Food for Thought

[Guardian 5]

Team - I received this link from a dear old friend the other day.

The note with it simply said, "thank you cold warriors for ending this".

All the best - TJ


http://www.spiegel.de/international/...707570,00.html

[ehrentitle]

Thomas, This is a great topic that I've actually given a lot of thought to in the last year. I'm an old cold warrior who spent 6 years in Germany. But as much as I'd like to take part of the credit for bringing the cold war to an end I have to agree with former president George H. W. Bush who said that the fall of the wall was "set in motion" not by leaders in Washington, Moscow, or Bonn but by "the people themselves."

I'm proud of my service on Freedom's Frontier in Berlin. But I think it was Mikhail Gorbachev's Perestroika and Glasnost that did more to bring down the wall and end the cold war than anything else. Those reforms and new freedoms encouraged internal dissent and put pressure on eastern European countries to change. I don't think the marches in Berlin and Leipzig nor the fall of the East German government would have happened without it.

I also think that Bush was right when he said we should not gloat about being victors in the Cold War, but rather view the fall of the wall as the beginning of a long road to reconciliation and lasting peace with Russia and the eastern bloc.

[GREENEDUDLEY]

Checked out the whole site. Some very interesting "Then and Now" photos. Thanks for put the link on.

[Jeremy92]

Very interesting site.

[konfetti]

Team - I received this link from a dear old friend the other day.

The note with it simply said, "thank you cold warriors for ending this".

All the best - TJ


http://www.spiegel.de/international/...707570,00.html

Tach Genossen!

After the WW II , you remind, Germany was a rubble field.
Germany 1945
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph8lyPyPIhQ
I hope we do not repeat the errors of our fathers and grandfathers !!

Housing shortage was everyday life.
From 1960 to 1990 The GDR built 2,2 Million Dwellings for 7 Million Peoples
The GDR has 17 Million Peoples in 1989

After the building phase the external areas was properly rebuilt so fast as it possible.

Berlin Marzahn
http://www.caminair.de/gallery/ddr?page=4
Berlin Hellersdorf
http://www.caminair.de/gallery/album09?page=1
Halle-Neustadt, ca. 1978
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...20060512153413
http://www.stadtundland.de/33_Museumswohnung.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJVj6gbGuI4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VRQc...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhpYenD6Po0
Frankfurt ab der Oder 1978.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnylA...eature=related

The note with it simply said, "thank you cold warriors for ending this"

in the GDR at least the roads were swept

Playground in USA?

hope for you this ending so fast as possible

[Guardian 5]

konfetti - Your spirited defense of the DDR is to be commended.

While I think it would be inappropriate for me to be drawn into debating the relative merits of living in the United States of America versus a socialist rump state that ceased to exist over 20 years ago, I will say this; If an American citizen living in one of the many the depressed areas you so amply illustrated in your last posting finds the means to move from that area to a more prosperous one, he or she is free to do so. It happens all the time. It happened to me. The citizens of the DDR didn't have that choice. When they tried to leave, they were liable to be shot. In fact, 957 of them were killed for the 'crime' of trying to live a better life somewhere else.

No country in what was then termed the 'free world' ever had to build a wall to keep it citizens from leaving. One of the greatest problems bedeviling the U.S.A. these days is illegal immigration. There are so many people trying to get into our country that we don't know what to do with them all. Other countries in the West are feeling similar pressures. When someone asked author Salman Rushdie what book he favored most, he replied simply, "My passport."

My point in posting the link from my old buddy Bill was just to remind people to remember the regime behind the fancy uniforms we love so well. The first DDR uniforms I ever laid eyes back in 1987 were being worn by members of the NVA's 11 Company, III Battalion, 3rd Border Regiment ("Florian Geyer"). Their role in time of war was to guide the lead elements of the Soviet 39th Guards Motor Rifle Division into my NATO defensive position in Hesse. Thus, it would have fell to me to try and kill as many of them as possible before I myself was overrun or nuked.

I thank my Maker everyday that that eventuality never came to pass. These days I take great delight in corresponding with NVA veterans on the WAF. But make no mistake; 21 years ago or so we were lined up eyeball to eyeball and if the orders ever came we would have tried our best to take the other guy out. Nothing personal mind, it's just the way it was.

As Kevin (ehrentitle) correctly stated above, NATO didn't liberate the DDR or Eastern Europe. But by maintaining eternal vigilance, and by making the other guy bankrupt himself on tanks and guns he couldn't afford, we set the conditions so that when the citizens rose up and said, "we've had enough", they were able to ultimately partake in the true peace and prosperity accomplished by the German people in the years following "Stunde Nil".

The WAF is remarkably free of political diatribes (with the possible exception of Genosse Viktor's tongue in cheek screeds) and it needs to stay that way. I do think however, that every once in a while its important to note that many forum members first saw the DDR through the lense of a TOW night sight or a similar contrivance. For me and others, animosities nourished over many years of Cold War service are only now starting to dissipate.

It was real; we lived it.

All the best - TJ

[grenzflieger]

konfetti - Your spirited defense of the DDR is to be commended.

While I think it would be inappropriate for me to be drawn into debating the relative merits of living in the United States of America versus a socialist rump state that ceased to exist over 20 years ago, I will say this; If an American citizen living in one of the many the depressed areas you so amply illustrated in your last posting finds the means to move from that area to a more prosperous one, he or she is free to do so. It happens all the time. It happened to me.

I agree that WAF should be free of political debate. Especially because the societies in which we live in a hard to compare. But because the topic 'social-economical Inequality' was a mayor topic of my study I would like to say to Konfetti that Belgium proves by it's Gini coefficient of 25 that a free market economy can achieve more equalty than the DDR (Gini coefficient 35 in 1982). That's quite interesting. In other words: yes, people in Belgium that live in a depressed area can move to other areas. In some coutries, like mine, that chance is proven to be a little smaller.

[konfetti]

I agree that WAF should be free of political debate. Especially because the societies in which we live in a hard to compare.

yes, but it is historically not correctly to say the GDR citizen lived in the Mud
every day. The photos are to subordinate that.
I have leave the east German territory in 1994.