James Mann - The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan

On June 9, 1987, an American diplomat paid a visit to the spacious embassy of the Soviet Union along Unter den Linden in East Berlin, a few hundred yards from the Brandenburg Gate. He asked for Soviet cooperation in making sure that Reagan’s trip went smoothly. According to Egon Krenz, the Politburo member then in charge of security for East Germany’s Communist regime, this American official gave the Soviets all the detailed logistics for the American president’s movements in West Berlin: Reagan would travel from Schloss Bellevue to the Reichstag, he would step out on the balcony of the Reichstag, and he would give a speech before the Brandenburg Gate that would be twenty minutes long. On the day before Reagan’s arrival, the entire Tiergarten section of West Berlin near the site of the speech would be closed, while U.S. and West German security officials scoured the area, up close to the Berlin Wall, to look for weapons or explosives. During the event at the Reichstag and during Reagan’s speech at the Brandenburg Gate, sharpshooters would be positioned on the roof of the Reichstag, armed with submachine guns, scanning the full 360-degree perimeter. U.S. officials also informed the Soviet embassy that loudspeakers would be used to amplify Reagan’s speech at the Brandenburg Gate. It was possible, they said, that the speech might be audible on the East German side of the Wall. 9

Soviets officials passed along these details to Krenz, ordering East German security officials to make sure there would be no problems during Reagan’s visit. Krenz thought it was revealing that the United States had gone to the Soviet Union for help. It was just another sign that the Soviets were still in charge of East Berlin, just as the Americans, British, and French were the ultimate authorities in West Berlin. 10

For East German officials, the meeting between the Americans and the Soviets raised another set of anxieties. Their regime, the German Democratic Republic, had no popular legitimacy; it depended on Soviet support and Soviet troops. What would happen if the Soviet Union altered course? That prospect no longer seemed so far-fetched. Gorbachev was not only easing controls on dissent at home, but he was also seeking to transform the Soviet Union’s relationship with the West. He was even making changes in the Warsaw Pact, the military alliance on which East Germany depended for its security. Was it possible that the two superpowers could work out some deal, some accommodation, that would undermine the East German government of Erich Honecker?

Curiously, the conclusions Krenz reached in East Berlin ran parallel to some of the views of Germans on the other side of the Berlin Wall. Diepgen, West Berlin’s mayor, was also extremely mistrustful of the two superpowers; he, too, feared that the United States and the Soviet Union might be working together, even conspiring, against the Germans.

Diepgen had been frustrated in his attempts to take part in ceremonies in East Berlin and to have Honecker cross through the wall to an event in the Western part of the city to commemorate the 750th birthday of the city of Berlin. The Reagan administration had made plain its opposition to Diepgen’s going to East Berlin, and the Soviet Union rejected the idea of Honecker’s going to West Berlin. “I have no proof, but it seemed as though the Russians and the United States didn’t want this,” reflected Diepgen two decades later. 11Many others in West Germany had similar views. After Honecker had formally rejected Diepgen’s invitation for an exchange of visits, the U.S. mission in West Berlin cabled Washington: “It seems likely to us that this episode will strengthen the belief of many here… that it is powerful foreigners, and not Germans, East or West, who call the shots on German soil.” 12

Diepgen and Krenz had different goals and interests. As West Berlin’s mayor, Diepgen was seeking a reconciliation with the East Germans that could somehow overcome the divisions of the Berlin Wall. In the East, Krenz was attempting merely to preserve the tight control of the East German government on its own side of the wall. West German officials were hoping that Gorbachev represented the beginning of fundamental changes in Moscow. The East German leadership was hoping for the reverse, that Gorbachev would preserve the status quo.

Nevertheless, in their shared mistrust of collaboration between Washington and Moscow, both Diepgen and Krenz were reflecting a point of view, a submerged German nationalism, that was common in the mid- to late-1980s. Ronald Reagan viewed the Cold War as an economic and ideological conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. Yet in Berlin, there were quite a few Germans who saw the Cold War also as a struggle against a world dominated by the two superpowers.

None of these leaders, whether in the West or in the East, anticipated what would happen in the streets of Berlin during the week before Ronald Reagan’s arrival. Suddenly, politicians on both sides were presented by the uncomforting reality that pop culture operates with its own dynamics, its own diplomacy.

It was early June, the time of year when Berlin begins a run of glorious cool summer weather. On the evening of Saturday, June 6, 1987, tens of thousands of young residents of West Berlin thronged outside the Reichstag building, about two hundred yards from the Berlin Wall, to hear the first of three nights of open-air rock concerts with star British performers. The headliner for the first night was David Bowie; he was to be followed on Sunday night by the Eurythmics (“Sweet Dreams Are Made of This”) and on Monday by Phil Collins and Genesis. RIAS (Radio in the American Sector), the West Berlin radio station started under the American occupation, had been promoting the Reichstag rock concerts for weeks, and these radio broadcasts could be heard in East Berlin. On the night of the first concert, the loudspeakers were turned toward the Berlin Wall, so that Bowie and his guitar could be heard on the other side.

In East Berlin, at least a thousand young people gathered near the Friedrichstrasse train station hoping to catch the sounds. About two hundred East German police appeared, put up a big metal fence blocking anyone from getting too close to the Berlin Wall, and told the crowds to go home. Shortly after midnight, the East German youths began throwing bottles and stones at the police.

On the second night, about three thousand East Germans gathered again on their side of the Berlin Wall to catch the sounds of the Eurythmics concert. Again, East German police put up a temporary metal fence to keep them away. This time, some of the East German youths tore through the fence and began skirmishing with the police. They began shouting slogans: “Down with the wall” and “The wall must go.” Police chased them down Unter Den Linden, East Berlin’s main boulevard, which ran down to the Brandenburg Gate and, behind it, the wall.

On the final night, the violence escalated. About a thousand East German police with batons charged into a crowd of about four thousand East Germans who had gathered to hear the Genesis concert. Some protesters were beaten, dragged away, and put into police vans. By the third night, the East German protesters had a new series of songs and rallying cries. Some of them were singing “The Internationale,” the Socialist anthem. Others chanted, “We want freedom.” Still others gave voice to the most surprising and novel slogan of all: The young East Germans shouted, “Gorbachev! Gorbachev!” 13

The demonstrations did not spread. They were not comparable to the massive uprising by workers that had threatened the East German regime in 1953. Yet there had been no unrest of any kind in East Germany for more than a decade. Witnesses said some of the youths at the rock concert seemed to be merely intoxicated. Nevertheless, the three nights of skirmishes over the rock concert demonstrated again the continuing, underlying discontent among ordinary East Germans with the Berlin Wall and with their own government. West German political leaders might be prepared to accept, for pragmatic reasons, the presence of the wall as an enduring if unpleasant fact of life in the city. Many East Germans were not.