West Berlin officials tried to forestall a speech at the Berlin Wall by raising new security problems. Reagan’s White House planners had said they wanted an audience of roughly forty thousand people, but Diepgen’s aides said it would not be feasible to have so large a crowd. There would of course have to be security checks on those who were coming to see the U.S. president, and the West Berlin government didn’t have the time or personnel necessary to check so many people.
American officials once again overrode the objections from Diepgen’s government. They decided to round up a crowd for Reagan on their own from the American community in West Berlin and from leading German employers. “We went to all the big companies here, and we said we want to invite all your people to see the president,” said John Kornblum, the head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in West Berlin. “You give us your employment rolls, and we’ll run them through the police computer.” The United States and its allies retained direct control over the West Berlin police department. Over a period of several days, American officials took the lists of approximately sixty thousand workers at German companies and ran them one by one through computers inside the U.S. mission, checking their dates of birth and police records to make sure that no impostors or troublemakers were on the list. Everyone who was cleared was given a ticket and was told to bring a photo identification card to the event.8
When U.S. Secret Service officials arrived in West Berlin, they had their own security questions. What if someone in East Berlin—say, a representative of East Germany’s Ministry of State Security, known as the Stasi—tried to take a shot at the American president? U.S. officials decided to erect a huge bulletproof screen behind the podium where Reagan would speak.
In the end, the Americans were so worried about security for Reagan that they resorted to an extraordinary measure, one tinged with irony. In order to lay the groundwork for Reagan’s anti-Soviet speech, the United States sought the quiet help and cooperation of the Soviet Union.
On June 9, 1987, an American diplomat paid a visit to the spacious embassy of the Soviet Union along Unter den Linden in East Berlin, a few hundred yards from the Brandenburg Gate. He asked for Soviet cooperation in making sure that Reagan’s trip went smoothly. According to Egon Krenz, the Politburo member then in charge of security for East Germany’s Communist regime, this American official gave the Soviets all the detailed logistics for the American president’s movements in West Berlin: Reagan would travel from Schloss Bellevue to the Reichstag, he would step out on the balcony of the Reichstag, and he would give a speech before the Brandenburg Gate that would be twenty minutes long. On the day before Reagan’s arrival, the entire Tiergarten section of West Berlin near the site of the speech would be closed, while U.S. and West German security officials scoured the area, up close to the Berlin Wall, to look for weapons or explosives. During the event at the Reichstag and during Reagan’s speech at the Brandenburg Gate, sharpshooters would be positioned on the roof of the Reichstag, armed with submachine guns, scanning the full 360-degree perimeter. U.S. officials also informed the Soviet embassy that loudspeakers would be used to amplify Reagan’s speech at the Brandenburg Gate. It was possible, they said, that the speech might be audible on the East German side of the Wall.9
Soviets officials passed along these details to Krenz, ordering East German security officials to make sure there would be no problems during Reagan’s visit. Krenz thought it was revealing that the United States had gone to the Soviet Union for help. It was just another sign that the Soviets were still in charge of East Berlin, just as the Americans, British, and French were the ultimate authorities in West Berlin.10
For East German officials, the meeting between the Americans and the Soviets raised another set of anxieties. Their regime, the German Democratic Republic, had no popular legitimacy; it depended on Soviet support and Soviet troops. What would happen if the Soviet Union altered course? That prospect no longer seemed so far-fetched. Gorbachev was not only easing controls on dissent at home, but he was also seeking to transform the Soviet Union’s relationship with the West. He was even making changes in the Warsaw Pact, the military alliance on which East Germany depended for its security. Was it possible that the two superpowers could work out some deal, some accommodation, that would undermine the East German government of Erich Honecker?
Curiously, the conclusions Krenz reached in East Berlin ran parallel to some of the views of Germans on the other side of the Berlin Wall. Diepgen, West Berlin’s mayor, was also extremely mistrustful of the two superpowers; he, too, feared that the United States and the Soviet Union might be working together, even conspiring, against the Germans.
Diepgen had been frustrated in his attempts to take part in ceremonies in East Berlin and to have Honecker cross through the wall to an event in the Western part of the city to commemorate the 750th birthday of the city of Berlin. The Reagan administration had made plain its opposition to Diepgen’s going to East Berlin, and the Soviet Union rejected the idea of Honecker’s going to West Berlin. “I have no proof, but it seemed as though the Russians and the United States didn’t want this,” reflected Diepgen two decades later.11 Many others in West Germany had similar views. After Honecker had formally rejected Diepgen’s invitation for an exchange of visits, the U.S. mission in West Berlin cabled Washington: “It seems likely to us that this episode will strengthen the belief of many here… that it is powerful foreigners, and not Germans, East or West, who call the shots on German soil.”12
Diepgen and Krenz had different goals and interests. As West Berlin’s mayor, Diepgen was seeking a reconciliation with the East Germans that could somehow overcome the divisions of the Berlin Wall. In the East, Krenz was attempting merely to preserve the tight control of the East German government on its own side of the wall. West German officials were hoping that Gorbachev represented the beginning of fundamental changes in Moscow. The East German leadership was hoping for the reverse, that Gorbachev would preserve the status quo.
Nevertheless, in their shared mistrust of collaboration between Washington and Moscow, both Diepgen and Krenz were reflecting a point of view, a submerged German nationalism, that was common in the mid- to late-1980s. Ronald Reagan viewed the Cold War as an economic and ideological conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. Yet in Berlin, there were quite a few Germans who saw the Cold War also as a struggle against a world dominated by the two superpowers.
None of these leaders, whether in the West or in the East, anticipated what would happen in the streets of Berlin during the week before Ronald Reagan’s arrival. Suddenly, politicians on both sides were presented by the uncomforting reality that pop culture operates with its own dynamics, its own diplomacy.
It was early June, the time of year when Berlin begins a run of glorious cool summer weather. On the evening of Saturday, June 6, 1987, tens of thousands of young residents of West Berlin thronged outside the Reichstag building, about two hundred yards from the Berlin Wall, to hear the first of three nights of open-air rock concerts with star British performers. The headliner for the first night was David Bowie; he was to be followed on Sunday night by the Eurythmics (“Sweet Dreams Are Made of This”) and on Monday by Phil Collins and Genesis. RIAS (Radio in the American Sector), the West Berlin radio station started under the American occupation, had been promoting the Reichstag rock concerts for weeks, and these radio broadcasts could be heard in East Berlin. On the night of the first concert, the loudspeakers were turned toward the Berlin Wall, so that Bowie and his guitar could be heard on the other side.