Roundup: Talking About History

Walter Isaacson: How Einstein Divided America's Jews

[Walter Isaacson is the president and chief executive officer of the Aspen Institute and the author of Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007).] Albert Einstein’s first tour of America was an extravaganza unique in the history of science, and indeed would have been remarkable for any realm: a grand two-month processional in the spring of 1921 that evoked the sort of mass frenzy and press adulation that would thrill a touring rock star. Einstein had recently burst into global stardom

James McGrath and Arthur Milnes: As the wall fell, Mulroney and Bush manoeuvred

[James McGrath of Houston, Texas, is George H.W. Bush's veteran spokesperson, and Arthur Milnes of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Queen's University was research assistant on Brian Mulroney's book, Memoirs. They are co-editors of Age of the Offered Hand: The Cross Border Leadership Between President George H.W. Bush and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, A Documentary History, published this year by McGill-Queen's University Press.] As Germany and the world celebrate the 20th

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom: The German Wall That Fell - And the Chinese Regime That Didn't

[Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, the Editor of the Journal of Asian Studies, and the author, most recently, of Global Shanghai, 1850-2010: A History in Fragments (2008) and China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (forthcoming from Oxford University Press).] How is it that a Communist Party organized along Leninist lines remains in charge in Beijing so long after its counterparts in cities such as Budapest and B

Mitchell Koss: Hungary was the first rip in Iron Curtain

[Mitchell Koss is executive producer of the "Vanguard" documentary series that airs on Current TV.] The breaching of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago this month has become the symbol of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and, ultimately, the triumph of democracy. But sometimes I wonder if we actually know yet what we were witnessing. I didn't see the wall come down, but I was in Hungary eight months earlier for what was in retrospect the beginning of the

Joshua Stanton: Berlin at 20 ... Neither Impossible Nor Inevitable

[Joshua Stanton, a former JAG officer, is an attorney in Washington, DC.] A quote sometimes attributed to Trotsky is that “revolution is impossible until it is inevitable.” Not for the first or last time, Trotsky was wrong, and as the leader of a well-organized revolutionary movement who’d watched the Czar crush the rebellion of 1905, he certainly knew better. There is a tendency for events that were once chaotic, precarious, and ultimately consequential to seem inevitable once they

Joseph S. Nye, Jr.: Who Caused the End of the Cold War?

[Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard University and Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations, was Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government from December 1995 through June, 2004.] Today we celebrate 11/9. The end of the Cold War was a greater historical transformation than 9/11, but controversy persists about its causes. An article by Steven Erlanger in today's New York Times quotes the neo-conservative commentator Robert Kagan as saying

Michael Meyer: The unanswered phone calls and misunderstood memos that helped bring down the Berlin Wall

[Michael Meyer, Newsweek's bureau chief in Eastern Europe in 1989, is the author of The Year That Changed the World.] Too often, we see history as inevitable. What was had to be, the culmination of seemingly tectonic forces. We tend to forget that history is also defined by the logic of human messiness. Happenstance, chance, even accident always loom large in grand events. Consider the iconic image that will play and replay on our TV screens over the coming weeks: Berli

Craig Nelson: Arab echoes of grassroots protest

[Craig Nelson is Associate Editor of The National] If Gamal Abdel Nasser, the late president of Egypt and legendary champion of Arab nationalism, had risen from his grave during the heady days of November 1989, he would have rubbed his eyes in disbelief. The stirring on the streets of Prague, Berlin and Bucharest not only spelled the end to the “enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend” politics that Nasser had mastered in playing off the rival superpowers against each other, it

Cameron Abadi: An Anniversary, For Sure. But For Whom?

[Cameron Abadi is a Berlin-based writer with a focus on contemporary Europe and the Middle East.In addition to his work for Germany's two largest weeklies, Die Zeit and Der Spiegel, he has contributed to Foreign Policy, Financial Times magazine and the New Republic. He's also worked for the Berlin bureau of Associated Press.] Many Berliners feel that the true cause for celebration has been overlooked. The official proceedings of Monday’s day of remembrance for the fall

Mitchell Bard: Kristallnacht Still Reverberates

[Mitchell Bard is the Executive Director of the nonprofit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) and the director of the Jewish Virtual Library.] RSS Britannica Blog via RSS RSS Posts by Mitchell Bard via RSS print Print Image of mbard Kristallnacht Still Reverberates Mitchell Bard - November 9th, 2009 In November 1938, a 17-year-old Jew living in Paris named Herschel Grynszpan received news that his family had been deported from th

