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A Brief History of Walls (Including Berlin’s)

“Has Donald Trump ever had a first thought about the Berlin Wall?” a former Times correspondent in Germany asks.

Many tourists who flock to Berlin want to see what’s left of the Berlin Wall. Remnants are not hard to find.Credit...Gordon Welters for The New York Times

To the Editor:

Has President Trump ever heard of the Berlin Wall? It is hard to think so from his explanation of his decision to stop the government shutdown to give congressional leaders a chance to provide funding for a wall between the United States and Mexico (“Shutdown Ends With No Funding for Wall,” front page, Jan. 26).

Part of his speech was a paean to walls:

“They do work. No matter where you go, they work. Israel built a wall, 99.9 percent successful. Won’t be any different for us. They keep criminals out. They save good people from attempting a very dangerous journey from other countries, thousands of miles, because they think they have a glimmer of hope of coming through. With a wall, they don’t have that hope.”

No, and people living in East Germany didn’t have that hope for almost three decades after the Berlin Wall went up in 1961. Every American president from John F. Kennedy to George H.W. Bush denounced the cruelty of that wall. Its demise in 1989 led to the reunification of Germany, a great victory for democracy and a fatal defeat for the Communist dictatorships in East Berlin and Moscow that had erected it.

Now, Vladimir Putin has second thoughts about all that; has Donald Trump ever had a first thought about the Berlin Wall?

Craig R. Whitney
Brooklyn
The writer is a former editor and correspondent, including in Germany, for The New York Times.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 22 of the New York edition with the headline: A Brief History of Walls (Including Berlin’s). Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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