants to run every aspect of your life. Most of these people are convinced they know what's best for you--better than you know yourself--so it's only reasonable that you should follow their orders. If you don't, they'll make you pay.
This is a major principle of socialism and communism, with results on display today in Venezuela and North Korea. But Americans over 50 or so saw an even more graphic demonstration of how terrible things inevitably happen when socialists want to run your life: A thing called the Berlin Wall.
After World War 2 ended in 1945, the four main nations of the allied forces in Europe--the U.S., Britain, France and the Soviet Union--divided Germany into four administrative zones. The German capital, Berlin, was about 100 miles inside the Soviet zone, and Berlin was similarly divided into four zones.
The western allies--having seen the damage done by the punitive terms of the treaty imposed on Germany after WW1--quickly began devising plans to rebuild Germany. But the Soviets--who had suffered more damage from the German invasion than any other country and were focused on rebuilding their own nation--refused to cooperate.
The Soviet position hardened after the other three powers decided to join their zones in West Germany. (Berlin remained divided into four zones.)
As the other three occupying powers started helping West Berlin and West Germany rebuild, residents of East Germany--the part occupied by the Soviets--watched in growing envy as the standard of living in both West Berlin and West Germany began rising rapidly. They saw the freedom residents of the west had, and contrasted it with the police-state in the east. They began to leave East Germany by tens of thousands.
Nowhere on earth was the contrast between communism and freedom more glaring than in Berlin. While West Berlin was busy rebuilding--thanks mainly to western help--the Soviet sector remained poor, bleak, littered with wreckage from the war. So on June 24th, 1948, the Soviets attempted to erase the contrast by starving residents of West Berlin--by closing off all surface access from the West to the city, ending both food and coal shipments to West Berliners. (Recall that Berlin was about 100 miles inside East Germany.)
It was a classic communist move: "If we can't control it, we'll kill it." And it appeared there was nothing the West could do to counter the blockade.
But the treaty dividing Germany allowed the non-Soviet powers access to Berlin by air. A few Americans wondered, was there any way the West could supply all the food and heating needs of the 300,000 residents of West Berlin solely by air?
Nothing like this had ever been tried before, and at first glance it seemed impossible. But the commander of the just-created US. Air Force urged the president to give it a try.
The Brits had undertaken a "little airlift" a month earlier and had worked up some estimates of how many tons of supplies would be needed to support 300,000 people. The minimum was 5,000 tons--a million pounds--of supplies every day.
So began the Berlin Airlift. Eventually crews from the United Kingdom, France, Australia and New Zealand joined in the airlift, supplying West Berlin not only with food but also with coal for heating, and other supplies.[14] The Communist press in East Berlin ridiculed the airlift, calling it "the futile attempts of the Americans to save face and to maintain their untenable position in Berlin."[68] Government radio broadcasts predicted the western powers would abandon Berlin soon.[82]
In the early months of the airlift food was certainly tight in West Berlin, so starting on August 1st the Soviets offered free food to any West Berliner who crossed to the Soviet sector and registered their ration card there. But residents of West Berlin overwhelmingly rejected the Soviet offer.
As residents of both parts of Berlin watched the seemingly-endless stream of western planes keeping the Western half of Berlin alive, the Soviets must have been furious. How could the western allies generously supply food and coal to people they had so recently been fighting? Germans noticed, and the elections in East Germany that year produced big losses for communist candidates.[15] Finally in May of 1949, after 11 months of non-stop air supply of West Berlin, Stalin lifted the blockade, allowing surface traffic to Berlin from West Germany to resume.
But dictators never give up, and the Soviets went back to the drawing board. As people continued to flee East Germany for the west by hundreds of thousands per year--331,000 in 1953 alone--the communists who'd been installed by the Soviets to nominally run East Germany recognized that they were losing their best and brightest. In internal documents they talked about a "brain drain," and worried about how to stop it. Of course the idea of liberalizing the Soviet-imposed communist police state--which top East German pols enthusiastically embraced--never occurred to 'em. Instead, in a classic dictatorial response they hit on another idea:
They'd build a wall and simply forbid East Germans to leave.
Again, it was a classic communist move: Just order whatever you want, threaten to kill people if they disobey, and it's "problem solved." So on August 13th, 1961, East German troops began unrolling barbed wire along the line dividing the Soviet sector of Berlin from the rest of the city--what would eventually become the Berlin Wall.
The communists eventually demolished buildings on the east side of the wall, to give guard towers unrestricted fields of fire. The cleared area was often laced with more barbed wire.
East German border guards fatally shot between 140 and 200 of their fellow citizens trying to escape.
In 1989 the people of Poland voted out the communist who had ruled them since 1945. In June of that year the communist government of Hungary began dismantling the electrified fence along its border with Austria (with Western TV crews present). In September more than 13,000 East German tourists escaped through Hungary to Austria.[104]
These events triggered a sort of chain-reaction, as other members of the Soviet Bloc likely decided that continuing to prevent their citizens from leaving might have negative effects on the lives of the leaders. In any case, on November 9th, 1989, the government of East Germany opened the gates in the Berlin Wall and allowed residents of East Berlin to step across to the west. Within days people had begun to dismantle the wall.
For 28 years the Berlin Wall (and similar barriers) imprisoned residents of the Soviet bloc. Guards were ordered to shoot anyone trying to escape. They killed at least 140 people.
Now, the Berlin Wall is hardly a secret, but if you're a college-age American I'll bet you've never heard any details about how it came about, or its purpose, or how many people were shot trying to get out. That's intentional: The leftists who run the Lying Mainstream Media and far too much of the Democrat party don't want you to know. They want you to believe socialism is the greatest idea ever.
