1987: "Tear down this wall!" Twenty years ago, President Reagan challenged the Soviet Union to end its domination of Eastern Europe and bring an end to the Cold War.

The gymnasium of my Massachusetts high school in the 1950s was sunk below ground level, and the building had a sign--a circle with three yellow and three black triangles. That marked it as the shelter we were to go to in case of an atom bomb attack by the Soviet Union (or "Russia," as we always called it), whose Communist rulers seemed bent on global confrontation with the United States.

Both countries spent untold sums on colossal stockpiles of nuclear weapons over a 40-year period that began in the late 1940s. Historians call it the "Cold War" because it never turned hot. If it ever had, leaders of both countries knew that millions could have perished in a nuclear holocaust.

It was a long, nerve-wracking standoff. But on June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan went to the Berlin Wall--the most potent symbol of the Cold War--and challenged his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, to change every thing. And within a few years, it had.

Berlin had been a flashpoint since the end of World War II in 1945, when Soviet and American armies met in Germany after destroying the war machine Adolf Hitler used to build the Third Reich and take over most of Europe.

FOCUS ON BERLIN

Berlin, along with the rest of eastern Germany, was behind Soviet lines when the fighting stopped in May. But the Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, had agreed to give occupation rights in the western part of Berlin to his wartime allies, the United States and Britain. (France got its sector a bit later.)

Wartime solidarity quickly cooled, however, as the Soviets installed Communist regimes in most of the Eastern European nations it occupied at the end of the war. President Harry S. Truman concluded that without help from the U.S., Western Europe would collapse economically and fall into Communist hands. The U.S. responded with a massive aid program known as the Marshall Plan to jump-start the economies of Western Europe and help them rebuild (see timeline, p. 22-23).

In 1949, after Stalin tried to starve the Allies out of West Berlin with a blockade, the U.S., Canada, and the Western Europeans formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), whose members resolved that a Soviet attack on one of them would be considered an attack on all.

Moscow responded by creating the Warsaw Pact, an organization of Eastern European states. East and West Germany became separate countries, with West Berlin an island of freedom 110 miles inside the Communist German Democratic Republic.

West Germany became a successful democracy and a member of NATO. Its prosperity and freedom attracted hundreds of thousands of people escaping from the hardships created by the Communist state-controlled economy in East Germany.

THE WALL RISES

To halt the hemorrhaging, on Aug. 13, 1961, the Soviets and the East Germans began building an insurmountable concrete wall that slashed through the city. East German guards were ordered to shoot anyone trying to flee over the Wall: 250 people were killed in escape attempts in the next three decades.

The Wall divided Berlin, literally and figuratively, running through buildings and separating families, with people climbing street lamps to wave and show off newborn babies to relatives on the other side.

The division extended underground: East Berliners couldn't ride the subway into the West; West Berliners still rode lines that ran through the East, but they needed passports to get off there.

Over the years, the western side of the Wall became a raucous tribute to free speech, with all kinds of graffiti. On the eastern side, buildings were torn down to create an open area with guard towers from which soldiers would shoot anyone who ventured into the "death strip."

GORBACHEV

When a new, younger leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, came to power in the Soviet Union in 1985, Western European leaders thought he might be a man they could do business with. But President Reagan, a former actor and conservative Republican who initiated a buildup of U.S. forces a decade after the demoralizing defeat in Vietnam, wasn't so sure.

So on that June day in 1987 when he went to the Brandenburg Gate, the symbolic heart of divided Berlin, Reagan issued a dramatic challenge 100 yards from the Wall.

"Secretary General Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you see prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: come here, to this gate," he said. "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

"Nobody expected that would happen," said John Kornblum, who was present as the senior American diplomat in Berlin at the time. "The idea," he said recently, "was to demonstrate that the United States was a dynamic power in the center of Europe, and to combat the notion that Reagan wanted to use our military power in Europe to defeat the Soviet Union."

Gorbachev knew that the Soviet Union's economic and political foundations were crumbling, and that military strength alone could not preserve its power.

The first breach of the Iron Curtain--as Winston Churchill first called it in 1946--came two years after Reagan's visit. Some of the Soviet "satellite" nations had been gradually opening up their political and economic systems in the 1980s. When Hungary opened its border with Austria in August 1989, thousands of East Germans (who were allowed to travel to other Soviet satellites) headed to Hungary as a way to escape to the West. Demonstrations against the government soon broke out all over East Germany, with a million people gathering in East Berlin on November 1 to demand freedom.

