[Oliver] Karsitz, who works as a cameraman for German TV, is unsentimental about that night. “I always try to look to the future and live for today,” he says.
His daughter, who is about to turn 20, is training to be a Web designer. His relationship with her mother didn’t last. Karsitz’s father still lives in what was East Germany.
Karsitz says that his generation lived with the East-West tensions every day, but they are “meaningless” today to his daughter and her friends.
“My daughter has no inkling of what it was really like then. Our generation is still working through it all, to some extent. East and West come together everywhere in this city now. At your job, for example, you work with people from both sides of the wall, and you notice the divisions a little bit, the different outlooks. But for her it plays no role whatsoever,” he says.
I watched the Charlie Gibson segment last night on the Berlin wall falling, read an AP story about about it this morning, and just read the NPR story here. It is sad that there was no mention of the east west tension, and America’s roll in maintaining and island of freedom in a sea of tyranny. No mention of the Berliln airlift, the years of standing toe to toe with the Russians, no mention of President Ronald Reagan and his challange to Gorbachov to “open the gate and tear down this wall…very sad..Maybe this is something else America needs to apologize for..
I know that few people actually care, but I will post this anyway:
The VFW, in their book [i][b]Cold War Clashes: Confronting Communism, 1945-1991[/b][/i], document [b]382[/b] American servicemen [b]killed by hostile fire during[/b] the “cold” portion of [b]the Cold War[/b]. That number is of unclassified and documented deaths, and it does not include training/operational deaths or the deaths during the Korean Police Action or the Vietnam Conflict. Also, that number does not include civilian deaths due to the Cold War or intelligence personnel killed.
To put the 382 casualty number in perspective, the Spanish American War had 385 “Battle deaths” and there were 147 “Battle deaths” during the Gulf War (1990-1991). So, the “cold” portion of the Cold War had 3 fewer unclassified US service member deaths due to hostile fire than the Spanish American War and more than double the KIAs of the Gulf War.
Officially, the period of the Cold War was from 1945-1991 and should include the 33,741 Battle deaths of Korea and the 47,424 Battle deaths of Vietnam for a grand total of 81, 547 US Service members killed by hostile fire during the Cold War.