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The 1961 Berlin standoff between NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries is one of those pivotal moments that give us an insight into what preceded it and what has followed it right up to today.

The Battle of Berlin, we may recall, concluded on 2 May 1945, and the German Reich’s remaining troops unconditionally surrendered between 8 May 1945 (VE Day) and 11 May 1945, when over 600,000 Wehrmacht soldiers laid down their arms in Czechoslovakia. The situation, then, was that nothing short of nuclear war could stop the Red Army advancing all the way to the English Channel, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated as American bluffs that there would be consequences for the Soviets, should they advance beyond the Elbe.

Stalin, as he smoked his pipe in far away Moscow, was not unaware of all these instances of American conniving. Italy was occupied solely by Western powers, bankrupt Greece, which foolishly wrote off Germany’s war-time reparations, was to suffer a horrific and totally avoidable civil war, fascist Spain was to be brought under the American umbrella and the French Army, which had been thoroughly trounced in 1940, was resurrected out of thin air and allowed occupy parts of Germany as a victorious power beholden to America.

Europe lay in ruins and the Americans launched their Marshall Plan, firstly, to keep the American economy, which the War rescued from the doldrums of the Depression, humming and, secondly, to allow Europe enjoy the crumbs of America’s new found prosperity as a means of making Communism anathema.

Although the world may have been at peace, America was not and her leaders remain as fixated on their goal of pushing the Soviets back from Berlin to well beyond Moscow, and the Russians remain as fixated on not being outflanked, as they were during the ’61 Berlin crisis, which arose because West Berlin was a pivotal NATO spy centre in the heart of East Germany.

Although the Berlin Crisis was the last major European political and military incident of the Cold War concerning the status of Berlin, and of post–World War II Germany, it was no means the last word on the matter and two famous speeches, one by POTUS JFK and the other by POTUS Ronald Reagan, are worth looking at to appreciate where we are and where we are going.

Civis Romanus Sum: Ich bin ein Berliner

Civis Romanus sum. I am a Roman. Such was the first memorable soundbite Jack Kennedy used in his famous Berlin address, and Ich bin ein Berliner, I am a Berliner, was the second. But, even though St Paul used Cicero’s famous retort on more than one occasion to evade crucifixion, it has to be stressed that the Romans were total and utter savages. Not only did they crucify Jesus but the X Fretensis and VI Ferrata legions, who were active in Greater Syria at the time, were so fond of tacking miscreants up that they often ran out of entire forests, never mind the wood for crosses to be found there.

And then there are Caesar’s Gallic wars, as well as Caesar’s self-serving spin on those acts of genocide. Caesar, who had no right to invade Gaul, slaughtered the Gauls in a text book genocide that would be familiar to any student of the United States of America, whose entire structure uses the rotten Roman Empire as its blueprint. If you go to Washington DC and cannot see the buildings that are modeled in Rome’s image and the hot air spouted by its politicians, who think they are Cicero returned from the dead, then you need both your eyes and ears tested.

And then we have Jack Kennedy’s Ich bin ein Berliner, I am a Berliner crap, which he spouted in 1963, a mere 18 years after the Battle of Berlin ended. If JFK had been referring to any of the combatants, who slugged it out on those streets during that battle, or any of the civilians, who had survived it, then his blarney might have made some sense. But no! He was saying that the residents of west Berlin in 1963 were the epitome of his American brand of democracy, freedom, Coca Cola, Disneyland and the San Fernando Valley’ s American way of life.

The truth of the matter is west Berlin in ’63 was a broken city, sustained only by the pfennigs the British, French and American troops, who occupied it, tossed to the locals, a good many of whom had moved there because Germany’s federal government made it an attractive option for students and hippies. The Federal Republic’s heart beat had moved elsewhere, to cities like Frankfurt, Munich and Cologne and well JFK and his hand-picked audience, who listened to his empty soundbites, knew it.

When JFK railed in that speech about democracy, freedom and progress, what he actually meant is that the American military occupation, which is ongoing in Germany to this day, would continue. When the former Hollywood actor POTUS Reagan made his famous speech on 12th June 1987 to an equally uncomprehending German audience, demanding that Gorbachev tear down some wall or other, he too meant that the American military occupation, which is ongoing to this day, would continue.

Not only does that occupation continue, but the Americans increasingly occupy what remains of the minds of most Germans. During the Cold War, which reached its peak at the time of the Berlin Crisis, Germans, particularly in Bavaria, were very opposed to their homeland being a parking lot for America’s nuclear arsenal on the very sound grounds that stationing such weapons of mass destruction there would necessitate a very robust Soviet nuclear response.

Though it was that fear of nuclear retaliation that led to the rise of the German Greens, the irony is that those CIA fifth columnists are now Germany’s chief cheerleaders for Armageddon. Given their rise to power, one has to wonder if there is any hope for Germany or, indeed, of the world this side of the Day of Judgment.

Germany allowed its American masters, together with Norway’s Quislings, to blow up their oil pipelines and thereby accentuate the self-deindustrialisation of their homeland. Post-war Germany, which once championed peace, now wants their American owners to station intermediate-range Tomahawk and SM-6 missiles, and even more hi tech hypersonic systems, on their home turf.

All very well, but as all of those put Moscow within range from Berlin, Putin and his chums cannot take any of that lying down. Whereas Stalin occupied the Baltics to stop Berlin outflanking Russia, it now seems Berlin is prepared not only to outflank Russia but to also go through the front door with its array of German-based American missiles.

The Berlin crisis is not over. Perhaps it could have been averted had Stalin overrun Finland and had Zhukov marched all the way to the English Channel. Who is to know? What we do know is that the High Command of the Russian Armed Forces are duty bound to protect, in good times and bad, the people of the Russian Federation no matter whether, as in the Berlin Crisis of ’61, that means de-escalation or, as it may mean in the months ahead, massive retaliation by wiping Berlin, the Greens and all of Germany off the global map once and forever.