Mini review: Tear Down This Wall

Did Romesh Ratnesar really go and write a 200-page book about a speech that was not the Gettysburg Address? Why yes, he did. And a darn fine job he did of it, too.

The subject here is Berlin, and the genesis and impact of what former president Ronald Reagan said at that city's Brandenburg Gate in 1987 to hasten the demise of the Communist-built wall that divided eastern and western portions of that city for several generations.

A big wet kiss to President Obama in a four-page epilogue suggests that Ratnesar has conventionally progressive sensibilities, but to his credit, Ratnesar tells the story of Reagan's famous challenge to Soviet leader Gorbachev with a keen eye for what happened and why. This is not Howard Zinn-style rewriting of history to suit ideology; it's a well-written look at a famous speech and the people with whom it resonated most.

Reagan wanted the wall down from the moment it went up, and Ratnesar shows that --thanks to his friendship with Reagan-- Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev looked the other way when it counted. Both leaders were more peaceful than either is often given credit for.

That's not to say that everyone wanted the wall to come down. Ratnesar does an impressive job of tracing the objections of U.S. State Department staffers to draft language that they thought might be seen as bellicose, or detrimental to the delicate position of free Germans who were trying not to antagonize the Communist government that then enslaved so many of their relatives. Ratnesar also traces the shared paternity of the famous challenge (made at the Wall for dramtic effect). He and his researchers talked with Peter Robinson, the primary speechwriter for "Some Thoughts on East-West Relations at the Brandenburg Gate."

Ratnesar also does a nice job of summarizing the postwar history of Berlin, and of sifting through related nuggets only recently made available. In one such nugget, Ratnesar describes a fateful German dinner party to which young Peter Robinson was invited while looking desperately for a hook as he drafted the speech. In another nugget, Ratnesar observes that Vladimir Putin was then a KGB agent stationed in Dresden. When it became clear that the Berlin Wall would not stand much longer, Putin and his KGB colleagues burned so many secret documents in their offices that the furnace they were using for that purpose quit working. Putin called for reinforcements from troops he did not get, and felt humiliated by what he regarded as the ineffectual Soviet response to capitalist provocation.

I recommend this book to any student of rhetoric or recent history. It's great stuff.