I went through the Berlin Wall in the spring of 1971, as a SP4 in the U.S. Army. Passed through Checkpoint Charlie (in uniform) as a part of the "Berlin Orientation Tour" that got offered to American servicemen back then. Rode from Frankfurt to Berlin on the "duty train", still remember peeking out the car window late at night as we crossed from West Germany to East Germany.
While on the east side in Berlin, they let us go on our own for a couple of hours. I remember going into the "fancy" department store, and seeing rows and rows of radios. Seemingly lots of product to choose from, but for the fact that every one was the same identical radio.
I recall being at an observation point on the western side, looking over the wall, watching the Stasi zip along in the no-man's land...
The twenty year span from the first moon landing to the fall of The Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union probably represents the high water mark of Western Civilization (I chose that phrase thinking of the memorial on the Gettysburg battlefield that signifies the "high water mark" of the Confederacy).
It's been downhill ever since...
