Aramike,

the link you provided (the Wikipedia one doesn't really cover the issue) only claims that Reagan had some influence in it. Some. So the argument here is did Reagan have some influence in the collapse or none at all. Am I right here?

So, how do we go about proving that Reagan had even some influence? And also that the main decisions weren't made by people like Gorbachov, Honecker and other similar East-European leaders?

Also from the link you provided:

So you never heard this claim before? Granted that the writer doesn't link the SDI directly with the collapse of the USSR but as a part of the process that led to the collapse.

It is widely believed over here that America tend to exaggerate Reagan's role in it, and has a very different view of the meaning of it all as well, thinking of it in terms of a total victory of the capitalistic system that now took over the world, and so on. I tend to agree with that scepticism on the american view of it all. The Soviet union would have been mismanaged even without an arms race, and Gorbatchev certainly did not react to american pressure in general when allowing Germany off the hook. He has said repeatedly that the USSR had brought itself into a mess all by itself, the arms race just contibuting to the general mess. In fact, as I posted it, Washington even called him to think about sending troops to keep the situation in Eastgermany under control", initially. To be fair, Washington gave up it's resistence earlier than the French and British, already in January at the latest it was official policy to now support reunification, not only in lip-confessions, but in solid policy. the French took longer, and Thather needed to be fought against by her own staff until late spring the following year, for she was icy about Germany.

As a forestory to reunification, I think the blow delivered to the Soviet system by Polish Solidarnosc and a series of unforseeable, lucky events and misunderstandings leading thr Hungarians to make decisions that were not talked about with the Russians first, were much more important.

Reagan gets overestimated very massively in egneral, like Kennedy too. The merit of American policy in the cold war is that it made a clear statem,ent that an invasion into the West would necessarily lead to a war with america as well. But without the braveness of the Poles andhungarians and eastgermans, that alone would not have meant much to enforce reunification. In fact, German reunification was no goal in American, British, Russian, Eastgerman or French politics at all. the only nation on Earth that had clearly set it's sights on reunifiaction and explciitly said so, was Wetsgermany (which does not mean that the events of autumn 1989 had been forseen, planned or adminsitred by the Westgermans - we were overrolled by events as much like anyone else.

The triggering factor were the people marching in protest in Eastgerman streets, who were refusing to be intimidated by the tools of power anymore. the opening of the border, btw, was an accident. The spokesman of the Eastern regime, who in a press confernece even almost forgot to mention that Eastgermans had won their right to travel freely, and needed to be asked for it by a reporter, oversaw that their was a timeline saying that this was not valid until 0400 the next day. Instead he said that according to his knowledge this was valid from rifght the present moment on. Less than one hour later masses and masses of people stormed the wall. It went so quickly that even th eastgerman borderguards were paralysed and knew of nothing. There were some calm heads on duty that night, ordering the magazines of their servicemen's weapons to be collected and kept separate from weapons. and one officer'S private initiative it finally was that led to the first gate beeing opened uncontrolled - before people had to stand in line and got a stamp in their papers - and even the wrong stamp, which said that they had been expatriated.

you see, in those weeks there were so many individual, singular events, curious stories, which were not coordinated and ordered at all. It was a spectacle that ran by itself, almost, and really very undirected. I still see it as a miracle that nothing, really nothing serious happened. and it started weeks earlier, with flocks of Eastgermans fleeing via the green Hungarian border, and the German embassy that was besieged for long (one of the most famous unfinished sentences of history being spoken there, the scene today sends tears to my eyes).

No. The Wall fell because primarily Gorbachev took a hands-off approach.
If the Soviets wanted they could have intervened militarily as they had done in Hungary in '56 and later in '68 in Tchekoslovakia.
Americans have a very one-sided view on the events of '89.
The USA didn't beat the Soviets, the Soviet empire collapsed/imploded all by itself (and many historians had written about it years before the events came to pass, it was a matter of when not if; for instance Hélène Carrère d'Encausse wrote about it in 1979 !!! in a book titled "L'Empire éclaté : La révolte des nations en U.R.S.S" in english "Shattered Empire, The revolt of the soviet states") and it was a MIRACLE that violence didn't ensue at least in eastern europe. Because in the Balkans the collapse of communism and death of Tito well it opened a new whole can of worms and we are still dealing with the consequences of that bloody aftermath.

