Fall of the Wall: 20 Years Later

Helle Dale / September 29, 2009

The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which culmitated a series of events in the summer and fall of 1989, allows us to begin looking through the lens of history. Important lessons are to be learned from the “year of miracles,” as Czech play-write and dissident Vaclav Havel called it, lessons about American leadership and lessons about the importance of engaging in the war of ideas with enemies of ffreddom and democracy.

The world has changed so dramatically since 1989, but many of us will never forget those spine chilling moments when demonstrations throughout Central and Eastern Europe started to challenge the power of the communist puppet regimes. The images of East Germans breaking down the Berlin Wall and pouring into freedom through the gashes will never fade away. But a new generation has come of age that has not known a world divided by the Iron Curtain or by that grim, grey, barbed-wired structure that separated the two Berlins.

The Berlin Wall now exists only as museum pieces and desk top ornaments. (more…)