(Insert World On The Brink Here)

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Hello, Internet.

So, we’ve been continuing to learn about the 1960s. For this unit, we’ve been focusing on examining how the world was “on the brink” in that decade. As our final product, we each wrote an essay about one event we believed best exemplified how the world was on the brink. I chose to write the following essay about the Berlin Wall being built:

Close your eyes. Imagine, for a moment, that when you open them again, you will be cut off from the world; a wall will divide your home from everything and everyone outside. Long stretches of barbed wire will allow you a final look at the world you’re losing, only to be replaced by a solid concrete barrier. Between you and the rest of your country will stand armed guards. The place you once called home will turn to a prison around you. This is the fate that befell the residents of West Berlin on the morning of August 13th, 1961. In the midst of a largely ideological, nonphysical war, Berliners were suddenly met with a very concrete slap to the face in the form of the Berlin Wall. To America and other democratic countries, the Berlin Wall was a physical reminder of the possibility of communist rule, and of just how close they were to the brink of destruction. What exactly was pushing them to the brink of destruction was a series of ongoing events. Throughout the fifties and into 1961, the East German Government had been facing a problem: East German citizens kept fleeing to West Berlin as refugees. While East Germany was under communist rule, West Berlin was under democratic rule, and provided a way out for East German citizens who disagreed with communism. At the time, the Cold War – the ideological tension between the East (communist countries such as Soviet Russia) and the West (democratic countries such as America) – was in full swing, and communist leaders were aggrieved by the idea of losing power or citizens to the West. In an attempt to quell the stream of refugees, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev proposed a solution: close off the border to West Berlin. The East German Government did so, first with barbed wire, and after two days during which there was no significant protest, with the Berlin Wall. The wall only heightened tensions between the East and the West, exacerbating the West’s fears of communism or all out war. For almost two weeks after the wall was erected, American president John F. Kennedy remained silent on the subject. However, America’s Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, released a statement shortly after the wall was erected, saying that the Wall would be the source of “vigorous protest” as it was a violation of the agreement between the East and the West for the East German Government to restrict the freedom of the citizens of West Berlin who were living under American rule. Rusk also said that the refugees coming from East Germany into West Berlin were responding to the “failures of communism”; that they weren’t being persuaded to leave East Germany by western propaganda, but rather were leaving because the communist system was not providing an agreeable situation for them. Once the Wall was in place, East German citizens were no longer able to flee, and were forced to comply with Communist rule or put themselves in danger trying to cross the wall. This, combined with the fact that West Berliners were now having their freedom restricted by the Soviet powers, gave the Soviets a sudden position of power over America – and although Kennedy didn’t publicly address the issue for thirteen days, he was eventually forced to respond to the situation. Throughout his statements and speeches addressing the Berlin Wall in the months following its construction, Kennedy maintained that America would defend Berlin, even if it meant potentially dire consequences, stating that the US would not “surrender the freedom of [those] for which [they were] responsible”. Although Kennedy wished to negotiate with the Soviet and East German powers, he also faced ongoing pressures from the American public to take a more extreme approach– either to surrender West Berlin, or start a war with the East. One National Review article described Kennedy as “[evading] firm decisions”, and another one shortly after said he was just “waiting for the dust to settle”– essentially, that he was not taking a strong enough stance. Kennedy refused to surrender or to start a war, believing that either extreme would end poorly, and that a middle ground could be reached. However, the extreme demands from the public reinforced the same Western fears that the wall itself did: the US was caught between the possibility of the East taking power, and the danger of nuclear war. Almost three decades later, on November 9th, 1989, the East German Government announced that the citizens of West Berlin were free at last to come and go as they pleased. Crowds swarmed the Berlin Wall – some seeking to destroy the barrier that had kept them divided from the world for so long, others simply looking to cross it. After almost thirty years of living in confines, a time in which almost two hundred people died trying to cross the wall, the citizens of Berlin could celebrate their freedom. From its construction in 1961 to its fall three decades later, the Berlin Wall cast a literal and metaphorical shadow over the West. The Wall acted as a constant physical reminder of just how much and in how many ways the world was on the brink – of Communist rule, of war, or at worst, of total destruction. Today, more time has elapsed since the fall of the Berlin Wall than time passed while it stood. However, it’s still widely recognized as one of the most prominent symbols of the Cold War, and of a world on the brink of obliteration.

