Walter Reuther: Address before the Berlin Freedom Rally

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Reuther's life, tragically cut short by a plane crash, spanned the politically charged years of the cold war. After World War II, the city of Berlin was divided into four sectors occupied, respectively, by the British, the Americans, and the French (West Berlin) and the Soviet Union (East Berlin). As conditions in the Soviet-controlled portion of the city deteriorated, German citizens flocked to West Berlin by the thousands. To stem what was fast becoming a hemorrhage of skilled professional workers, the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev demanded in 1959 that all Western powers vacate Berlin, stating that the city would be turned over entirely to the East German government. The Western powers refused to leave, setting the stage for one of many cold war crises in Berlin.

In his youth, Reuther had allied himself with the Communist Party but, like many Americans who had been leftists in the 1930s, denounced any such affiliations following the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939. In the political debates of the 1950s cold war, Reuther advocated a dialogue between the United States and the Soviet Union, a position that rankled many conservatives who were staunchly opposed to any hint of rapprochement with the Soviets. In 1959 the mayor of Berlin, Willy Brandt, invited Reuther to speak at a freedom rally organized by West Germany's trade unions. Speaking in German, Reuther addressed a crowd of six hundred thousand at the Brandenburg Gate, where John F. Kennedy would deliver a famous address in 1963 and Ronald Reagan would in 1987 call on the Soviets to tear down the wall separating East and West Germany.

Reuther begins characteristically by linking his audience with the American labor movement. As corporations began to organize globally, Reuther believed that workers would need to also organize internationally to achieve their objectives. A founding member of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, Reuther envisioned a worldwide labor movement that rejected Communism. This speech to the West German trade unions thus emphasizes the common interest of American and German workers in freedom.

Reuther refers to the earlier Berlin blockade. In 1948 the Soviets restricted access to the city in reaction against Western efforts to integrate the city's quadrants, including the introduction of currency reform measures. With ground transportation halted, no food or other supplies could get into the city. President Truman ordered planes to deliver needed materials to West Berlin in what is now known as the Berlin airlift, one of the earliest showdowns between the United States and the Soviet Union in the cold war. The airlift became a symbol of Soviet tyranny and American freedom during the cold war, and Reuther invokes that history early in his speech to reinforce the tie between Berlin and the United States.

Reuther uses the term iron curtain, made famous by British prime minister Winston Churchill in a speech given in 1946 at an American college. In this part of his address, Reuther extends the community of those who cherish “freedom and human dignity” to Poland, Hungary, and China. Poznan, a city in Poland, was the site of a massive anti-Communist demonstration in 1956 in which more than fifty people were killed. That same year, Soviet troops entered Budapest, Hungary, to quell student demonstrations. Finally, in March 1959, Tibetans rebelled unsuccessfully against the Communist Chinese in Lhasa; as a consequence, the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, went into exile in India. Similarly to the way in which he sets management in opposition to labor and the American public, Reuther joins several nations with America in opposition to Communist aggression.

American labor unions, particularly the industrial organizations, had a history of engaging in leftist political activities. In the heart of the cold war years, Reuther's speech to the May Day rally in West Germany sent a strong message that organized labor stood against Communism and Soviet aggression. Distancing himself personally from his past political affiliations, Reuther nevertheless signaled his own rather liberal position of favoring détente with the USSR. This document shows Reuther's political savvy as well as his belief in a broader, international cause for organized labor.