The Berlin Wall Does Not Rest in Peace

berlinwall1Twenty-five years ago, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came crashing down. The anniversary prompts a meditation on some realities that escaped the old-line establishment press, and which may remain unknown entirely to those growing up in the Age of the Tweet.

The wall was a project of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), a one-party totalitarian dictatorship and the most slavish ally of the Soviet Union, which under Joseph Stalin grabbed half of Germany in the wake of World War II. The GDR was also the Communist state most involved in terrorism against the West in general and the United States in particular.

The official name of the wall was the Antifaschistischer Schutzwall, the “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart,” the familiar inversion of reality. As the late Susan Sontag observed during the 1980s, “Communism is fascism.” So the GDR was actually the fascist state, with goose-stepping troops decked out very much like those of the National Socialist regime under the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, also known as Nazis. Sontag was not the first to make this observation. The late Hans Massaquoi, son of a Liberian father and German mother, who in Destined to Witness told of growing up black in Nazi Germany, saw no difference at all between the Nazis and Communists.

The Communist regimes were so repressive that people fled at any opportunity, leaving loved ones behind. More than 3 million people fled the GDR and no Stalinist dictatorship could allow people to vote with their feet.  So in August 1961 the regime put up the wall, along with barbed wire and guard towers holding vigil over the “death strip,” as it came to be known, embedded with anti-personnel mines.

So the GDR made emigration an exciting experience. Some 5,000 made the attempt to breach the wall, among them the Strelzyk and Wetzel families, who flew to freedom in a hot-air balloon. In the 1982 Disney film Night Crossing, Peter Strelzyk (John Hurt) calls GDR oppressors “pigs,” a rare case of truth in cinema dealing with Communism. For those who remained, life was bleak.

Marxist ideology guaranteed that the GDR would be an economic basket case, less consequential to the world economy than Hong Kong. The GDR’s crowning industrial achievement was the Trabant, doubtless the most inferior automobile ever produced. But as John O. Koehler showed in Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police, the Stalinist regime was efficient at repression.

Beyond North Korea and Albania under Enver Hoxha, perhaps no regime has exercised such complete control over the people. Koehler documents the repressions of the “Red Gestapo” against both Germans and the West. The material on Stasi operations against the United States and NATO remains relevant, along with Stasi operations in the Third World.

In “The Stasi and Terrorism” chapter Koehler detailed the bombing of the La Belle discotheque in West Berlin a “massacre” carried out by the Libyan regime of Moamar Qaddafi. Koehler provides the full cast of characters, including Yasser Chraidi, the Libyan terrorist who planned the attack with Musbah Albugasem Eter, Musbah El Ablani and others who were not members of the Libyan People’s Bureau. Those included Mohamed-Suleiman Benali, a Moroccan “residing in West Berlin on welfare.”

The GDR was also a “playground for international terrorists,” such as Abu Daoud, leader of the Black September group that masterminded the 1972 Olympic attack that claimed 11 Israelis. The regime made Daoud a “guest of honor” at a Communist Party Central Committee event and housed at the Metropole, East Germany’s most luxurious hotel. “He was also given a reception at the mission of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and met with officials at the Syrian and South Yemeni embassies” before moving on unscathed. East Germany was also a safe haven for Carlos “the jackal,” Abu Nidal, and others.

Stasi provides a thorough account of how and why the Berlin Wall came down. But on the intelligence and terrorism sides, many loose ends remain. Libya is once again a playground for terrorists, and they now understand that they can kill American diplomats and torch the diplomatic compound with impunity. Not only so, but the U.S. Secretary of State will blame everything on a video and say “what does it matter?”

Meanwhile, 25 years after the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, Barack Obama remains shrink-wrapped in statist superstition. Omnipotent government may have failed elsewhere, but in his view it remains precisely what America needs, along with more surveillance of the people. So no surprise if the anniversary draws no comment from the President of the United States.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

Subscribe to Frontpage’s TV show, The Glazov Gang, and LIKE it on Facebook.

  • Atikva

    The Berlin Wall may have crashed, but it didn’t herald the end of the communists’ dream to enslave the world. It was just part of a new communist tactic pursued after WWII, consisting in the discrete infiltration of our key institutions and their transformation into willing partners without changing their names. The only thing that remains of The New York Times, the Rockefeller Foundation, most of our universities, and the Democrat Party, for instance, is their names. Nothing else remains of what they used to be, of what we trusted them to be.

    • rhondakelly07

      America needs to have a wall to get illegals out

      • Atikva

        I have nothing against such a wall, but more would be needed to
        stop the invasion. They have already built a complete network of tunnels under the south border to cross it undetected. There would have to be agents patrolling along it 24/7 and more importantly, a new set of measures barring any benefits to be paid to illegal immigrants. That would stop the flow of invaders more surely than anything else.

  • http://hansonslittlecorner.com/ John R Hanson

    “Sure, we can move our troops out of Europe. There Is no danger there anymore.” Have we heard those words lately? What a joke. The cost to remain free from tyrants will always be high and if we enjoy being free then we better start paying the piper before the piper is dead along with all freedom loving people.

    • rhondakelly07

      Minorities are invading taking over and killing Whites Christians.

  • rhondakelly07

    Minorities and Muslims and illegals, and africans, are destroying our nations get them out.

    • kiwi41

      Get them out …..by ANY means …………………..

  • Erudite Mavin

    The Communist not only enslaved the people of East Germany with the Berlin Wall but the entire border of East Germany across from West Germany was Fenced off and I saw this first hand in 1983. High Fences, barbed wire, guard towers, land along the fence flat with landmines.

  • kiwi41

    Time to remember this ; As Veterans’ Day approaches

    It’s easy to forget but THIS is what an American Commander in Chief sounds like…..

    http://www.youtube.com/embed/rKsW6c_CgFY?feature=player_detailpage

    A stark contrast to that P_O_S_ in the infesting the WH now

    • cree

      Thanks kiwi41. Yes he does, genuinely. This vet is honored to have know him as my president. Won’t, can’t say the same for P…O…S.
      Glad for the escapee.

  • SoCalMike

    We fought and won the 2nd World War and the Cold War only to be taken by Communists and Fascists from within who took the time to “long march” through our educational, media and entertainment institutions and attack us from within.
    They succeeded.
    I doubt this generation of Americans can undo the damage that the traitors from my generation have foisted on us.
    Evidence Item A is Barack Hussein Obama.

    But we are the last best hope. If we fall, that leaves Israel, Canada and Australia.
    The UK and Europe are done.