Volume 36, Number 20 · December 21, 1989
The German Revolution
By Timothy Garton Ash
Once upon a time, and a very bad time it was, there was a famous platform in West Berlin where distinguished visitors would be taken to stare at the Wall. American presidents from Kennedy to Reagan stood on that platform looking out over the no man's land between two concrete walls. They were told that this, the Potsdamer Platz, had once been Berlin's busiest square, its Piccadilly Circus. Their hosts pointed out a grassy mound in the middle of no man's land: the remains of Hitler's bunker. Armed guards watched impassively from the other side, or rode up and down the death strip on their army motorbikes. It was the image of the cold war.
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