Stanford Student Letters and Memoirs

May 4, 1960

I came to Berlin with certain misconceptions (as I can see now in retrospect) which I think arose from my reading of American newspapers and listening to American TV, and from my conversations with kids who had been there. Thus several of my own wrong inaccurate ideas are perhaps shared by most Americans. I expected above all to see in Berlin the comparison of the standards of living provided by Capitalist vs Communist economies. I also expected to observe clear examples of suppression of freedom of action and the "big lie", used to mislead epople [people] in the Communist system. My misconceptions lay in the simple images I had drawn of the evils of Communism vs the cirtue [virtue] of the free world- the contrasts that do exist are more subtle and not so readily visible to the eye.

One did see in Berlin the differences if physical appearance at the border in east and west Berlin. In west B. there is tremendous building activity both downtown and in the suburbs and the skyline is dotted with numerous beautiful, modern structures. There are endless new stores of all kinds, displaying a variety of consumer goods (fine ones) and the streets are crwoded [crowded] with shoppers. In East B. there are acres of war ruins, where only the loose rubble has been cleared away, leaving shells of bldgs. and here and there a lonely survivor head above the flat, bush covered ground around it. There is Stalin Allee as an example of the new construction style, but its tasteless design (after the Russian model) is all the more depressing, and its stores are obviously fewer and contain less in both variety and quality in the west.

But we msut be cautious in the conclusions drawn from these observations. West B. doesn't prove the success of Capitalism per se- it is economically a completely unnatrual [unnatural] situation in two ways. It is entirely cut off from its natural source of food supplies; it must there fore be subsidized by the west German gov't to the extent of $370 million dollars a year, and its industries are also given tax discounts etc. Neither do the conditions in east B. simply prove the failure of the Communist system; rather it probably illustrates deliberate choices on the part of the east gov't to develop factories ahead of consumer goods or housing projects.

When I turned to the subject of apparent freedom of action, I was again surprised. For, in walking around east B. the people we saw didn't look any sadder or more fearful than those walking around West B; they seemed to go on about their own business, etc. As to propaganda, again the black-white version was unsatisfactory. To begin with, one senses everywhere the presence of two propaganda lines, one from the Communists and one from the wests. They are quite alike in their exaggerations too:

The West says:

1. East Germany is a country of 17,000,000 enslaved people, held under the heel of Communism by Russian tanks and soldiers

2. West B. is a beacon of freedom to suppressed peoples in the midst of a Red sea

3. West B. must remain exactlly [exactly] as is and even to discuss changing the status-quo in any way is dangerous and unwise

The East says:

1. West G. is a hotbed of Naziism and militarism

2. West B. is the center of imperalism, espionage and agitation.

3. West B. mus [must] become a demilitarized free city.