Some say that the people who designed and built the Berlin Wall were geniuses.
I strongly disagree with this view, although I do not deny that the Berlin Wall did represent the pinnacle of human architectural design and human architecture at that time.
Others say that the Berlin Wall was built to protect the safety of the people of East Germany. I think that those who say this are not blind, but rather blind in their hearts. The Berlin Wall was built to protect the security of East Germany, but not the people of East Germany.
During the Cold War period after World War II, Germany was divided into East Germany and West Germany. Due to economic and political differences, East Germany faced a large population loss and detachment. To solve this problem, the East German government decided to build a wall in Berlin to separate the east and west. The wall had a total length of about 155 kilometers, including 43 kilometers of concrete wall and 112 kilometers of barbed wire, restricted areas, etc.
The height of the wall was about 3.6 meters, and the Berlin Wall, equipped with facilities such as watchtowers, observation towers, and patrol paths, was designed to prevent people from crossing the wall and escaping, nothing else. As long as the people of East Germany did not vote with their feet, East Germany would be safe.
Ironically, the official name of this wall built by East Germany was "Anti-Fascist Wall".
Even more ironic is that the builders of this "Anti-Fascist Wall" were the successors of fascism.
The most ironic thing is that from the day it was built, it never stopped an attacking enemy, because there was simply no one from the west who wanted to enter the east to enjoy its superiority. On the contrary, even after the wall was built, although it did indeed to some extent curb the tide of East Germans' crazy escape, it could not extinguish the desire of East Germans to escape.
From the time the wall was built in 1961 until 1980, less than twenty years, 170,000 East Germans successfully fled to West Germany.
Nothing can stop people's yearning for freedom.
During this period, the people of East Germany exhausted their thoughts and brainstormed in order to flee to West Germany. They invented various ways to climb over the wall, such as gliders, tunnels, jumping from tall buildings, hot air balloons, catapults, swimming across the canals that crossed the border, and even crawling through sewers, etc., using human wisdom to the extreme.
In April 1963, Wolfgang Engels, a soldier of the People's Army, stole an armored personnel carrier from a Soviet military base and crashed through a hole in the Berlin Wall, then crossed over to the west. On July 15, 1987, Thomas Krug, a young East German, flew a Z-42 light aircraft from a sports club across the border and landed at the British military base in Gatow, Germany.
Another method was to enter neighboring countries such as Poland and Czechoslovakia under the guise of tourism, and then break into local American or West German embassies seeking asylum. These individuals were called "stay-behinds". In just 13 years after 1976, 8,700 people fled through this method.
On Bernauer Strasse, adjacent to the wall, every year there were people who, with the belief of risking their lives, jumped from the upper floors of buildings along the street to West Berlin, and the police had to seal all the windows facing west.
The East German government claimed that the lives of the people of East Germany were like heaven. However, the people of East Germany would rather risk their lives than stay in this supposedly happy earthly paradise.
Everyone knows that the most common occurrence in East Germany was famine. But East Germany would rather waste food than allow its people to escape.
The only explanation is that the so-called paradise is actually a real hell. And those who escape from hell will show the world the evils of hell. So, building a wall is actually building a prison.
From the time the Berlin Wall was built in 1961 until 1989, nearly 30 years, at least 200 named individuals from East Germany died while trying to cross the wall, and more than 3,200 unsuccessful attempts were arrested.
What made them continue to risk their lives? The answer is only two words - freedom!
On June 12, 1987, U.S. President Reagan delivered a speech at the Berlin Wall, shouting to Soviet leader Gorbachev, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" He said in his speech, "This wall will fall because it cannot withstand confidence, it cannot withstand truth, and it cannot withstand freedom."
And then, just over two years later, it really fell.
The fall of the Berlin Wall was completely different from any other major historical event because there was no collective effort, no elaborate planning, and no grand group action.
On the contrary, the collapse of the Berlin Wall was even more absurd than its construction because the process of its collapse was full of misunderstandings and hesitations, more like an own goal.
On the evening of November 9, 1989, during a live international press conference, Günter Schabowski, the First Secretary of the East Berlin branch of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, was at a loss when asked by a reporter. At this moment, an assistant handed him a note. He opened the note and read it out loud: "Citizens can freely apply for private trips abroad without meeting any prerequisites."
The journalists on the scene were stunned, and a West German journalist asked for clarification: "When does it take effect?" Schabowski clumsily and hesitantly replied, "As far as I know... now, immediately."
Then he left the venue, leaving behind a room full of astonished journalists.
It should be noted that the East German authorities were indeed planning to relax restrictions on citizens' travel abroad, but the decision had not been finalized, and the plan did not guarantee complete freedom of movement. In theory, Schabowski's statement at the press conference was clearly a slip of the tongue, a blatant own goal, and it happened in a very absurd manner.
However, even more absurdly, this own goal statement did not receive any denial from the tightly organized East German authorities. As a result, thousands of East Germans saw the live broadcast on television and, in the sudden happiness, gathered at the border with doubts, hesitations, and fears.
At the main checkpoint between East and West Germany, the Bornholmer Strasse border checkpoint, Colonel Jakel, who was having dinner, also saw the live broadcast. He could not believe his eyes and ears and immediately called his superiors for confirmation, but his superiors were just as clueless as he was. The colonel repeatedly requested orders from his superiors to deal with the situation that was about to unfold, but his superiors refused, saying, "I can't pull a document out of my hat."
And so, East Germany, a country that knew the thoughts of every citizen, suddenly became paralyzed on this night, without orders to let people through or orders to stop them, everything had to go with the flow. The colonel and his soldiers even opened the armory at one point, intending to fulfill their duty to "guard the border." But in the end, faced with the surging crowd, he reluctantly and fearfully opened the gates.
The crowd surged through, and the Berlin Wall, built on absurdity, collapsed, and the so-called "German Democratic Republic" was sentenced to death in an instant.
The movie "Knocking Down the Berlin Wall" portrays this historic moment with dark humor: when the son of a checkpoint soldier picks up a weapon, his mother, who works as a cook at the checkpoint, says to him, "Son, they are also someone else's sons and daughters."
So, the massacre never happened. When the crowd surged through the checkpoint, the soldier's son just clung tightly to his mother's embrace.
Another soldier said to the colonel that his son had said to him, "We have a worldview, but we can't see the world." He added, "Of course, I taught him this lesson."
These two scenes reveal the fundamental absurdity of this high wall - the destruction of humanity. People are born free, but the high wall treats them like pigs, depriving them of their freedom. And anything that destroys humanity may be powerful and towering, but its collapse is inevitable because people are not pigs after all. The yearning for the free world can be suppressed but not eliminated.
Why did the tightly organized East German authorities have such a major own goal? And why did they remain silent after the own goal occurred?
The only explanation is that no one wanted to maintain this wall that destroyed humanity anymore. They already knew in their hearts that the collapse of this wall, built on absurdity, was a relief for everyone. In other words, at this point, no one wanted the wall to remain standing. Or rather, they did not oppose its collapse.
Looking back at history, the collapse of the Berlin Wall was indeed absurd. The silence of the big shots made a few small characters the protagonists.
However, the real protagonist was the deep longing for freedom in people's hearts. This longing, on the day the Berlin Wall stood tall, determined its fate to collapse in the future.
A wall built on absurdity cannot stand forever, no matter how precise its design, how perfect its construction level, or how reliable its quality.
Because anything that conflicts with human nature is the most unreliable.