When the Berlin Wall went up on Nikita Khrushchev’s orders, plainly he thought he had put in place a tool of Communist strength and resolve.
In fact, what he had bequeathed the world was this: The most visible symbol of Communist despair and desperation — a concrete confirmation that the only way Soviet-style societies could keep people was literally to wall them in.
Twenty-five years ago today, it all started to come a-tumbling down. East Germany announced its citizens would be allowed to travel to the West.
Others grabbed their hammers and chisels and pounded away. Mercifully, Mikhail Gorbachev did not insist on a military effort to keep it all from happening, as past Soviet leaders probably would have done.
But the events this day were an outcome, not a cause. Long before the Wall came down physically, an American president had inflicted the fatal blow when he used the one thing Communism never could deal with: the truth, spoken aloud and publicly.
That president’s name was Ronald Reagan, who sealed the Wall’s fate when he went to Berlin and issued his famous call: “Mr. Gorbahev, tear down this wall.” Even for him it hadn’t started there.
Early on in his presidency he had told a friend his strategy for the Cold War: “We win, and they lose.”
Reagan had help, of course. Back when the Wall was new, another president, Jack Kennedy, stood in front and declared he was a Berliner, as was everyone who believed in freedom. These two Cold Warrior presidents each understood no wall could ever squelch the desire for freedom.
That would make it a constant source of embarrassment for its Communist overlords. Somehow ordinary people kept coming up with ways to defeat the barbed wire, land mines and armed guards. Some sneaked across the Wall in the trunks of cars.
Two brothers went across on a zipline they strung from an apartment in the East to one in the West. Two families memorably made it over in a hot-air balloon they fashioned out of bed sheets.
We count it as a blessing — and a victory — that a whole generation has grown up without this ugly scar in the middle of Berlin.
But we also do well to remember that the Wall did not magically come down. When Reagan spoke his prophetic words, he backed them up with actions: sending Stingers to Afghan rebels; supporting a Polish pope in Rome and an electrician leading a free trade union in Gdansk; sticking with the Star Wars space defense that aimed to render much of the Soviet arsenal obsolete.
So as the world marks this wonderful victory for freedom, let no one make the mistake of speaking of the “fall of the Berlin Wall.”
The Berlin Wall came down because it was pulled down.