Tewnty years ago Today...

[Capt Worley PE]

...the Berlin wall came down. This was huge. I remember watching TV in my apartment as people stood atop the walls with sledge hammers.

It was quite moving.

I think just about everyone realized this was the beginning of the end for Communism and the USSR. I have to hand it to Gorbi for bringing the USSR down in a somewhat controlled crash. It could have been much worse than it was.

As I watched the wall broken apart, I wondered what the future would hold. It looked quite bright, and I think it has generally turned out quite well. Germany's reunification went well, and the ex-Soviet block natiomns seem to have integrated prety well, despite nastiness in what was once Yugoslavia.

One of my inane, non sequitor thoughts at the time was, "Man, this will really do Tom Clancy out of a job!"

 

[RIP - VTEnviro]

I was 9 years old at the time. I remember it coming down and they passed a chunk of it around school, but I was a little young to understand the socio-political-economic ramifications.

 

[wilheldp_PE]

I watched the History Channel special about the wall this weekend. I didn't realize how extensive that thing was. The concrete wall that everybody envisions when you think of the Berlin wall was only a small part of the structure. There were chainlink fences with barbed wire on top, trip-wires with automatic machine guns, a mine field, a track with trained attack dogs, a bed of nails at the base of the concrete wall for people who scaled it and jumped down the other side, and a stretch of smooth sand so that if you managed to get past all the other obstacles, they would at least know that somebody had been through there by your footprints.

Not only that, but the wall didn't just divide east from west Berlin. The wall went all the way around West Berlin since the whole city resides in East Germany.

 

[Road Guy]

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall....

 

[Dexman1349]

Like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAI9oZ9LkTs