Who Did Tear Down That Wall?
Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, talks with NPR’s Melissa Block about secret documents concerning the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the months leading up and just after it.
Amazing stuff. Margaret Thatcher pleads with Gorbachev off the record to assist in keeping Germany divided—“You’ve got all those soldiers.” Brent Scowcroft muses that it might be better to keep two Germanys. Meanwhile Gorbachev was talking, apparently sincerely, about “our one European home,” and Shevardnadze said in a Politburo meeting that the Soviets should just tear down the wall themselves (he was ignored).
Gorbachev’s foreign affairs adviser, Anatoly Chernyaev, recorded the moment in his diary.
“…This is the end of Yalta, the Stalinist legacy, and the ‘defeat of Hitlerlite Germany,’” he writes. “This is what Gorbachev has done. And he has indeed turned out to be a great leader. He has sensed the pace of history and helped history find a natural channel.”
Gorby doesn’t get enough credit in the West anymore.
Go listen, then go read the documents.