While I chose to write about the Berlin Wall, one of the other prominent examples we focussed on was the Cuban Missile Crisis. We watched the movie Thirteen Days, and looked at some primary sources around the crisis. I took some great academic notes while watching the movie (a few days before watching this movie I watched The Death of Stalin, which stars Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev):

CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

  • Oh god it’s so edgy
  • Oim toilking ta you layta
  • Comrade Buff
  • They’re really going to lengths to show that this is the White House
  • wAnNa Toik aBoiT tHis PawTy
  • Did he just steal some guy’s toast
  • Surface to surface
  • The beehive hair
  • Loyalty, or as they call it in 1960s Cuba, Fidelity
  • The Soviets are putting medium range missiles into Cuba
  • Edgy football
  • What happened to it being in colour
  • Ted Sorensen
  • SS4 Sandal??
  • That’s the missile map
  • Kill 80mil in five minutes
  • Dean Rusk
  • Hit them with a missile or retreat
  • Lock em in a room and kick em in the ass
  • Find him, Kenny.
  • Kenny and the Kennedys sounds like a nickelodeon show from 1997.5
  • Get rid of the missiles & Castro in one fell swoop
  • Fidel is friends with Steve Buscemi
  • That fade transition though
  • Connecticut is day two
  • Sned
  • “There’s something immoral about abandoning your own judgement”
  • Cuban blockade
  • They can hit every place in the country
  • EXCEPT SEATTLE
  • “Peace is our profession”
  • “You’re in a pretty bad fix, Mr. President”
  • They’re gonna look for Clifford
  • Ortsac. Very creative.
  • wE are nOT INvaDiNg cUBA
  • Between 20-30 Soviet ships approaching Cuba
  • John McCone (CIA)
  • Adlai Stevenson
  • Jazzy
  • Smile! You’re on Candid Camera!
  • “Did those bastards shoot so much as a BB Gun at you?”
  • “It was a cake walk, sir.”
  • The Guns of August
  • October 24th
  • X Men First Class
  • Is that Steve Carrell
  • There’s a submarine
  • Russians are not idiots
  • Well this is just going to torpedo their whole plan
  • The ships are stopping?
  • It’s not Steve Carrell
  • Eyeball to eyeball and the other guy just blinked
  • Maintain contact, do nothing else
  • Defcon 2 (JFK does not approve)
  • “I’m an old political cat… But I’ve got one life left”
  • 48 hours
  • The Ratatouille X men crossover nobody asked for
  • Puppet Buscemi
  • Missiles are now operational
  • Frogs (short range tactical nukes)
  • They had missile warning lights??
  • “No”
  • More football
  • Accept the first letter
  • “it wON’T WORK BECAUSE IT’S WISHFUL THINKING”
  • Make the Soviets agree
  • Remove Turkey missiles in six months
  • Is it pronounced Khrushchev or Khrushchov?
  • “We have to have an answer tomorrow. Because Monday, we go to war.”
  • He’s not holding the steering wheel the right way
  • Ah he’s drinking coffee
  • Don’t drink coffee while driving Kenny that’s how you end up spilling it
  • They’re burning their documents
  • Wow a Soviet? In the Russian embassy? Big shocker.
  • Tomorrow.
  • The sun came up.
  • “There’s no stopping us now” Oh no
  • Yup there’s the football

Aside from looking at the more political aspect, we also took a look at the social events that were happening in the 1960s (aside from the African American Civil Rights Movement). We watched an episode about social change called The Times They Are A-Changin’, which talked about some important things that were happening in the sixties: the women’s rights movement (particularly bodily autonomy for women with things like birth control and the beginning of a conversation around premarital sex), the push for environmental awareness, the conservative movement, the united farm workers (and how it tied in to a Latino civil rights movement), and the events of Stonewall and the gay rights movement. After watching it and taking notes, we were asked to create a piece of media talking about how one of the topics discussed was an example of the world being on the brink.

I chose to focus on the gay rights movement, with my thesis being that throughout the 1960s the world (or, more accurately, America) was on the brink of a social revolution– and Stonewall (along with some other events around the same time) was the watershed moment that pushed it over the brink and kicked off an actual activist movement. I created a keynote explaining the history of the gay community pre-Stonewall, the events of Stonewall, and some of the activism it directly inspired, shown here as a video:

Although I chose to focus on a few important things that Stonewall inspired, the events of the Stonewall riots are more widely considered to be one of the first successful acts of LGBTQ+ activism in America, and a major tipping point for the LGBTQ+ liberation movement. They helped bring the community out of the shadows and into the public eye, and without Stonewall it could have taken several more years for the movement to get anywhere.

Here are the sources I used for the video:

Stonewall
Marsha P. Johnson
STAR
Conversion therapy
Joseph Nicolosi (This didn’t make it into the final product, but Nicolosi was a more contemporary advocate for conversion therapy, who died just two years ago.)
Brenda Howard

It’s been interesting to look at the 1960s in terms of both the social and political events of the time, and having multiple layers creates a more in depth picture of what life in 1960s America was like. I’m looking forward to learning about more history, both social and political, in our next unit.

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