Some nice pieces being written about the unique symbol of the Cold War.

This caught my eye:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/13/op...l.html?_r=1&hp

It was fifty years ago that the communist led DDR physically divided up Berlin. Merkel and Co have held their somber minded remembrance activities in the capital today.

I can also recommend these books for further reading:

"The Berlin Wall" - Frederick Taylor ISBN 978-0-7475-8554-1

"The Cold War" - John Lewis Gaddis ISBN: 0-713-99912-8

I guess that no one spent a moment thinking about all those spies that became unemployed when the Wall came tumbling down? You don't get movies like the "Ipcress File" made any more.

The article you linked mentions the Tiananmen massacare:

"I recall a meeting with my friend the East German author Heiner Müller in June 1989 in the Paris Bar, in West Berlin. I explained how much the East German government’s commentary about the Tiananmen Square massacre upset me. The East German news media was constantly going on about the “bandits” who had killed allegedly unarmed Chinese soldiers. If anyone had the authority, I said, to raise his voice against what was obviously a preparation for a similar “solution” for the East German pro-democracy movement, it was he. To my amazement, Mr. Müller, who was always ready with a joke, replied: “I believe that you don’t realize how many Taiwanese” — that is, anti-Beijing interlopers — “were present in Tiananmen.” I tossed my glass of red wine on his shirt."

Very similar things are happening today (in Syria, for example), and are explained away by dictators exactly the same. spome things don't change so quickly. plenty of jobs for spies still.

I used to work with a girl from Westberlin and one from the (former) DDR. The two of them had a lot of things in common (like food, tv, songs). Much more than I had with the Berlin girl even though we're both from "the West". It seemed to me as if the Berlin Wall was less solid than it looked - DDR goodies and culture were entering Westberlin through it.

Aw...I miss my DDR buddies. Summers in Banzin, kartoffel salat and Quark kueche. Those funny tiny soda drinks in miniature dark brown glass bottles. I remember being ten and holding whole 5 commie Deutsch Mark! I felt so rich.

I had more in common with a Dresden friend than a friend from West Berlin, but country and Berlin were different. The commie uniforms were similar, the Russian songs we sang. I think we shot more.

I remember my West Berlin friend telling me how cooped up they used to feel, how every one flew out frequently. It was lovely to live in Berlin early nineties.

Ah yes - it's all fun and games until someone is tortured & jailed.

If memory serves - it was East germans that fled west and not the other way round.

wow, unbelievable that this happened 50 years ago and when one walks around Berlin or goes to those leftover wall bits,
or the Charlie Checkpoint, one gets the feeling it all happened just a while ago.
never ceases to amaze me how mad people can be.

I worked with sales reps who were in East Berlin when the wall finally came down. They came back to the office and told us of the excitement, hope and the taste of freedom that buzzed through the air that fateful night. Berlin had finally come together as one city. We listened with tears of joy in our eyes. I still get a bit emotional when I think back to that November in 1989, especially since I had daily contact with coworkers from Budapest, Berlin, Prague and Warsaw. Their excitement for what was to come was contagious.

Your statement could have been from an East German Trade Union pamphlet decrying the loss of "useful masonry and building jobs" when the wall was taken down. Well, I guess it's just another way of looking at it.

The NYT link is well written because it does seem that everyone has moved on from Cold War events and takes today's democracy as a given. It was only 20 years ago that the borders came down. When the Soviets finally withdrew their forces from Germany by 1994, the fact was clear that there wasn't this equal force behind the Iron Curtain, there was little motivation to maintain forces in the East Bloc countries, but no effort was spared to maintain a prescence in history's biggest and most expensive military pissing contest. Ridiculous really and maybe when all the West's secrets are revealed in a few decades, we'll know the real truth. History is written by the victors; in a stalemate, everyone has their angle on the "truth".

To the OP: thanks for the recommendations, I can't wait to read those books

Actually, the Soviet forces stayed longer also due to the fact the grounds of their former army camps were totally vandalized, there were dozens of those places and all become unusable biodomes, the fauna and flora destroyed and it was pretty much no man's land, with toxic risks to population. Castles (now UNESCO sites) that they took as they barracks were destroyed. One castle's room after they destroyed the toilets, the soldiers shat for 40 years into a whole that was made into the ceiling of room bellow. The earth was soaked up with petrol and chemical warfare waste, or dumped into rivers. This headquarters was completely devastated, and ended up with the toilet room, and garbage, human waste and dead animals filled place, with no walls, etc. It took long to dismantle the main stuff of cold war, the electronic war part of it (iron curtain info is a portal explaining the radio war, written by a local army specialist, only in Czech), radars, transmitters, etc etc. which was more time consuming than just loading up tanks onto trains. This web deals with history of Soviet/CZ/DDR borders activities and mentions the calamity RA did in those russian army barracks, property and buildings they confiscated. See for images, you won't probably understand. That said, we pushed them out fast, it took shorter than in Germany, mabe coz we said we will supervise the clean up and damage management ourself, as long as they are out and don't do anymore horrific acts.