Darrell Castle talks about the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and why it is still relevant today. Transcription / Notes MR. GORBACHEV, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. Today is Friday, November 15, 2019, and on today’s Report I will be talking about the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years ago this week, and why it is still relevant today. On November 9, 1989, thousands of East Germans imprisoned by the Soviet System for more than four decades began the process of tearing down the wall, just as Ronald Reagan had encouraged them to do in 1987.  I remember watching it on television as if it were yesterday. Another U.S. President went to Berlin in 1963 just two years after the wall was built and made a similar speech as a way of encouraging and showing solidarity with people imprisoned by that terrible regime.  President Kennedy spoke outdoors, near the wall.hundreds of thousands of people on the east side of Berlin gathered to listen to his words by loudspeaker. The same thing happened when President Reagan spoke more than two decades later. Why is the fall of the Berlin Wall relevant today since it has been 30 years? For one thing it helps to remember as a way to understand where you have been. If you don’t know where you’ve been its hard to understand where you are going. A second reason would be to review the long history of the cold war, the many tactics employed, and the tactic that finally worked. Finally, it may help to understand how the soviet system denied sovereignty to captive nations as does the European Union although in a different manner today. How did it all happen to such a great city Like Berlin from which came Einstein, Planck and Heisenberg? After world War ll the allies divided Berlin into four sectors; American, British, French, and Soviet. The Soviets had the East sector and forbid travel to the West but somany East Germans were escaping into the West, an estimated 3.5 million between 1945 and 1961 that on August 13, 1961, the East German government ordered construction of a wall to prevent escape. Families were separated by the wall for decades and hundreds died trying to escape to the West. The rebuilding of Berlin post World War ll was an American achievement under the leadership of George Marshall and President Truman. When the Soviets closed off Berlin to the West, Truman and Marshall began an airlift of supplies that eventually broke the blockade. The two political systems which together destroyed Berlin, National Socialism, and Soviet Communism were necessary for the strength of each to grow and expand. Without the necessity to fight Hitler there would have been no Soviet invasion and conquest of Eastern Europe. The crackup of the Soviet Union did not happen because of Reagan’s speech although it certainly helped. More than anything it helped the morale and determination of the East German People to continue their demands for freedom and reunification. For many years the Soviet control of its Western European Empire had been teetering on the brink of collapse. The Soviet System was a good example of what a planned collectivist economy can achieve. The old jokes such as we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us, and we are in the 15th year of the 5 year plan for the Soviet economy, were actually true. Those Eastern European countries were actually burdens instead of benefits. They gave the Soviets the illusion of being a great empire, but they didn’t produce anything so they were a net drain on the Soviet economy. Since they had no first world GDP to speak of, the Soviets had to pour money into each of them to keep them going and to maintain their militaries. Sometimes you think you own something only to find out it actually owns you. Gorbachev was brought to power specifically to fix the desperate economic problems that had been hidden from the West for so long. When he saw what the problems were and that they ...