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The Century: America's Time - 1981-1989: A New World — Transcript

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0:18I am the Edison Phonograph... The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor by air
0:24Ask not what your country can do... President Kennedy has been shot...
0:31That's one small step for man... We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal
0:36[Applause]
0:39Mr. Gorbachov tear down this wall
0:50[Music]
0:59[Music] More people now visit the Vietnam
1:08Veterans Memorial in Washington than any other single site in the nation's capital.
1:17But even before it was dedicated in 1982 it was the subject of bitter
1:23debate everything about the war in Vietnam was controversial.
1:27[Music] People who had been
1:30drafted to fight in that very unpopular war were were actually blamed for uh for
1:35having participated in it. I saw some of these troops coming home from Vietnam
1:39booed and hissed on the and the docks of San Francisco a very shocking sight.
1:45Indeed it was the Vietnam veterans themselves not the government who began
1:51the memorial project. It was designed by a 22-year-old
1:57Yale student named Maya Lynn. Its austere simplicity came as a shock.
2:04[Music] On the wall the names of all the
2:10Americans who died in Vietnam.
2:14Every day friends and loved ones wives and children come here to make a connection.
2:23When I finally got there to the wall I was panicked that I didn't
2:27see his name and I I thought for a moment maybe he's
2:31not here maybe they left him out and so I'm searching searching and in the
2:36minute I finally locked my eyes on his name William A. Branch
2:44That almost felt like maybe that I was looking at myself
2:50for the very first time maybe as his daughter and I never really saw myself
2:54that way before
3:01[Music] Among those who leave mementos and tributes
3:09at the wall are the Vietnam veterans who survived Dennis Manion was there on
3:14Veterans Day in 1982 when the wall was dedicated
3:20I just I don't know I just had to go I knew people who were going to be on
3:26this wall: William Huff, Michael Hiller,
3:33Jim Rice, Benjamin Fordham, Malcolm Mole, Melvin Rimel
3:38I mean I knelt right down in the ground when I saw Malcolm Mole and Melvin Rimmel. The last time I saw either one of
3:48them I was kneeling next to the bags that they were in.
3:54Behind every name there's a story
4:00Captain Hartley a real gung-ho guy and he just couldn't wait to get into combat that was
4:05his biggest goal I remember his tank going by and he
4:13was covered but he used to wear these skintight black gloves and you could see
4:17this arm going by with the black glove on the hand and I just I was crushed
4:26You can see your reflection in the wall
4:31and have your own image somehow superimposed behind the names is
4:37eerie and also comforting in that you can be with friends one more time
4:45[Music]
4:57America lost the war in Vietnam. In 1975 the North Vietnamese took over in
5:051979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and as the 80s began what
5:11many identified as communism was gaining ground in Africa and Central America a
5:16new form of anti-americanism was spreading throughout much of the Muslim
5:20world at home Americans were mired in economic problems skyhigh inflation
5:26interest rates over 20% the country was discouraged but Ronald Reagan with his
5:33infectious optimism persuaded Americans that their country could overcome the
5:37humiliation of Vietnam and was destined again to be as it had once been the
5:44world's military economic even he said the moral leader
6:00On January the 20th 1981 Ronald Wilson Reagan became America's 40th President
6:07Reagan came in at exactly the right time they wanted someone who represented the
6:11older better stronger America.
6:14He made people feel good about being Americans with that whole idea
6:20that that everything's fine and and you know everything's under control
6:32But only two months after the inauguration the country's new found
6:35sense of hope and purpose seemed suddenly in danger
6:46[Music]
6:49It was just unbelievable just
6:55shocking we just couldn't believe what had happened
7:03We had word from uh George Washington Hospital that President Reagan may not live
7:09And then it turned out that the next day that he survived the bullet and
7:14he was actually joking with doctors and it just kind of added to the Superman
7:18myth of of Reagan I think. Within a month the president was
7:24looking hale and hearty again and talking up the future
7:28We have much greatness before us we can restore our economic strength
7:33and build opportunities like none we've ever had before
7:39Ronald Reagan's answer to double- digit inflation record unemployment and
7:44high interest rates was fewer regulations lower taxes and less money
7:49for social programs the immediate effect was a brutal recession
7:54Daryl McDaniels of the rap group Run DMC grew up in Hollis Queens
8:01in New York City. It was really a close-knit type community everybody knew
8:06everybody you knew every kid you knew every Uncle you knew the name of every
8:09dog and cat on the block
8:13[Music] But hit by the recession inner
8:17city neighborhoods deteriorated homelessness became a
8:21prominent feature of urban life.
