The Berlin Wall by Norman Gelb

Author:Norman Gelb
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2016-09-11T23:00:00+00:00

9 — ‘Why Didn’t We Know?’

SURPRISE, WHEN IT happens to a government, is likely to be a complicated, diffuse, bureaucratic thing. It includes neglect of responsibility, but also responsibility so poorly defined or so ambiguously delegated that action gets lost. It includes gaps in intelligence that, like a string of pearls too precious to wear, is too sensitive to give to those who need it. It includes the alarm that fails to work, but also the alarm that has gone off so often it has been disconnected. It includes the unalert watchman, but also the one who knows he’ll be chewed out by his superiors if he gets high authority out of bed. It includes the contingencies that occur to no one, but also those that everyone assumes somebody else is taking care of. It includes straight-forward procrastination, but also decisions protracted by internal disagreement. It includes, in addition, the inability of individual human beings to rise to the occasion until they are sure it is the occasion — which is usually too late ... Finally ... surprise may include some measure of genuine novelty introduced by the enemy, and possibly some sheer bad luck.

Thomas C. Schelling[101]

*

There was a six-hour time difference between Berlin and Washington. Early morning in central Europe was late night of the previous day on the east coast of the United States. If Honecker had deliberately timed his operation for when American leaders would be least prepared to respond quickly, he had chosen shrewdly. There weren’t many people in the American capital — or in any of the places they had gone to get away from the oppressive heat of the city — sharply attuned on a Saturday night to the latest developments far away from home.

Washington was to remain very much in the dark about the story unfolding in Berlin for many hours after the bales of barbed wire were first pushed off the trucks on the sector border. A lot of disjointed reporting came in at first — bits and pieces of news being passed along by the wire services: East German troops and police had taken up positions on the sector dividing line; they were tearing up pavement; they were stringing barbed wire. But news agency reporters in Berlin were not reading too much into what they were at first able to see happening. For one thing, they were too busy covering the story as it developed in the dark of night. For another, like everyone else there, they didn’t know exactly what the Communists had in mind. Pedestrian, vehicular and train traffic between the Soviet and western sectors was being interrupted. The Communists, as always, were making extravagant declarations. It was a good enough story without speculative forecasts about how long the East Germans were prepared to go on with the prodigious effort and expense of manning a barbed-wire, city-centre frontier with troops and police.

Having fielded their share of unfounded rumours and exaggerations at various times during the previous few weeks, the main bureaus of the news agencies were being cautious.

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