A reader asks….
“As a matter of interest, did anyone see Matt Frei’s three part series on Berlin? Overall it was enjoyable and sympathetic. but his treatment of the fall of the Wall made no mention whatever of Ronald Reagan – having portrayed JFK as a continuing inspiration – certainly no footage of the Gipper’s call for Mr Gorbachev to \’tear down that wall\’. He contented himself with the remark that east Germany ‘imploded’ with no further explanation or contextualisation than that. Quite dreadful.
Just imagine if Obama had been President at the time !
And Frei Boy has a degree in German, got his BBC start in Germany. So the BBC will look to him as at least as much an expert on Germany as they think he is on the US. Matt Frei is a political commentator and not a respectable journalist.
This man did more to dismatle communism then anyone and the BBC?? Just ignore it.
I take your point David, I did wonder the same but……. there is different way of looking at – Reagan was more responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union itself, the fall of the Berlin wall, whilst obviously part of this, was more down to internal pressures in east germany. Reagans triumph was more to cripple the soviet union at its heart – moscow – through unprecedented spending (take note fisal conservatives) that the Russians couldn’t compete with. the wall’s collapse was partly down to this policy, but partly down to the unrest caused by soviet mismanagement all those years.