8:25Listen to Daryl McDaniels
8:29bling at a w high people coming people going people B to die don't act me
8:38because I don't know why but it's like that and that's the way it is
8:45When I came off the road in 1986 I mean it looked like a war zone like a
8:51battle Zone like somebody dropped the bomb. These are the words that iot so I
8:57man I never about the understand. The bomb was crack cocaine in the form of a rock [Music]
9:07This new scourge first came to public attention in 1983. It was cheap it
9:12was instantly addictive and it was devastating in its effects.
9:13You're going to be fine oh yes yes
9:18You know I came off the road and I'm like oh that's um homeboy's sister and I'm like what happened to her
9:26yo she's feing out yo she's cracked out she she's you know selling her body and
9:30she's doing everybody in the neighborhood... what y it's because of
9:34crack man it's because of crack
9:37Crack turned addicts into predators yo she robbed him of and he robbed the father and he killed his
9:43brother and this and that and I was like oh my God
9:47The population in America's ghettos was decimated by jail and death violent
9:54crime Rose by 33% during the decade drug dealing became a quick way
10:00to riches for those with few other opportunities
10:06The drug dealers had two things they had money
10:13and they had power cuz you looking this guy he's 18
10:17years old he's driving a Mercedes Benz he got big gold chain diamond rings all
10:21over the place what does he do for a living
10:25The Great Divide between the haves and the have-nots got wider in the
10:311980s in the world outside the ghetto there were now new legal ways to get
10:36rich quick Reganomics had achieved its goal
10:41inflation had been stopped with regulations reduced and interest rates
10:45lowered Wall Street exploded this was the beginning of the
10:49Roaring 80s
10:52When I started broker government bonds I was 23 years old I was making $75,000 a year
10:58Chris Burke a former waiter with a high school education went to Wall Street and joined a new class of
11:04wealthy young urban professionals in the acronym of the time he was a
11:15yuppy. When I would come in at 7:30 in the morning with a trench coat and I
11:19have a phone and I have two phones in my I could get my coat off until 10:00 in
11:24the morning literally I mean it was back then it was
11:28wild By 2 p.m. the roar in the bond trading
11:32room fueled more by fear than greed was unearthly. They all shouted and sweated
11:38and swore and devoured their electric donuts. The heady times were described in
11:42Tom Wolf's The Bonfire of the Vanities. The novel of the 80s... Creates a half
11:4710,000 by 10,000 kid are taking it up
11:51Extraordinary percentages of the graduates the top graduates at Harvard Yale Princeton
11:59um were heading for Wall Street. No longer there going to be doctors or
12:04lawyers we going to go straight to this great cornicopia where there was money
12:09practically floating the air
12:13There was no place in America small or large where a company couldn't be a
12:19target for a corporate raider. Corporate raiders were looking for companies to
12:23buy and then sell off their assets. In Williamsport Pennsylvania a small dairy
12:29company with a string of convenience stores became the target of a hostile takeover
12:35It struck me as incredible that someone with uh a stack of paper a stack
12:41of legal documents and a bank behind him could come in and steal a company away
12:45from a community and away from uh the people would work so hard to build it it
12:49just didn't make sense. Keith Strycula was working for his
12:53father the CEO of Foodcraft Inc when the raider visited the company it was the
12:59beginning of deer season in Pennsylvania which is national holiday in
13:03Pennsylvania this guy came in dressed as a hunter the company was a target and he
13:10was a big game hunter. Farmers, dairy workers, store clerks
13:16almost a thousand people depended on Foodcraft for a living. The entire city
13:21of Williamsport was worried. People would come up and express
13:27sympathies almost as if someone had died
13:34The company fought back trying to persuade every individual shareholder
13:41not to sell to the raider. A year and a half later at a
13:46shareholders meeting in 1986 the company's fate was decided.
