The Wall

Red Baron admits that we Germans have a particular attitude to walls and, by the way, to wheels as well. The latter is natural in a country relying on its economy with Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes. German carmakers do not intend to reinvent the wheel but are still betting on stone-age technology, particularly air-polluting diesel engines.

Back to walls. I still vividly remember Ronald Reagan contemplating the Berlin Wall near the Brandenburg Gate on June 12, 1987, imploring," Mr. Gorbatschow, tear down this wall!" Note: pre-Merkel Chancellor Helmut Kohl, as usual, grinning, this time in the background.

In 2019 another wall emerged as a protagonist of world history, symbolizing the struggle for humanity and freedom, with POTUS demanding, "This barrier is absolutely critical to border security."

This is how German cartoonist Klaus Stuttmann© "saw" POTUS on television

In his speech on television, POTUS claimed, "The wall will also be paid for, indirectly, by the great new trade deal we have made with Mexico."

Since Mexico will pay for it, Democrats see no reason to yield to the president's demand for 5.7 billion U$ to finance "his" wall. Subsequently, POTUS refused to raise the US debt ceiling, thus forcing his government into a shutdown. Government institutions stopped working, and their employees were no longer paid. I once lived through a shutdown in Wahington, DC, as a tourist in 2013.

POTUS is desperately trying to fulfill his campaign pledge, where he promised to build a 1,000-mile concrete southern border wall. Now, he calls the wall whatever you like, a steel barrier, sometimes even a fence (wooden?), although he has frequently rejected suggestions that it is just a fence.

In an interview Senate, minority leader Chuck Schumer mentioned a wall 20 feet high. Still, historical examples show that to fight tunneling techniques, it is more important how deep a wall reaches into the ground.

Since ancient times, people have dug tunnels to "undercome" walls. Here is an example of what the French troops under the command of General Louis Hector de Villars achieved during the siege of Freiburg in October 1706. Mineurs* (sappers) approached the city in approches* (covered ditches) until they reached the wall when they started to dig tunnels. After filling the tunnel stub with gunpowder and igniting the fuse, they hoped for a breche* (breach) in the wall.
*note that all those military terms are French

French miners approached Freiburg's walls from the west in 1706.
The fortifications were built by the famous French architect Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban
thirty years earlier.

A recent example is the escape tunnels dug under the Berlin wall from 1961 to 1989.

Built escape tunnels are marked in red.

Note that the border protection facilities built by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) comprised a pre-wall, a barbed-wire fence, a death strip with patrolling dogs, observation towers manned by border guards with submachine guns, and the proper wall right on the border, and visible from West-Berlin.

These were long tunnels of about 50 meters (©Onetz.de)

While President Reagen had a clear message concerning a political wall, POTUS instead has a vague idea about his wall. In his televised address to the American people, he said, "So sad, so terrible," which I would like to agree with and add, "so true."

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