Gorbachev made it clear that Soviet troops in East Germany would not intervene. A week later, East Germany began opening checkpoints at the Wall and allowing East Germans to cross. Jubilant West Germans met them on the other side. Disbelief soon gave way to euphoria; people danced on the Wall, while others took turns swinging sledgehammers to bring it down.

A year later, East and West Germany were reunited and the Cold War was officially over. And at the end of 1991, the Soviet Union itself fell apart, swept away by a tidal wave of change; Russian patriots blamed Gorbachev for its demise, though he remains a respected figure in the West.

With Russia and several other former Soviet states struggling with political change and no longer a military threat, the U.S. was suddenly the world's only superpower. Many Americans hoped for a new era of global peace and prosperity.

Indeed, many positive developments followed in the next 15 years. The Communist states of Eastern Europe became democracies and joined the European Union and NATO, which began feeling its way into a new role as a peacekeeping organization. China turned from economic Communism to capitalism and became one of America's biggest trading partners (although its authoritarian government still severely restricts personal and political freedoms).

But all the ethnic and nationalistic antagonisms that had been suppressed during the Cold War began boiling up in the 1990s both in Europe, where Yugoslavia violently imploded, and in the Middle East.

Some had serious consequences for the U.S. For example, arms and money supplied by Washington to Muslim militias fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan ended up fueling the rise of Islamic terrorist groups.

CHALLENGES AHEAD

Today, any danger of nuclear attack that the U.S. and its allies face is probably not from Russia or China, but from terrorists or rogue nations like North Korea who might get hold of nuclear or biological weapons.

The challenge for the United States in the 21st century is to build international organizations that discourage violence and encourage countries to find ways to peacefully solve their problems--as it succeeded in doing in Europe in the 20th century. O

COLD WAR

Timeline

1947

MARSHALL PLAN

With Europe in ruins after World War II and the U.S. worried about Soviet expansion, Washington launches a massive economic recovery program. Named for Secretary of State George Marshall, the plan provides billions in aid, jump-starting Western Europe's economies.

1948-49

BERLIN AIRLIFT 

In June 1948, the Soviet Union blockades West Berlin, the only part of eastern Germany under Allied, not Soviet, control. President Truman begins a daily airlift of food and supplies to keep the city from starving. The Soviets lift the blockade in May 1949.

1950-53

KOREAN WAR 

Communist North Korea invades South Korea in Juno 1950. With U.N. forces, principally from the U.S., backing South Korea, and Communist China fighting alongside the North, the war lasts three years and ends in a stalemate.

1956

UPRISING IN HUNGARY

Student demonstrations against Hungary's Soviet-imposed Communist government lead to a full-scale revolt. After less than two weeks, Soviet troops invade Budapest, kilting thousands of civilians and crushing the uprising. The U.S. decides not to intervene.

1957

SPUTNIK 

The soviets launch the first space satellite into orbit, catching the U.S. off guard and beginning the space race. The U.S. ultimately moves ahead, landing the first men on the moon in July 1969.

1961

BERLIN WALL BUILT

1962

The Soviets deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba, in striking range of Florida. President John F. Kennedy responds with a naval blockade of Cuba and the two sides are at the brink of nuclear war. After a 13-day standoff, the Soviets remove the missiles.

1960S-1975

VIETNAM WAR 

In 1965, the U.S. sends combat troops to aid South Vietnam in its war against Communist North Vietnam, which is supported by the Soviets and the Chinese. By the time U.S. troops Leave in 1973, 58,000 Americans have died. The war ends in 1975 when Communist forces overrun the south.

1968

PRAGUE SPRING

Leaders of Czechoslovakia's Communist Party attempt to institute reforms, including Loosening control over the media and introducing multiparty democracy. Soviet troops invade and the reforms are halted.

1979

AFGHAN INVASION

Soviet troops invade Afghanistan in support of the Marxist government, which is battling Islamic insurgents known as mujahedeen. With help from the U.S., Pakistan, and others, the mujahedeen wage a 10-year war against the Soviets, who withdraw in 1989.

1985

GORBACHEV'S RISE

Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Leader of the Soviet Union. Grasping his nation's dire situation, he institutes capitalist reforms known as perestroika, and a Limited expansion of political freedom known as glasnost. He lets the Berlin Watt come down in 1989, and Germany reunify in 1990.

1989

BERLIN WALL FALLS

1991

FALL OF THE SOVIET UNION

After popular uprisings sweep away Communist regimes in much of Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union formally disbands and Gorbachev gives up power to Boris Yeltsin, the democratically elected President of Russia.

