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(Ernst Reuter - first Mayor of Postwar Berlin - no easy gig)

With the 20th anniversary of the end of the Berlin Wall coming up, I've been running through some events involving Germany, and most notably Berlin, during the height of the Cold War.

Ernst Reuter had the somewhat herculean task of being the first Lord Mayor of postwar Berlin. In 1948 he was faced with the blockade of Berlin by the Soviet Army which effectively cut off all supplies of food and fuel to the city. Reuter appealed to the West for help and it began the famous Berlin Airlift, which singlehandedly saved the city from starvation.

On March 30, 1949, Reuter visited the U.S. and was invited to participate in a segment of Meet The Press where the subject of Berlin and the Cold War in general were discussed.

May Craig: “Mister Mayor I’m thinking of it in the larger sense, as long as the Communists hold the basic doctrine of world revolution how can there be peace unless everybody else submits?”

Ernst Reuter: “ As long as Western powers and the free world is not insisting on the liberation and not fulfilling the task to liberate these peoples who want to be free, that will be very difficult. But in the long run the Soviets cannot stay against the greater moral strengths of the western peoples, that is impossible. I don’t know, maybe after twenty, thirty years we will have a war, I don’t know. But for the time being I can see the possibility to come to a solution, at least for the time being without a war.”

Reuter, who died in 1953 never got to see the fruits of his labor, but he was a very integral part of the Big Picture.

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(East German refugee in 1989 - Giddy relief mixed with nightsticks)

In what would eventually be the collapse of the Soviet Union and the former Eastern Bloc in general, the exodus from East Germany started hot on the heels of news that Hungary had decided to open its borders to Austria, allowing some 60,000 the opportunity to migrate West.

The floodgates opened and soon highways and embassies were jammed with East Germans, heading West.

John Holland (CBS News): “ The latest report is around 250 people approached the back fence of the West German Embassy which has been cordoned off by barricades and guarded by police. But when police saw the numbers of people coming the simply let them pass and they climbed over the back fence into the embassy, adding to the estimated 5,000 East German refugees believed to be in the embassy compound. West German Red Cross officials at this hour are saying that they cannot any longer accommodate new arrivals, but West German embassy sources say they are still coming in and place is still being made. And in some cases the embassy employees are giving up their offices in order to shelter refugees.”

The beginning of October was just the tip of the iceberg.

(Howard K. Smith, Daniel Schorr, Charles Collingwood, Eric Severeid, Ernest Leiser, David Schoenbrun discuss Berlin)

"If, at this conference we could make a beginning toward relaxing the tension then, as they believe, in diplomacy as in forestry that great oaks from little acorns grow, perhaps we could plant an acorn at this conference."- Charles Collingwood.

On the eve of the G-20 Summit in London, I was thinking back on previous summits, back when there was a Cold War. Before The Soviet Union dissolved, everything that seemed to go wrong in the world after 1945 was either directly or indirectly attributed to the goings on of The Evil Empire. The ever-present threat of Communism seemed to be the one glue that held most of Europe and the Western Hemisphere together. It was the one fear that held everything else in check. All out nuclear war was never far away from peoples minds, and the threat of total annihilation made for many sleepless nights.

And so it was this particular Summit Conference, held over the question of Germany, or to be specific, West Berlin that drove all the Super Powers to the negotiation table. The question of reunification was argued since the end of the War and would stay that way until well into the 1980's. And it was always the potential flash point for a crisis threatening to become World War 3.

So fifty years ago next month, on May 10 1959, the Geneva Conference of Foreign Ministers would begin, in another attempt to negotiate another Cold War strategy. Nothing was particularly accomplished, and whatever was achieved died the following year with the U-2 incident and the eventual building of the Berlin Wall. On the eve of the Conference, a panel of CBS News correspondents got together to discuss what lay ahead. It's interesting to compare journalistic skills then and now - how, even within a news organization there was no lock-step point of view, opinions ran the gamut.

Information, even in the relatively primitive days of the 1950's was considered important.

("It is far easier to make war than to make peace" - Georges Clemenceau - French Statesman, 1919)

2009 is the year for a lot of milestone anniversaries. The Moon landing in 1969, Tiananmen Square, the reunification of Germany, the first open elections in Glasnost-era Soviet Union and Solidarity's sweep to power in Poland - all in 1989. Pretty impressive year.

Post World War 2 has always been a fascination with me. Certainly the Cold War, the dissolving of former colonies and the emergence of Nuclear Superpowers were major factors in shaping Foreign Policy as we know it today. The role of Secretary of State became much more prominent during this time, probably more than any other in our history. George C. Marshall is mostly remembered as the author of The Marshall Plan and the system of Foreign Aid in helping rehabilitate countries devastated by the war.

But antagonisms between the Soviet Union and the former Allies began pretty much from the get-go, when the question of what to do about Germany came up.

Germany was unified in 1989 - it didn't happen overnight. Beginning in 1947, as this clip from Marshall's return from a failed London Conference points out, The Soviet Union was dead against any idea of unification. A stand which would eventually lead to the construction of the infamous Berlin Wall

The issue was simple - it was whether or not Germany was to continue divided, or whether the Allies could agree to recreate a unified Germany. Unless this could be achieved, all other questions relating to Germany would remain academic.