Forget that disaster which led to the current economic meltdown, look at the other problems he gave us with the geopolitics of the cold war.
Iran/Iraq yeah great move.
Afghanistan, wonderful I wonder how that worked out.
Pakistan, superb.
Saudi, well at least their good citizens ain't attacking NY at the moment.
South and Central America, hey look at some of the fruitcakes down there now as a backlash from the interventions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO-BLggwqRU

We were lucky with Gorbachev, very lucky, and lucky that he wasn't overthrown until after the fall of the wall and the ending of the Warsaw Pact. All of the players had their parts to play in the end of communism in Eastern Europe, it wasn't a single person that knocked down the wall, it was a combination of factors. Reagan, Maggie, Gorbachev, and the East German Freedom movement, and the sane thinking of key people at the wall on that fateful evening. :03:

Reagan:up: Whether anyone believes he was instrumental in getting the wall down or not, Reagan made Americans feel good about America. That is half the battle for any President. Reagan is and will be my most influentual President in my lifetime.

They only climbed on the wall after it was clear to them the Soviets under Gorbachov would not mind so much.

The real heroes of the Berlin Wall were the Polish shipyard workers of Solidarity, They did all the heavy lifting 10 years earlier.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...dansk_1980.jpg

You hit the nail on the head here AVG. Unless one lived through that time it's difficult to understand the depth of the post Vietnam national funk.

I think Charlie Daniels said it best:

Wrong in that the protests and mass escapes already had began several weeks earlier - when it was not clear at all to anybody that the Soviets would not start shooting and would not tell the VoPo and Volksarmee to shoot as well. Just days earlier people crossing the border in Hungary still felt to still run for their lives. Their are some very dramatic videos and the despair to be seen in the faces, and the tension, was real.

Yes, they were not the first, but the first to be successful. The first were those rebellions that had been put down by Soviet tanks.

Typical responses right down the line...

You cannot deny the fact that Regan was instrumental in the bringing down of the wall.

Post all of your thoughts and cartoons to the contrary. History is histor no matter how much you wish to revise it.

To which you, of course, are immune. ;)

No Reagan was not instrumental in bringing down the wall.
This is just happy wishing on your part. History tells another story.
Stealth Hunter is absolutely correct in his analysis. A country as big as the Soviet Union, rife with contradictions DOESN'T just collapse overnight.
The socio-economical, political and military problems what would ultimately lead to the implosion of the U.S.S.R spanned decades, and as I said any historian worth his salt would have forseen the collapse of the Soviet System years, even decades before it came to pass.
Reagan was not needed for that, thinking otherwise is a distortion of historical facts and indulging in self-importance.

Yea sure whatever

Such regimes do not collapse by themselves just automatically - as can be seen in North Korea. If there would not have been Gorbatchev (who ruled out the use of force from the beginning, and very principally so, he said) but somebody like let's say Cruchtchev II. - history today maybe would look different. For the Russians, he is a weak leader until today, the one who destroyed the Soviet Union. For us Germans he is the most decisive leader of all the national leaders who had a word in the events of 1989. That's why he is extremely popular over here. The views of him could not be more polarised than they are between Russians and Germans. When some years ago he brought his terminally ill wife to a hospital here in Müster, and later she nevertheless died, there was a strong emotional reaction throughout Germany as if they were two popular and beloved people of ours.

If you think so (that Gorbachev acted because of Reagan's rhetoric), I've got the Brooklyn Bridge to sell you. :DL
You may not want to accept it, but history will show just how inconsequential Reagan really was in bringing down communism in europe. :03: