22 years ago yesterday the"Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart" came down

[Ichingcarpenter]

The Berlin Wall was officially referred to as the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart" (German: Antifaschistischer Schutzwall) by GDR authorities, implying that neighbouring West Germany had not been fully de-Nazified.<2> The West Berlin city government sometimes referred to it as the "Wall of Shame"—

In 1989, a radical series of political changes occurred in the Eastern Bloc, associated with the liberalization of the Eastern Bloc's authoritarian systems and the erosion of political power in the pro-Soviet governments in nearby Poland and Hungary. After several weeks of civil unrest, the East German government announced on 9 November 1989 that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans crossed and climbed onto the wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. Over the next few weeks, a euphoric public and souvenir hunters chipped away parts of the wall;

[Kolesar]

1. The threat of Nazism featured heavily in Soviet "messaging" after the war

That is what I recall from Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's books.

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. Not just Soviet, either

the "threat" of a re-unified Germany was something that some Western leaders worried about as well (including the governments at the time of France and Germany).

[datasuspect]

3. I remember St. Ronaldus Regus Reaganus standing imperiously with his Viking broadsword hacking away

at the Berlin Wall.

That was when the world knelt before him and wept tears of gratitude.