Peter Beinart: The Myth of the Wall's Fall

[Peter Beinart, senior political writer for The Daily Beast, is a professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.] Twenty years ago today, the Berlin Wall fell. And as soon as it did, a myth began to arise: that it was Ronald Reagan’s uncompromising anti-communism that brought the Soviet Union to its knees. The myth’s consequences have been immense: Again and again, post-Cold War hawks have invoked Reaga

Anthony Dolan: Reagan's Four Little Words

[Mr. Dolan was chief speechwriter at the Reagan White House for eight years and served in the George W. Bush administration as special adviser in the offices of the secretary of State and the secretary of Defense.] Ronald Reagan would embarrass himself and the country by asking Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, which was going to be there for decades. So the National Security Council (NSC) staff and State Department had argued for many weeks to get Reagan's now famous

Steven J. Erlanger: The Legacy of 1989 Is Still Up for Debate

[Steven J. Erlanger is an American journalist who has been the Paris bureau chief for The New York Times since 2008.] PARIS — The historical legacy of 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell and the cold war thawed, is as political as the upheavals of that decisive year. The events of 1989 spurred a striking transformation of Europe, which is now whole and free, and a reunified Germany, milestones that are being observed with celebrations all over the continent, including a Fre

Giles Whittell: The tide of history George Bush Sr was too timid to navigate

Tear down this wall, Ronald Reagan had demanded. His grasp on the subtleties of foreign affairs was often weak but he saw the sweep of history as clearly as if it was being presented to him in a movie. He understood better than his aides the significance of the scar through Berlin. His successor did not. The fall of the Berlin Wall was the moment the West won the Cold War. It was not quite the end of the Soviet Union but it was the moment the myth of Soviet omnipotence within the W

Katrin Bennhold: Lessons From the Former East Germany

[Katrin Bennhold is a correspondent for the International Herald Tribune in Paris. An economist by training, Katrin has been covering French and European politics for the IHT and its parent newspaper, The New York Times, for almost three years.] PARIS — Like most people, I had slept through the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was Friday, Nov. 10, 1989, and I was 15 years old, a teenager with boys and ballet classes on my mind and an identity firmly rooted in the western pa

Jiri Dienstbier: Answering NYT: The Berlin Wall, 20 Years Later

[Jiri Dienstbier, a 52- year-old dissident in November 1989, became foreign minister of Czechoslovakia a month after the wall fell.]What went through your mind when you first heard that the wall had fallen? How did it affect your life and/or your thinking? Looking back now, what one thing would you have done differently? We were prepared. In 1985, Charter 77 published the Prague Appeal, in which we argued that Europe is divided in Germany and that to overcome the

Hubert Védrine: Answering NYT: The Berlin Wall, 20 Years Later

[Hubert Védrine was spokesman for President François Mitterrand when the wall fell. A future foreign minister of France, he was then 42 and a Socialist.]What went through your mind when you first heard that the wall had fallen? How did it affect your life and/or your thinking? Looking back now, what one thing would you have done differently? The opening of the wall by the rudderless Eastern German authorities confirmed that the country was finished. The event was

Rudy Giuliani: Ronald Reagan's unyielding style won the Cold War

[Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He is a trustee of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.] In the 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union is viewed by some commentators as the result of systemic weakness. While it is true that the free nations of the West had significant economic, social and political advantages, the reality is that any existential struggle comes down to two things: the capacity to fight and the w

Jeffrey Simpson: Why we celebrate the fall of the Wall

[Jeffrey Simpson is The Globe and Mail's national affairs columnist.] In June of 1989, five months before the Berlin Wall collapsed, the West German chancellor's foreign policy adviser told a visiting journalist: No, there was no chance of East Germany imploding for a very long time. True, signs of discontent were popping up in Hungary and Poland, but East Germany would remain faithful to the Soviet Union and to its own Stalinist-inspired system. The head

Anthony R. Dolan: The Power of Reagan's Four Little Words

[Mr. Dolan was chief speechwriter at the Reagan White House for eight years and served in the George W. Bush administration as special adviser in the offices of the secretary of State and the secretary of Defense.] Ronald Reagan would embarrass himself and the country by asking Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, which was going to be there for decades. So the National Security Council (NSC) staff and State Department had argued for many weeks to get Reagan's now famous