13:50It's kind of like the Academy Awards where it's like somebody's going
13:54up there and opening up an envelope and you don't know what the outcome's going
13:57to be I thought the company was going to go and I looked over my father and he had
14:01his poker face and the votes were coming in we realized that we had
14:06won. I said you know David beat Goliath in this one
14:10It was the exception of course many wage earners were crushed and many
14:15companies destroyed in the greatest wave of corporate takeovers in American history
14:27In the early 1980s American confidence in the future found a
14:32powerful symbol in the Space Shuttle. It made its maiden flight in
14:371981. The space shuttle at 2,000 tons fully fueled is virtually the size and
14:43the length and the weight of a World War II Destroyer but in if you took a World
14:48War II destroyer and turned it up on on on its fan tail that is the scale of the
14:53of the Space Shuttle
14:55Malcolm McConnell was a journalist who covered the shuttle
14:59for Readers Digest We are go for main engine ignition
15:04We have main ignition 3... 2... 1... and solid ignition and lift off lift off of the
15:13first operational Space Shuttle mission with two satellites on board and the shuttle
15:18has cleared the tower. The first time I saw it rise into the sky I was virtually
15:23speechless I stood there my mouth agape my eyes open I thought this is
15:27wonderful this this this is this is this is stupendous
15:33If we can do this we can do anything [Music]
15:42The world could now watch as the shuttle launched communication satellites into orbit
15:47there were already many there and with every new satellite the world grew
15:53smaller. The remotest place was now just a phone call away
15:59we had actually figured this out and built something that allowed us to
16:03manipulate the trillion dollar phone system around the world we go to a pay
16:06phone and we' we' take a a cable to White Plains a satellite to Europe we'd
16:10go over to the Turkey satellite station take a satellite back to Texas and we'd
16:14actually loop around the world three or four times and call the pay phone next
16:17door and so you could shout into the phone and about 40 seconds later you'd
16:20hear it on the other phone and it was it was patently illegal by the way we were
16:25lucky we didn't get caught. Steven Jobs and Steven Wozniak would bring computer
16:30technology into the 1980s such a far cry from the 50s and 60s
16:35The computers at that time were as big as this room we're in right now if
16:40not bigger they were customade you couldn't you could not just goad and buy
16:44a computer they were enormous instruments enormously expensive
16:49Developed by the military but also put to use by the bureaucracy
16:54computers some Americans worried could be used by the government to monitor or
16:59even control the lives of its citizens just like big brother in George
17:04Orwell's most famous novel. It was in 1948 when Orwell wrote 1984
17:12but he was overly gloomy about the resilience of of of democracy
17:21[Music] Wozniak and Jobs and their fans
17:26had a dream make computers available to all
17:30[Music] Americans. There was going to be a
17:33computer in every home and it was going to change the world we talked about how
17:37people were going to be empowered I listen to people who were
17:41excited about the revolution we talked about it as being a revolution
17:46And there were a lot of people like me who somehow wanted their
17:49own computer that they owned [Music]
17:52When cheap microchips became available, Wozniak and Jobs decided to build
17:58the computer that everybody was looking for. We were forced to start this company
18:02we didn't really want to but everybody wanted these
18:06computers. We worked in my parents garage and eventually kind of took over their
18:10whole house it was it's kind of funny
18:14Their first efforts were Apple 1 and the popular Apple 2 launched in
18:201977 they made the computer affordable. But it was the 1984 Macintosh
18:26with its mouse and user-friendly graphics that truly liberated the computer
18:36On January 24 Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh and you'll see
18:42why 1984 won't be like 1984
18:52The explosion of personal computers onto the market seemed to
18:56liberate technology For one thing, ordinary citizens began to
19:01dream of going into space themselves. I think most people had come
19:06to believe that the space flight was absolutely safe pretty soon civilians of
19:12all sorts will take these flights to begin this bus service which was the shuttle
19:20The first civilian chosen was a teacher Christa McAuliffe
19:25Oh that's great I love it. The New Hampshire mother of two small
19:30children joined the crew of the 25th shuttle mission
19:38The launch from Cape Canaveral Florida was set after many delays for
19:43January the 28th 1986. For Florida it was an unusually
19:48cold morning 27 degrees. We were quite surprised
19:53to hear that the the the countdown was proceeding ahead. No shuttle had been
19:57launched in where that cold. We have main engine start
20:034... 3... 2... 1 and lift off lift off of the 25th space shuttle mission as the
20:12shuttle cleared the tower and the first shock waves of sound began began to
20:17pound the press grandstand the roof bouncing up and down the plywood under
20:20your feet bouncing the shock waves hitting your chest
20:23But at that point we're all standing up we were all screaming our
20:26heads off go I mean in any sense of professional composure was was lost
20:34[Music] My husband and I were just stepping
20:41off an escalator in a department store in the the TV department so we we
20:50stopped to watch and there were 100 sets all on the
20:58same scene and we watched it go up and then all of a sudden
21:13poof and we just couldn't believe
