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Republished from Rising Tide Foundation
The Silk Road was a network of trade routes which connected the East and West, and was central to the economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between these regions from the 2nd century BCE to the 18th century.
(Image by Wikipedia (commons.wikimedia.org), Author: Kelvin Case) Details Source DMCA
This article is based off of a presentation done at the RTF symposium on Nov 16th titled "The Art of Peace: The New Silk Road Counters an Age of Turbulence"
This past November marked the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and along with its celebration the continuation of a false narrative, not only as to what had instigated the Cold War, but more importantly what the world was promised and ultimately denied when they were told that the Cold War was supposedly finally over.
In a recently published paper, On Churchill's 'Sinews of Peace', I went over the drastic shift in geopolitics that occurred with the passing of Franklin D. Roosevelt who had upheld, along with his vice-president Henry Wallace, an anti-colonial post-WW II vision known as "The Century of the Common Man". Churchill was very much dependant on American support to destroy the Frankenstein monster that the Bank of England had helped fund into significance and though Churchill loathed FDR's vision, he was not in a position where he could outright resist it and instead found himself needing to make large compromises and often, most likely with the thought that this would all be temporary"and so it was.
Upon the death of FDR in 1945, the Iron Curtain speech shortly after created an oppressive division throughout the world, and caused the spread of fear over a fabricated image of the communist boogeyman, the effects of which we are still reeling from.
The Cold War divisionGermany was officially divided according to this map by the Soviet Union, the UK, USA and France from 1945 to 1949. This was done to ensure that Germany would not attempt any further military action after WWII. It was Churchill's Iron Curtain announcement in 1946 that turned the USSR into the free world's public enemy #1, without any specific reason as to what the Soviets had done to warrant this declaration of the 'Cold War' division. This split with the Soviets was formalised in May 1949 when the British, French and American zones were joined to form the Federal Republic of Germany. The Soviets had no choice but to form a separate German republic in October 1949; the German Democratic Republic.
Despite these two German republics being set up, the British, French and American militaries would remain in West Germany until May 5, 1955, and ended their nearly 10 year occupation only after West Germany had joined NATO in 1954. Under these terms, West Germany would be allowed to establish a military force of up to half-million men and resume the manufacture of arms. The end of the Allied occupation of West Germany meant a full recognition of the republic as a member of the western alliance against the Soviet Union.
It should be evident that such manoeuvres were a clear show towards the USSR of not only a hostile stance but an ever increasing aggressive military doctrine that was preparing for a war.
Although West Germany was given 'independence' on a short leash, Allied presence never left West Berlin up until at least 1990. Berlin, as the capitol of Germany, held great strategic significance and became a form of battleground in intelligence gathering and espionage. Berlin had been split in two after WWII, and the Allied occupied West Berlin not only became a symbol of 'freedom' in response to the 'tyranny' of the Soviets, but was an important stronghold to keep in the Cold War, since it was in the middle of Soviet-held territory.
The blockade of roads and rail lines into West Germany by the Soviets in 1948-1949 and the later building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 were terrible decisions made by the USSR but should be measured in the context that such reactions were primarily instigated by an escalating western military aggression against them.
West Berlin would be surrounded by a wall that stretched out to 140 km, was 11.8 ft high, was for the most part electrified and had over 116 watchtowers and over 14, 000 guards and dogs. It would divide Berlin for 28 years.
This was indeed a very terrible period not only for those in Berlin but for much of the world. The Cold War thinking had allowed for the justification of the Spanish Inquisition-like Red Scare that occurred in the United States and elsewhere, where Americans who refused to follow the very narrow line of what was deemed acceptable thoughts and opinions in the free world newspeak could at any point in time face a judicial inquisition on them, akin to having committed a thoughtcrime.
Schools and workplaces were put through drills on a regular basis of how to react if the Soviets were to launch a nuclear bomb against America. Such tactics were used to put the American people in an ongoing fear state and thus quickly, the former allies who had by far the largest death toll in WWII in their essential role in combating fascism, were turned into a terrifying race of boogeymen with seemingly no sense of 'humanity' or 'morality'.
As a quick side note, I want to bring attention to Elbe Day April 25, 1945, which marked the day when the American and Soviet forces met for the first time near the end of the war. There was a very strong comradery that occurred, and these men would become forever united since they experienced together the brutality and hardship of a hard won war.
It is also important to note that the Russians and Americans never had any historical conflict with each other at this point. In fact, Russia's navy would place itself along both east and west coastlines of the United States during its Civil War to protect Lincoln's Union from foreign intervention- that is, from Britain and France. The Russian navy were treated as heroes during their seven month stay in the US
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