how well can you remember the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989?

[Zebra]

can you at all?

i can remember those days very well

 

[Zebra]

those were good times

 

[westwall]

can you at all?

i can remember those days very well

Hell, I was there.

 

[Zebra]

Hell, I was there.

nomen est omen!

hence your name?

 

[Zebra]

what did you see there and then?

 

[westwall]

nomen est omen!

hence your name?

Nope. My name is based on a different set of reasons. Most of my time in Germany was spent around Stuttgart at that time.

 

[westwall]

what did you see there and then?

Other than the constant celebration not much on the western side.

I traveled to Berlin so I could see the eastern side and I remember how utterly drab and lifeless the place seemed.

First time I drove a Trabant. What a piece of crap!

 

[DudleySmith]

I remember being puzzled by west German responses to re-assimilating east Germany and the negative views of it; don't know which factions were unhappy but it seemed like plenty were negative and complained for years afterward.

 

[evenflow1969]

I was in Cleveland for a bowling tournament. Had a few in me. News went back and forth from people tearing down pieces of the wall to tanks in Moscow.

 

[westwall]

I remember being puzzled by west German responses to re-assimilating east Germany and the negative views of it; don't know which factions were unhappy but it seemed like plenty were negative and complained for years afterward.

West Germany took an enormous economic hit when they took the east back over. That and the eastern Germans didn't like to work hard as a group.

Of course there were exceptions, but the effects of 50 years of socialism had had a terrible effect on the German people.

 

[JGalt]

I remember it very well, the image of President Reagan smashing that wall with a big stick are forever etched in my mind.

It took him two days to knock the whole thing down. I bet his massive muscular arms were tired.

 

[DudleySmith]

West Germany took an enormous economic hit when they took the east back over. That and the eastern Germans didn't like to work hard as a group.

Of course there were exceptions, but the effects of 50 years of socialism had had a terrible effect on the German people.

I guessed it was related to having to absorb a hollowed out shell of a region, and probably the cheap labor dumped on the economy, but expected a lot less negativity over it than here was, or least what the press was making it out to be at the time.

 

[DudleySmith]

I remember it very well, the image of President Reagan smashing that wall with a big stick are forever etched in my mind.

It took him two days to knock the whole thing down. I bet his massive muscular arms were tired.

View attachment 943168

Japan's best President ever. I wish the U.S. would have had a good one then.

 

[Zebra]

I remember being puzzled by west German responses to re-assimilating east Germany and the negative views of it; don't know which factions were unhappy but it seemed like plenty were negative and complained for years afterward.

the Greens were especially opposed to it then.

they argued that Germany was a very bad and guilty country and did not deserve such luck

 

[Zebra]

Japan's best President ever. I wish the U.S. would have had a good one then.

why Japan?

 

[CrusaderFrank]

nomen est omen!

hence your name?

That sounds good!!

 

[DudleySmith]

why Japan?

Reagan handed them several industries on a silver platter; big fan of off-shoring and corporate welfare and protecting white collar criminals, while selling guns to terrorists and running a drug smuggling ring that dumped massive amounts of dope on American streets. Promoted flooding the country with wetbacks and open borders.

 

[Bleipriester]

After the fall of the wall, the Kohl-Regime began to take the citizens´s jobs away and to replace them with foreign criminals.. To do the bidding of western german companies, eastern companies were simply liquidated, the jobs terminated. Remember those were state owned companies that were thrown away by the state.

 

[JGalt]

After the fall of the wall, the Kohl-Regime began to take the citizens´s jobs away and to replace them with foreign criminals.. To do the bidding of western german companies, eastern companies were simply liquidated, the jobs terminated. Remember those were state owned companies that were thrown away by the state.

Weird. The same thing happened here after Biden tore down our southern border wall.

Maybe I should rethink that Berlin Wall.

 

[DGS49]

The most noteworthy thing about it is that NOBODY expected it to happen, ever. We were under the impression that the USSR was a permanent thing on the world's landscape despite its living under a host of illusions.

I have visited countries that were formerly in the Soviet bloc, and their citizens were even more convinced that the USSR would last for at least their entire lifetimes. When the USSR fell, it took them years to simply believe that it had happened.

And West Germany surprised everyone when they agreed to accept the currency of East Germany on a Mark-for-Mark basis, despite the fact that West German Marks where much more valuable in the world market.

Thanks to Comrade Putin, the current generation of Europeans are starting to get a flavor of how awful the USSR was, and the threat that it represented to its neighbor countries (i.e., NATO)