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Reflecting on Nov. 9
by Sander A. Diamond, professor of history, Keuka College
Published Nov 9, 2006
KEUKA PARK,
N.Y.—On Nov. 9, 1989, the
epicenter of the Cold War started to collapse. The symbol of the division of Europe, the Berlin Wall, opened. It marked the beginning of the end of
communism in Europe. A year later, the two
Germanies, East and West, were reunited Oct. 3.
The following year, the Red Banner, the symbol of the USSR, was
lowered from its staff high above the Kremlin. The Cold War, and with it
communist Russia,
came to an end. The epoch of the world wars and the Cold War came to an abrupt
end.
It has often been asked why Nov. 9 is not celebrated in Germany as a
national holiday. The opening and
removal of nearly all of the Berlin Wall was an event of global proportions and
unexpected.
The answer to this question is related to the date. Many
Germans wanted Nov. 9 to be a national holiday but eschewed it in favor of Oct.
3, the commemoration of Unification Day, the day the two Germanies became one
or more precisely, East Germany
was absorbed by the Federal Republic of Germany (formerly West Germany). Put
simply, Nov. 9 is a date many want to forget other than its passing in 1989.
Why? On Nov. 9, 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated, marking
the end of the German Empire and the political demise of the Royal House of
Prussia. Two days later, Germany
signed the Armistice (hence, Armistice Day here and in the UK, now called Veterans Day in the USA). Germany lost the First World War and the
democratic Weimar
Republic replaced it,
what one person called “a republic without republicans and a democracy without
democratics.” It limped along until the
onset of the Great Depression, with millions feeling they had been cheated at
the Versailles Conference.
Adolf Hitler and his nascent Nazi Party believed that
Germany’s greatness and its international aspirations had been thwarted by the
loss of the war and the sellout to the Allies by what they called “The November
Criminals:” Jews, communists and socialists.
In mid-1923, Germany
was struck by one of the greatest inflations in history and the currency
collapsed. Millions were ruined. Sensing his time had come, Hitler tried to
overthrow the government with a Putsch on Nov. 9, 1923. The Beerhall Putsch in Munich
was a failure; Hitler and his cohorts were arrested and tried for treason in Munich. The judges,
however, were in sympathy with Hitler’s ideals. He received a light sentence
and went to Landsberg Prison where he wrote Mein
Kampf, his vision of a future Germany
and Europe. Ten years later, on Jan. 30, 1933,
he was appointed the last chancellor of the doomed Weimar Republic.
It was the dawn of the Third Reich and the start of the march toward war in
Europe in September 1939 and a world war with the entry of the United States
two years later. In the end, 56 million were dead, including 30 million
Russians and 67 percent of European Jewry.
Nov. 9 is also remembered for another reason. On that day in
1938, Nazi Storm troopers set fire to all of the Jewish temples in the country.
It is known as the Kristallnacht, or “The Night of the Broken Glass,” a name
taken from the shattering of the windows. It was the beginning of the end of
German-Jewry and a prelude to the Holocaust.
But there is a mystery here and it is not to be found in why
Nov. 9 is not a national holiday in Germany. It is to be found in
reflecting why the wall opened on that day. To be sure, the East German
government was on the verge of collapse in the weeks before that momentous day.
However, one has to ask if that date was merely a historical accident or by
design, an effort to reverse all of the negative memories of the epoch of the
world wars: the end of the Empire, the Beerhall Putsch, and the curtain-raiser
of the Holocaust, the Kristallnacht?
Most assuredly, Nov. 9 is well remembered in democratic Germany.
As for the Berlin Wall, all that was left standing is a small section across
the street from the Opera House. The real monument is the end of the Cold War,
in Lincoln’s
words, “victim of the silent artillery of time.”
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