Excerpt

When the Berlin Wall went down I was furious, angry, mad as hell. I had the same feelings when President Kennedy stood near the wall and proclaimed, Ich bin ein Berliner. And the Greatest Generation cheered. And Ronald Reagan, when at the wall, said, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall it galled me more than ever. But the Greatest Generation my generation, cheered. In this case, one, of course, has to take the source into consideration. Heres another prize quip from the class B movie actor: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade was on the wrong side in the Spanish Civil War. Wow! That means the fascist General Franco was on the right side. Franco, the military dictator, the reactionary deluxe, a throwback to the Dark Ages, the slaughterer of hundreds of thousands and Hitlers ally was Ronnies right side of history?

On every anniversary of the fall of the wall, ignorant, brain-washed, newspaper columnists write about how those poor Berliners suffered until the wall came down and then Germany was reunited and free. Or, these writers dwell on some freedom seeking East Berlin sneaking through what the Germans called The Wall of Shame. The shame game of World War II has long been a twisted mess.

Not only do I bristle about the Berlin Wall coming down, I get angry when I read that 500 American historians think that the Marshall Plan was the greatest document of the 20th century. The great humanitarian plan that revived European colonialism, triggered the period of interventionism and the catalyst for dozens of wars worldwide, including our own stupid wars in Korea and Vietnam. That was a great plan?!!

The U.S. has continued its brand of military and market imperialism, a process started long ago to take over the banner proclaiming, The sun never sets on. This banner formerly referred to the British Empire. It now should read, The sun never sets on Pentagon Outposts. Not only did the Truman-Marshall Plan return Europe (and later Japan) to its ancient imperialism, but to Laissez Faire capitalism. This is the brand of greed economics that had caused experimentations in different forms of owner/worker ownership and production.

The Berlin Wall was the only monument to World War II for U.S. soldiers who fought against the Germans, as well as to me, the soldier on the ground. Germany started two horrific world wars, each only twenty five years apart. Millions and millions of lives had been lost and many more lives adversely disrupted, including mine. The prevailing attitude during the Second World War was that Germany had to be punished. The agreed upon plan was to divide the country up, keep it pastoral and put the leaders on trial. A few hundred were tried, a few were executed, the rest given jail terms or acquitted. Most of those jailed served very little time. Thousands of other German leaders were given lucrative jobs within different U.S. agencies.

Soon after the war ended, all the dividing lines in Germany, except one, were obliterated. The sections allotted to the U.S., U.K. and France became the new country of West Germany and the Soviet section became East Germany. Berlin, captured by the Soviets, also had been divided into the four power sections. The three sections, other than the Soviet zone became part of West Germany.

To create its own anti-Communist country, the U.S. had given complete forgiveness to all the supposed ex-Nazis and plied them with huge gifts of money, protectionism and favored nation status. All the big name German industries that had made weapons to kill me and all the others just a few years before, were now back in business, compliments of the U.S.A. These were the same industries that had been using slave laborers and worked most of them to death. They were now back in full, profitable production.

The Wall was built by East Berliners to keep their people from leaving for West Germany, the great, new, lollypop land. West Germany, the Disney World of nations, created by the U.S. to heap insults on the nation that did the most to halt the Hitler scourge.

I had been in the Army since December of 1942 and in direct combat against Hitlers nasty troops in the autumn, winter and spring of 1944-45. That fall and winter was particularly ugly, with cold, rain, snow and cloudy skies more common than sunshine. Most of that time was spent in the ground, some just slit trenches or fox holes, as they are commonly called. When stationary for more than a day, a more elaborate hole was dug. To make things more unpleasant, the majority of that time we were targets of very active German artillery. Some nights the incoming shells were so intense that no one could leave their holes. The Germans never seemed to run out of ammunition.

Im supposed to forgive these Germans? Not only was the U.S. policy one of forgiveness, but we rewarded them with the good life and instant democracy, the same democracy that took hundreds of years of effort by our ancestors and much involvement. This we endowed on our enemy? I was in that ugly war because of Germans, all of them. That means civilians too. They waved the Swastika flags, they voted for Hitler, they produced the weapons, they cheered the troops with every victory. All the good Germans had been killed off by Hitler or had left their country by 1940. Even the very young were formed into training and cheering squads, then thrown into Hitlers killing machine as his troops finally began to lose.