I remember where I was. I remember on November 9, 1989, twenty years ago, seeing my father flip through the news reports coming from the television when the event first began. It was rare to see my Dad turn on the TV and surf through the channels, so I knew instantly something big was happening. I remember seeing the images of huge chunks of cement and iron rodding being tossed aside by the ecstatic mob as photo cameras flashed against the dark night sky. I remember watching, but although my father tried to explain it to me, I was not fully aware of the significance of what I was observing.

Three years previously, President Ronald Reagan had stood where that mod then rallied, calling on Prime Minister Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” I have faint memories of seeing this speech televised live as a child, but once again not fully grasping their weight.

Whatever else we may think about the short-comings of the great communicators Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan, one thing we should not fail to appreciate and emulate from these men: They called a spade a spade when it came to the danger and evil of Communism in general and Soviet Russia in particular. In a day when others called for appeasement and syncretism with the Communists, they called for wariness and war readiness. Their uncompromising determination to hold this line may have prevented the entire Western World from falling behind the Iron Curtain.

Today we Christians live in a time when many who claim to be evangelicals are calling for appeasement to the world’s priorities and methods. Syncretism of biblical Christianity with humanism is on the prowl, and many are falling prey. We are too often more than willing to join with worldy enemies of God where we find some external commonality with them, even though they reject the sovereignty of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It was this same type of movement for appeasement and syncretism that led to the rise of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain in the first place. You see, this is a year of many anniversaries. In addition to being the 20^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, today is also the 71^st anniversary of the Nazi massacre against Jews known as the Kristallnacht. Even more significantly, this year is the 150^th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

World War II and the consequent rise of the Iron Curtain are directly attributable, as historian Paul Johnson posits in his book Modern Times, to the efforts of a few disciples of Darwin’s evolution to explain the void left in man’s philosophy by the absence of God. These men, in particular Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche, presented the most influential paradigms to counter the old Christianity of the West, and the philosophies of Marx and Nietzsche especially became embodied in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.

Hugging the Devil

Yet somehow the still predominantly “Christian” countries of Britain and America found themselves in league during World War II with one of these entities against the other, under the theory that “the enemy of your enemy is your friend.”

Paul Johnson writes:

[T]he confusion of moral issues by the end of the war was fundamentally compounded by the presence, in the ranks of the righteous, of the Soviet totalitarian power. There was scarcely a crime the Nazis or the knights of bushido had committed, or even imagined, which the Soviet regime had not also perpetrated, usually on a bigger scale. It ran precisely the type of system that produced the war and its horrors. More specifically, the Nazi-Soviet pact of April 1941 had made the Axis aggressions possible.

Nevertheless, Soviet Russia not only judged the guilty of the war it had helped to create but emerged as its sole beneficiary.[1]

The rise of the Iron Curtain and with it the Berlin Wall can be attributed in no small part to the naiveté of President Franklin D. Roosevelt toward Communist Dictator Joseph Stalin. Roosevelt, was at his heart a Communist sympathizer, holding to many of the same basic presuppositions about the role of the state in human life as Stalin. In addition, he surrounded himself in his cabinet with Communist sympathizers, a point President Truman immediately recognized when he succeeded Roosevelt, and the reason he quickly moved to replace these wolves in sheep’s clothing.

The Building of the Berlin Wall

Roosevelt thought he could play Stalin, and wanted to prevent Churchill from messing things up with his Communist suspicions. He wrote to Churchill on March 18, 1942, “I know you will not mind my being brutally frank when I tell you that I think that I can personally handle Stalin better than either your Foreign Office or my State Department. Stalin hates the guts of all your top people. He thinks he likes me better, and I hope he will continue to do so.’ “This vanity,” wrote  Johnson, “so reminiscent of Chamberlain’s belief that he could ‘handle’ Hitler, was compounded by an astonishing naiveté.”[2]

