GERMANY LURCHES TO THE RIGHT; SHOULD WE BE WORRIED?

Berlin was divided and since 1961 a wall had separated the east from the west in order to stop those in the German Democratic Republic, who didn't want to live in a 'communist paradise,' from escaping to the west.

- JOHN DOBSON

Thirty five years ago I witnessed something quite extraordinary. It was the 9th November 1989 and I had travelled to West Berlin for some talks with our German partners. Berlin was divided in those days and since 1961 a wall had separated the east from the west in order to stop those in the German Democratic Republic, who didn't want to live in a "communist paradise," from escaping to the west. Between the end of WWII and the building of the wall, some 3.5 million (20% of the population) had chosen to escape to the Federal Republic of Germany and you could understand why. On many visits to communist East Berlin I had witnessed drab and dreary lives led by its citizens, by comparison to those in the sparkling and wealthy West. In those days you could mount an observation stand on the western side of the wall (which was in fact two walls separated by what was known as the "death strip" - a wide area containing trenches, beds of nails, dogs and mines), and at night see the darkness and silence of the east, interrupted only by the squeals of tram wheels.

Soviet propaganda risibly portrayed the wall as an "anti-fascist" protection for its people, which fooled nobody. Along with the separate and much longer inner German border, which demarcated the border between East and West Germany during the Cold War, the wall came to symbolise the "Iron Curtain" that separated the Western Bloc and the Soviet satellite states of the Eastern Bloc.