Mr Etges, when the Liberty Bell arrived at Schöneberg Town Hall, over 400,000 people waited in front of the town hall and in the surrounding streets to hear the bell. It was a highly emotional moment in politically turbulent times. What do we know about the motivations of the 16 million Americans who donated to the bell?
By 1947 at the latest, the Cold War had become a defining issue in US foreign and domestic policy. Unlike after World War I, the vast majority of Americans now advocated for their country to take on an international leadership role, providing military, political, economic, and cultural support, especially to Western Europe, against the communist threat posed by the Soviet Union—even though this meant enormous expenditures for foreign aid.
The divided Germany and the divided Berlin played a central role in this. The US gave the occupied enemy country, which was initially supposed to be kept economically weak, a new chance in an astonishingly short time. The fact that millions of Americans had German ancestors certainly played a role, as did the formation of blocs during the Cold War. The airlift carried out by the US together with Great Britain to supply the population of West Berlin during the blockade that lasted more than 300 days in 1948/49 also changed the relationship, particularly with the West Berliners.
The fact that around 16 million American citizens signed the Freedom Pledge and donated more than a million dollars to set up Radio Free Europe and produce the Freedom Bell was also thanks to a PR campaign. Founded in 1949 and led by Lucius D. Clay, the National Committee for a Free Europe cleverly linked central ideas and symbols of US history with the fight against communism, to which citizens could make a small but concrete contribution. The bell is a replica of the American Liberty Bell, a national symbol associated with the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the ensuing revolution. The inscription on Berlin‘s Liberty Bell is based on a quote from President Abraham Lincoln’s most famous speech, the Gettysburg Address. It proclaims that the world should experience a rebirth of freedom (that this world under God shall have a new birth of freedom). The Freedom Bell, intended for Berlin, was created as part of the so-called Crusade for Freedom, which began in
1950, and traveled through 26 US states before being hung in the tower of the Schöneberg Town Hall on October 21, 1950. It was not until much later that it became known that the National Committee had cooperated closely with the US State Department and the CIA.
What did people in America know about the airlift and the situation of the people in West Berlin?
The blockade of West Berlin, which began on June 24, 1948, was one of the greatest challenges facing the US in the early Cold War. The New York Times described the conflict as a kind of final battle for Berlin, quoting General Lucius D. Clay, who explicitly ruled out a withdrawal from the city. The US military governor knew he had the American public behind him. In a poll conducted by the Gallup polling institute a few weeks earlier, 80 per cent of respondents said the US should remain in Berlin, even if it meant a new war.
The airlift organized under Clay’s command was repeatedly reported on prominently, and Mayor Ernst Reuter’s famous appeal for solidarity to the “peoples of the world” fell on receptive ears among Americans. The ultimately successful airlift also had unexpected and unplanned consequences. On the one hand, it was an important factor in the transformation from “enmity to friendship.” This was true in many ways, both on a personal and political level. On the other hand, the defense of the freedom of the western part of the divided city became a core element of American credibility in the Cold War, and West Berlin became “America’s Berlin.” President John F. Kennedy expressed the enormous symbolic significance of the city like no other during his visit to Berlin on June 26, 1963. “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words: Ich bin ein Berliner.”
Currently, there are increasingly serious conflicts around the world. The Liberty Bell stands for peace and freedom. With the Liberty Oath, it reminds us that the dignity of each individual is inviolable and that it is important to “resist aggression and tyranny wherever they appear on earth.”
The Freedom Bell and the Liberty Oath are, in a sense, relics of the Cold War: they had a clearly anti-communist thrust, and after 1990, their promise was fulfilled for million people in Eastern Europe as well.
Political developments in many European countries—including here in Germany and in the US—show that peace and freedom cannot be taken for granted. Even today, they must be defended against their enemies. In this sense, the oath remains an important commitment to human rights and, at the same time, a pledge to take action and fight actively to preserve freedom and democracy.
