Word: germanism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Places for people to sleep are more important than safe havens for the transcripts of parliamentary speeches in Uganda. Certainly they are more important than storage for the German and Swahili translations of those records...
...creation of two Germanys in 1949 and the decision by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer a few years later to tether West Germany to the Atlantic Alliance. For the Soviet Union, which subjugated East Germany as a satellite and buffer, this meant that any war with the West would occur on German rather than Russian soil. For the other Europeans, it meant a respite from the problem of German militarism. For the U.S., it made possible the creation of a strong NATO alliance to lead the struggle for containing the Soviets...
Enshrined in the constitution that established West Germany was the goal of reunification, but even conservative leaders there were privately saying as recently as six months ago that this was a theoretical aim, not an immediate one. In January East German leader Erich Honecker said he could envision the 100-mile barbed barrier around West Berlin that was the grotesque symbol of ) Germany's division remaining in place for another century. Few would have challenged that prediction...
...soon concrete -- many frantically sought routes of escape. The Berlin Wall was meant to halt a tide of migrants to the West that had left East Germany short of workers and threatened the stability of the Communist regime: more than 2.7 million had departed since the founding of the German Democratic Republic in 1949, 30,000 in July 1961 alone...
...most publicized instances, 18-year-old Peter Fechter, an East Berlin bricklayer, was cut down by machine-gun fire as he tried to scale the Wall and, in plain view of Western policemen and reporters, was left lying for an hour while he bled to death; finally East German border guards retrieved his body. Fechter was one of an estimated 75 who have been killed over the past 28 years while trying to escape across the barrier...