The Fall Of The Berlin Wall

Another Cold War Myth

By WILLIAM BLUM
Weekend Edition
October 2-4, 2009
Courtesy Of CounterPunch

Within a few weeks many of the Western media can be expected to turn on their propaganda machines to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, November 9, 1989. All the Cold War clichés about The Free World vs. Communist Tyranny will be trotted out and the simple tale of how the wall came to be will be repeated: In 1961, the East Berlin communists built a wall to keep their oppressed citizens from escaping to West Berlin and freedom. Why? Because commies don't like people to be free, to learn the "truth". What other reason could there have been?

First of all, before the wall went up thousands of East Germans had been commuting to the West for jobs each day and then returned to the East in the evening. So they were clearly not being held in the East against their will. The wall was built primarily for two reasons:

The West was bedeviling the East with a vigorous campaign of recruiting East German professionals and skilled workers, who had been educated at the expense of the Communist government. This eventually led to a serious labor and production crisis in the East. As one indication of this, the New York Times reported in 1963: "West Berlin suffered economically from the wall by the loss of about 60,000 skilled workmen who had commuted daily from their homes in East Berlin to their places of work in West Berlin." (New York Times, June 27, 1963, p.12)

During the 1950s, American coldwarriors in West Germany instituted a crude campaign of sabotage and subversion against East Germany designed to throw that country's economic and administrative machinery out of gear. The CIA and other US intelligence and military services recruited, equipped, trained and financed German activist groups and individuals, of West and East, to carry out actions which ran the spectrum from terrorism to juvenile delinquency; anything to make life difficult for the East German people and weaken their support of the government; anything to make the commies look bad.

It was a remarkable undertaking. The United States and its agents used explosives, arson, short circuiting, and other methods to damage power stations, shipyards, canals, docks, public buildings, gas stations, public transportation, bridges, etc; they derailed freight trains, seriously injuring workers; burned 12 cars of a freight train and destroyed air pressure hoses of others; used acids to damage vital factory machinery; put sand in the turbine of a factory, bringing it to a standstill; set fire to a tile-producing factory; promoted work slow-downs in factories; killed 7,000 cows of a co-operative dairy through poisoning; added soap to powdered milk destined for East German schools; were in possession, when arrested, of a large quantity of the poison cantharidin with which it was planned to produce poisoned cigarettes to kill leading East Germans; set off stink bombs to disrupt political meetings; attempted to disrupt the World Youth Festival in East Berlin by sending out forged invitations, false promises of free bed and board, false notices of cancellations, etc.; carried out attacks on participants with explosives, firebombs, and tire-puncturing equipment; forged and distributed large quantities of food ration cards to cause confusion, shortages and resentment; sent out forged tax notices and other government directives and documents to foster disorganization and inefficiency within industry and unions ... all this and much more. (See Killing Hope, p.400, note 8, for a list of sources for the details of the sabotage and subversion.)

Throughout the 1950s, the East Germans and the Soviet Union repeatedly lodged complaints with the Soviets' erstwhile allies in the West and with the United Nations about specific sabotage and espionage activities and called for the closure of the offices in West Germany they claimed were responsible, and for which they provided names and addresses. Their complaints fell on deaf ears. Inevitably, the East Germans began to tighten up entry into the country from the West.

Let's not forget that Eastern Europe became communist because Hitler, with the approval of the West, used it as a highway to reach the Soviet Union and wipe out Bolshevism forever. After the war, the Soviets were determined to close down the highway.

In 1999, USA Today reported: "When the Berlin Wall crumbled, East Germans imagined a life of freedom where consumer goods were abundant and hardships would fade. Ten years later, a remarkable 51% say they were happier with communism." (USA Today, October 11, 1999, p.1.)

About the same time a new Russian proverb was born: "Everything the Communists said about Communism was a lie, but everything they said about capitalism turned out to be the truth."

William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir.

He can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com

Revisionists Challenge D-Day Story

By Hugh Schofield
Paris
Page last updated at 15:23 GMT, Friday, 5 June 2009 16:23 UK
Courtesy Of BBC News

A revisionist theme seems to have settled on this year's 65th anniversary commemoration of the Normandy landings.

The tone was set in Antony's Beevor's new book, D-Day, which tries to debunk certain received ideas about the Allied campaign.

Far from being an unmitigated success, Mr Beevor found, the landings came very close to going horribly wrong.

And far from being universally welcomed as liberators, many troops had a distinctly surly reception from the people of Normandy.

The reason for this was simple. Many Normandy towns and villages had been literally obliterated by Allied bombing.

The bombardment of Caen, Mr Beevor said, could almost be considered a war-crime (though he later retracted the comment).

Many historians will retort that there is nothing new in Mr Beevor's account.

Harrowing Experience

After all, the scale of destruction is already well-established.

Some 20,000 French civilians were killed in the two-and-a-half months from D-Day, 3,000 of them during the actual landings.