This is a major principle of socialism and communism, with results on display today in Venezuela and North Korea. But Americans over 50 or so saw an even more graphic demonstration of how terrible things inevitably happen when socialists want to run your life: A thing called the Berlin Wall.
After World War 2 ended in 1945, the four main nations of the allied forces in Europe--the U.S., Britain, France and the Soviet Union--divided Germany into four administrative zones. The German capital, Berlin, was about 100 miles inside the Soviet zone, and Berlin was similarly divided into four zones.
The western allies--having seen the damage done by the punitive terms of the treaty imposed on Germany after WW1--quickly began devising plans to rebuild Germany. But the Soviets--who had suffered more damage from the German invasion than any other country and were focused on rebuilding their own nation--refused to cooperate.
The Soviet position hardened after the other three powers decided to join their zones in West Germany. (Berlin remained divided into four zones.)
As the other three occupying powers started helping West Berlin and West Germany rebuild, residents of East Germany--the part occupied by the Soviets--watched in growing envy as the standard of living in both West Berlin and West Germany began rising rapidly. They saw the freedom residents of the west had, and contrasted it with the police-state in the east. They began to leave East Germany by tens of thousands.
Nowhere on earth was the contrast between communism and freedom more glaring than in Berlin. While West Berlin was busy rebuilding--thanks mainly to western help--the Soviet sector remained poor, bleak, littered with wreckage from the war. So on June 24th, 1948, the Soviets attempted to erase the contrast by starving residents of West Berlin--by closing off all surface access from the West to the city, ending both food and coal shipments to West Berliners. (Recall that Berlin was about 100 miles inside East Germany.)
It was a classic communist move: "If we can't control it, we'll kill it." And it appeared there was nothing the West could do to counter the blockade.
But the treaty dividing Germany allowed the non-Soviet powers access to Berlin by air. A few Americans wondered, was there any way the West could supply all the food and heating needs of the 300,000 residents of West Berlin solely by air?
Nothing like this had ever been tried before, and at first glance it seemed impossible. But the commander of the just-created US. Air Force urged the president to give it a try.
The Brits had undertaken a "little airlift" a month earlier and had worked up some estimates of how many tons of supplies would be needed to support 300,000 people. The minimum was 5,000 tons--a million pounds--of supplies every day.
So began the Berlin Airlift. Eventually crews from the United Kingdom, France, Australia and New Zealand joined in the airlift, supplying West Berlin not only with food but also with coal for heating, and other supplies.[14] The Communist press in East Berlin ridiculed the airlift, calling it "the futile attempts of the Americans to save face and to maintain their untenable position in Berlin."[68] Government radio broadcasts predicted the western powers would abandon Berlin soon.[82]
In the early months of the airlift food was certainly tight in West Berlin, so starting on August 1st the Soviets offered free food to any West Berliner who crossed to the Soviet sector and registered their ration card there. But residents of West Berlin overwhelmingly rejected the Soviet offer.
As residents of both parts of Berlin watched the seemingly-endless stream of western planes keeping the Western half of Berlin alive, the Soviets must have been furious. How could the western allies generously supply food and coal to people they had so recently been fighting? Germans noticed, and the elections in East Germany that year produced big losses for communist candidates.[15] Finally in May of 1949, after 11 months of non-stop air supply of West Berlin, Stalin lifted the blockade, allowing surface traffic to Berlin from West Germany to resume.
But dictators never give up, and the Soviets went back to the drawing board. As people continued to flee East Germany for the west by hundreds of thousands per year--331,000 in 1953 alone--the communists who'd been installed by the Soviets to nominally run East Germany recognized that they were losing their best and brightest. In internal documents they talked about a "brain drain," and worried about how to stop it. Of course the idea of liberalizing the Soviet-imposed communist police state--which top East German pols enthusiastically embraced--never occurred to 'em. Instead, in a classic dictatorial response they hit on another idea:
They'd build a wall and simply forbid East Germans to leave.
Again, it was a classic communist move: Just order whatever you want, threaten to kill people if they disobey, and it's "problem solved." So on August 13th, 1961, East German troops began unrolling barbed wire along the line dividing the Soviet sector of Berlin from the rest of the city--what would eventually become the Berlin Wall.
The communists eventually demolished buildings on the east side of the wall, to give guard towers unrestricted fields of fire. The cleared area was often laced with more barbed wire.
East German border guards fatally shot between 140 and 200 of their fellow citizens trying to escape.
In 1989 the people of Poland voted out the communist who had ruled them since 1945. In June of that year the communist government of Hungary began dismantling the electrified fence along its border with Austria (with Western TV crews present). In September more than 13,000 East German tourists escaped through Hungary to Austria.[104]
These events triggered a sort of chain-reaction, as other members of the Soviet Bloc likely decided that continuing to prevent their citizens from leaving might have negative effects on the lives of the leaders. In any case, on November 9th, 1989, the government of East Germany opened the gates in the Berlin Wall and allowed residents of East Berlin to step across to the west. Within days people had begun to dismantle the wall.
For 28 years the Berlin Wall (and similar barriers) imprisoned residents of the Soviet bloc. Guards were ordered to shoot anyone trying to escape. They killed at least 140 people.
Now, the Berlin Wall is hardly a secret, but if you're a college-age American I'll bet you've never heard any details about how it came about, or its purpose, or how many people were shot trying to get out. That's intentional: The leftists who run the Lying Mainstream Media and far too much of the Democrat party don't want you to know. They want you to believe socialism is the greatest idea ever.
posted by SF at
2:41 PM
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