Word: berlin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...lurch left, coming under a Communist regime or, more likely, splitting apart into warring fiefs, the U.S. would be confronted by a teeming enemy (pop. 75 million) along its 2,000-mile, currently undefended border. The U.S. would have to divert troops now faced off against the Soviets from Berlin to the Persian Gulf to the western Pacific. The Soviets, of course, would like nothing better than to have the U.S. saddled with the Western Hemisphere equivalent of the U.S.S.R.'s own hostile neighbor, China. Refugees by the hundreds of thousands would pour over U.S. borders, competing with Americans...
Such a show of independence from Moscow is surprising in an East bloc nation known for marching in lockstep with the Kremlin. But while Honecker has eased travel restrictions he has added a new extension to the Berlin Wall just behind the Brandenburg Gate, as if to indicate that there are clear limits on how far the new togetherness can go. TIME Senior Correspondent Frederick Ungeheuer spent two weeks crisscrossing East Germany in an effort to understand the ambivalence of a country striving to be both Communist and German. His report...
Nearly four decades after the end of World War II, East Berlin still seems to be digging out from the rubble left by Allied bombardments and the advancing Red Army. The old German Cathedral, a stone's throw from Checkpoint Charlie and West Berlin, stands charred and roofless, awaiting renovation. On the once famous Unter den Linden promenade, the German State Library shows the pockmarks of bullets and shrapnel. But the war and subsequent dismemberment of the country have also left deep psychological wounds that have fostered the growing sense of unease in East Germany about the present stalemate...
Fear of an explosion of discontent may have persuaded Honecker to open the gates a little. "A few months ago, you could have cut the mood here with a knife," says a Western diplomat in East Berlin. "The whole thing smacks of crisis management." But the exodus also enhances Honecker's image across the border as a more benign, if not exactly popular, patriarch who is willing to take risks for the sake of detente. Explains a West German official: "Honecker knows the road to other West European capitals goes through Bonn...
...East Germans prefer to stay behind. Applying for permission to emigrate can lead to immediate dismissal from work, without compensation. Many also know from West German TV that finding a job on the other side, where the unemployment rate is 9.6%, is not easy. The pastor of an East Berlin church pleaded with his congregation to stay, arguing that "anyone who cannot be a Christian here will not be able to be one somewhere else." Many members of the East German artistic community fear that leaving would only be a step back for them and prefer to stay...