In some areas - like the Falaise pocket where the Germans were pounded into oblivion at the end of the campaign - barely a building was left standing and soldiers had to walk over banks of human corpses.

The suffering of civilians was for many years masked by the over-riding image - that of the French welcoming the liberators with open arms Christophe Prime Historian

As for the destruction of Caen, it has long been admitted that it was militarily useless.

The Germans were stationed to the north of the city and were more or less untouched.

Twenty-five years ago, in his book Overlord, Max Hastings had already described it as "one of the most futile air attacks of the war."

Though these revisionist accounts were written elsewhere, it is in France that these ideas strike more of a chord today.

It is not as if the devastation wrought by the Allies is not known - it is just that it tends not to get talked about.

And yet for many families who lived through the war, it was the arrival and passage of British and American forces that was by far the most harrowing experience.

"It was profoundly traumatic for the people of Normandy," said Christophe Prime, a historian at the Peace Memorial in Caen.

"Think of the hundreds of tons of bombs destroying entire cities and wiping out families. But the suffering of civilians was for many years masked by the over-riding image - that of the French welcoming the liberators with open arms."

'Sullen' Welcome

According to Prime, it was during the 60th anniversary commemoration five years ago that the taboo first began to lift.

At town meetings across Normandy, witnesses - now on their 70s - spoke of the terrible things they had seen as children.

The destruction of Caen has been seen as militarily useless

At the same time an exhibition at the Caen memorial displayed letters from Allied servicemen speaking frankly about their poor reception by locals.

That too was an eye-opener for many Normandy people.

For example, Cpl LF Roker of the Highland Light Infantry is quoted in another new book about the civilian impact of the campaign, Liberation, The Bitter Road to Freedom, by William Hitchcock.

"It was rather a shock to find we were not welcomed ecstatically as liberators by the local people, as we were told we should be... They saw us as bringers of destruction and pain," Mr Roker wrote in his diary.

Another soldier, Ivor Astley of the 43rd Wessex Infantry, described the locals as "sullen and silent... If we expected a welcome, we certainly failed to find it."

Sexual Violence

In his book, Mr Hitchcock raises another issue that rarely features in euphoric folk-memories of liberation: Allied looting, and worse.

"The theft and looting of Normandy households and farmsteads by liberating soldiers began on June 6 and never stopped during the entire summer," he writes.

One woman - from the town of Colombieres - is quoted as saying that "the enthusiasm for the liberators is diminishing. They are looting... everything, and going into houses everywhere on the pretext of looking for Germans."

The evidence shows that sexual violence against women in liberated France was common Author William Hitchcock

Even more feared, of course, was the crime of rape - and here too the true picture has arguably been expunged from popular memory.

According to American historian J Robert Lilly, there were around 3,500 rapes by American servicemen in France between June 1944 and the end of the war.

"The evidence shows that sexual violence against women in liberated France was common," writes Mr Hitchcock.

"It also shows that black soldiers convicted of such awful acts received very severe punishments, while white soldiers received lighter sentences."

Of 29 soldiers executed for rape by the US military authorities, 25 were black - though African-Americans did not represent nearly so high a proportion of convictions.

Happy and Thankful

So why did the "bad" side of the Allied liberation tend to disappear from French popular consciousness?

The answer of course is that the overwhelming result of the Allied campaign was a positive one for the whole of France.

It was hard for the people of Normandy to spoil the national party by complaining of their lot.

The message from on-high was sympathetic but clear: we know you have suffered, but the price was worth it. Most people agreed and were silent.

In addition, open criticism of British and American bombings raids had long been a hallmark of French collaboration.

Some accounts have disputed the idea of a warm welcome for the Allies

In Paris - which, it is often forgotten, was itself bombed by the British - pro-German groups staged ceremonies to commemorate the victims, and the "crimes" of the Allies were excoriated in the press.

After the war, abusing the Allies would have seemed like siding with the defeated and the dishonoured.

Of course, in some communities the devastation was never forgotten.

There are villages in Normandy where until recently the 6 June celebrations were deliberately shunned, because the associations were too painful.

And on the ideological front, there have been intellectuals of both left and right who justified their anti-Americanism by recalling the grimmer aspects of the French campaign - like the "cowardly" way the Americans bombed from high altitude, or their reliance on heavy armour causing indiscriminate civilian casualties.

But in general, France has gone along with the accepted version of the landings and their aftermath - that of a joyful liberation for which the country is eternally grateful.

That version is the correct one. France was indeed freed from tyranny, and the French were both happy and thankful.

But it is still worth remembering that it all came at a cost.

Related Information:

BACKGROUND

Q&A: D-Day maps and analysis

The first war reporters

UK's last day as a superpower

Allied 'bandits' behind enemy lines

D-Day panoramas: Landing sites

Soldiers' stories: 'I was there'

BBC History: D-Day landings