LESSON PLAN 4: WORLD HISTORY

1987: "TEAR DOWN THIS WALL"

BACKGROUND

For nearly 50 years, the Soviet Union and its allies and the U.S. and its allies were locked in an ideological and military conflict called the Cold War. The tension began after World War II, when the Soviet Union forcibly installed Communist regimes in the countries of Eastern Europe.

CRITICAL THINKING 1

* Remind students that Berlin was 110 miles behind Soviet Lines. Ask them to suggest reasons why they think Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin might have conceded control of West Berlin to the Americans, British, and French.

* (The four were still officially allies and the West had helped win the war, so he might not have wanted to create a conflict at that point. In addition, Communism was gaining popularity in West Germany, France, and Italy. He might have believed Western Europe would become Communist on its own.)

CRITICAL THINKING 2

* Tell students that in February 1945, the allies met in Yalta in the Soviet Union and agreed to spheres of influence in post-War Europe.

* Might the sharing of power in Germany, and especially in Berlin, have led to inevitable conflict between such very different political systems?

DISCUSSION QUESTION

* President Reagan is often credited with bringing the Cold War to and end. Can one man or a single speech make that much of a difference?

WRITING PROMPT

* Tell students to assume they were young guards at the wall. Have them write entries in their diaries. What feelings must have raced through the minds of guards whose job it was to shoot their fleeing countrymen?

FAST FACT

* In addition to the 250 people who died trying to escape at the wall, another 650 died while trying to escape East Germany from other places.

WEB WATCH

www.dailysoft.com /berlinwall Comprehensive background on the wall. Go to "Timeline," left screen.

QUIZ 3 > WORLD HISTORY

1987: "TEAR DOWN THIS WALL" > Pages 22-25

1. Briefly explain what the "Cold War" and "Iron Curtain" were. --

2. The World War II alliance between the Soviet Union and Western democracies cooled after

a. the U.S. expanded work on nuclear weapons.

b. Soviet citizens began fleeing to the West.

c Western European economies began to outperform Eastern European economies.

d the Soviets set up Communist regimes in Eastern European countries.

3. The U.S. program to revive the economies of Western Europe is known as the

a Eisenhower Plan.

b Marshall Plan.

c Truman Plan.

d General George S. Patton Plan.

4. In 1949, after the Soviet Union blockaded West Berlin, the U.S., Canada, and the countries of Western Europe formed a military alliance called the --.

a North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

b Western Atlantic Military Organization.

c Joint Organization for Common Security.

d Atlantic Alliance.

5. In 1979, in an attempt to support a Marxist government that was battling Islamic insurgents, the Soviet Union invaded

a Hungary.

b Czechoslovakia.

c Afghanistan.

d Mongolia.

6. Briefly describe what the Berlin Airlift was and what it achieved. --

IN-DEPTH QUESTIONS

1. Do you think President Reagan hastened the fall of the Berlin Watt and the collapse of Communism? Why or why not?

2. How would you describe the link between the Cold War and the current ethnic and religious conflicts afflicting the world, including the rise of Al Qaeda? Why do you think Cold War tensions helped suppress these conflicts?

ANSWERS KEY

1. A 50-year period of armed tensions between the Soviet Union and the West; the dividing line between Soviet control and the West. [Similar wording is acceptable.]

2. [d] the Soviets set up Communist governments in Eastern European countries.

3. [b] Marshall Plan.

4 [a] North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

5. [c] Afghanistan.

6. During the Soviet blockade of West Berlin, the U.S. flew in supplies for months; the airlift kept West Berlin out of Soviet control [Similar wording is acceptable.]

GAME SHOW

Use with articles identified.

The statements are answers to questions (modeled after the TV show Jeopardy). Students must answer in the form of questions.

Divide the class into teams.

Read the statements.

Call on the first team with a hand raised.

Correct answer = 10 points

Wrong answer = -10 points

[And another team may respond for the same chance to gain or lose 10 points.)

STATEMENTS TO READ                         CORRECT RESPONSE

1987: "TEAR DOWN THIS WALL"

6. Soviet leader during World War II.     Who was Joseph Stalin?
7. Last leader of the Soviet Union.       Who was Mikhai Gorbachev?
8. Western military alliance opposing     What is NATO?
   Soviets.
9. In 1956, Soviets crushed an uprising   What is Hungary?
   here.
10. Where the Soviets placed missiles     What is Cuba?
   in 1962.

Craig R. Whitney is an assistant managing editor and former European diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times.