The Rude Awakening

But Roosevelt was in for a rude awakening. Johnson continued: “[Stalin] did not believe in an imminent eschatology [as Hitler—the idea that the triumph of his form of Totalitarian Socialism over the world was to happen soon]. But he was greedy. He was too cautious to follow Hitler’s example of systematically creating opportunities for plunder, but he could not resist taking such opportunities when they presented themselves. His sensible tactic was to hold his hand until the Americans had vanished to the other side of the Atlantic.”[3]

At the Yalta conference, Stalin had promised Roosevelt that he would allow for free elections in Poland, but when the time came, it was announced that the elections would be run Soviet-style. When Roosevelt got the news two days later, he banged his fist on his wheelchair: “Averell is right. We can’t do business with Stalin. He has broken every one of the promises he made at Yalta.” Churchill wasted no time telling Roosevelt “I told you so,” sending him a barrage of thirteen forceful messages to this effect in the month that followed.

Nevertheless, in his last weeks Roosevelt did nothing to encourage Eisenhower to push on rapidly toward Berlin, Vienna, and Prague, as the British wanted. “The Americans could not understand,” General Montgomery wrote sadly, “that it was of little avail to win the war strategically if we lost it politically.” . . . General Bradley calculated it would cost 100,000 US casualties to take Berlin; General Eisenhower was opposed to anything which ended military co-operation with the Red Army; all wanted Soviet assistance against Japan. So Eastern Europe and most of the Balkans were lost to totalitarianism. [4]

James Byrnes, Secretary of State, said Russia was “trying to do in a slick-dip way what Hitler tried to do in domineering smaller countries by force”.

On March 5, 1946, Sir Winston Churchill made the Cold War a public fact when he delivered a speech at the university of Fulton:

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. Beyond that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eatern Europe . . . what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in many cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.

By allowing the Russians to enter Berlin first, Stalin established a presence of in the city of 2,500,000 Red Army soldiers plus 400,000 security forces.

“On 24 June Stalin blocked access to the Western zones of Berlin, and cut off their electricity.

“Unable to agree on a peace formula for one Germany, the rival blocs had begun creating two Germanies in 1946. On 18 June 1948 the three Western Allies announced a new German currency for their zone. That was the pretext for the Soviet move.” [5] General Lucius Clay asked for permission to send a battalion into Berlin to prevent a Communist takeover, but the new Secretary of Defense did not want to risk war with Russia. In retrospect, scholars indicate that Stalin did not have the desire at the time to fight a conflict with the other Allied forces over Berlin since he was much more concerned with Yugoslavia.

Thus, by inaction from America, Communist Russia took Eastern Germany. However, it wasn’t until August 13, 1961 that the Soviets erected the Berlin Wall to prevent the heavy migration of people to West Berlin, an island of freedom behind the Iron Curtain. The Wall eventually encircled West Berlin, stretching for almost 100 miles. At least 136 people died trying to cross the border during its 28-year existence. Now, thanks to the determination of Berliners to tear down the Wall, only a few segments remain.

Lessons Learned

We can rejoice in the anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent fall of Soviet Russia, but let us not fall into the same trap of naivete as Chamberlain and Roosevelt. Let us learn from the vigilance of Churchill and Reagan. We can not let down our guard. The fall of the Nazi and Soviet regimes has been followed by new efforts to destroy Christian freedom in the world.

Moreover, let us learn from this passage in history the folly of appeasement and syncretism with the enemies of God. We do not become more powerful by becoming like them and joining forces with them; we become more vulnerable. “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?” II Corinthians 6:14. Instead, let us embrace the glory and holiness of our Lord and His brilliant Law-Word. Let us take confidence in His wisdom and strength.

Let us remember Christ, “that [our] hearts may be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words” (Colossians 2:2-4).

Footnotes:

[1] Paul Johnson, Modern Times 429 (1985).
[2] Id at 433.
[3] Id at 435.
[4] Id at 436.
[5] Id at 441.