21:19[Music] Flight controllers here looking very
21:23carefully at the situation. Obviously a major malfunction
21:30[Music] I felt a sense of utter cold doom
21:39virtually flow over me that massive huge 2,000 ton vehicle
21:46had been shredded into tiny little pieces almost like confetti
21:53It was caused not by high-tech computer failure but by the simplest
21:59gasket which had contracted in the cold. Just for those lives to be gone in
22:06a flash just gone it's it's
22:10[Music] unbelievable. We will never forget them
22:20nor the last time we saw them as they prepared for their journey and waved
22:25goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God
22:32[Music]
22:42The 1980s was a decade of pushing boundaries. Ladies and gentlemen rock and roll
22:49[Music] 1981 saw the premiere of round-the-clock
22:54music television It was great
22:59um my mom thought MTV was a spawn of Satan. The PTL Television Network
23:04presents... Competing for the attention of television viewers was a new breed of
23:07televangelists who preached a mixture of old-fashioned religion and modern
23:12entertainment. They attracted about 90 million viewers a week
23:19[Music] And I thought they were unique the
23:24um evangelist on TV. It was all over television
23:28Jim Swaggart and um Baker um
23:34It was unique you know Jesus theme park wow you know I mean uh I we of course I didn't
23:42buy into it but that was the mood of the country that was the mood the way things
23:45were going. In the early 1980s the world had
23:50its first warnings about AIDS. ln June of 1981 we heard the first
23:56report of a new and peculiar disease. We called it slim disease for a
24:04while we called it other things for a while uh we did not really have the
24:10understanding in 1981 of what we were up against. And suddenly you would hear so
24:17and so is sick how is so and so and people you knew got it people were
24:24getting sick and dying. Acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
24:29AIDS affected mainly gay men at first and by 1983 it had killed 2,000 people
24:37Literally people were dropping like flies. Tom Ammiano was a gay man in
24:42San Francisco in 1984 when 6,000 people had died of AIDS. Tim a teacher and Tom's
24:50lover of 6 years was diagnosed with the disease. Tom became an activist.
24:55Your frustration was there is no help there is absolutely no help.
25:01We were desperate and we were angry
25:06We had tremendous trouble making the people around President Reagan
25:12understand how serious this was. These were ultra conservative people
25:18and most people got AIDS by doing things that other people didn't do and most
25:22people didn't approve of they're doing. Tim he was a wonderful wonderful
25:27man and when when you knew Tim and you knew his worth this could drive you
25:33absolutely nuts. It was very hard for all of us to
25:37watch him deteriorate in the past days of his life but at the same
25:44time he gave us so much [Music]
25:49By 1985 more than 12,000 people had died
25:55One of them was the movie idol Rock Hudson
25:59Rock Hudson's death took AIDS out of the shadows.
26:03AIDS affected anybody rich and poor young and old men and women
26:10When Ali Gertz got AIDS from an encounter with a bisexual lover she
26:15became emblematic of the diseases' spreading danger
26:18Ali Gertz was my best girl friend Ali gave me a big lecture - you be
26:26careful you take care of yourself and that night she went home early and
26:31two weeks later she ended up in the hospital. Someone did a very simple blood
26:36test and realized she had full-blown AIDS and she had pneumocystis pneumonia
26:42People magazine put her on the cover of the magazine and it sold more
26:46issues than any issue that year. All of a sudden she was everybody's
26:52little sister best friend daughter
27:00she wasn't a drug user she wasn't promiscuous [Music]
27:04It didn't matter who you were all it meant was that you could
27:09fall in love with someone and that was the fatal mistake
27:24In 1987 people who had died of AIDS got their memorial. A quilt which showed the
27:31magnitude of the nation's loss more than 40,000 Americans.
27:39I think that for for my generation AIDS was the equivalent of World War II
27:44It was a cataclysmic event it was a wakeup call we had pushed the boundaries
27:51of behavior so far and here was nature coming up with a way to say
28:00you've gone too far.
28:05By the end of the decade almost 100,000 people had died in the battle
28:10with AIDS and it was not over [Music]
28:20You were here to liberate not to conquer and so you and those others did
28:25not doubt your cause... On June the 6 1984 President Reagan
28:30and some of the D-Day veterans commemorated those who died for freedom
28:35on the beaches of Normandy. You all knew that some things
28:38are worth dying for one's country is worth dying for and democracy is worth
28:44dying for because it's the... President Reagan saw the struggle with the Soviet
28:48Union in the clear-cut terms of World War II good versus evil
28:54The Soviets were willing to pursue a very aggressive foreign policy and
28:59indeed their foreign policy they were quite Frank about it was world domination
29:03This is a Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile or
29:07ICBM which can reach the United States 30 minutes after launch. I remember
29:11standing out in the street of my house on a on a fall afternoon with the dark
29:15clouds and thinking wow there was this huge presence on the other side of the
29:18world that was out to get us all
29:23What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that we could
29:29intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached
29:32our own soil or that of our allies. The president's Strategic Defense
29:37Initiative SDI or Star Wars was part of his effort to neutralize communism
29:44[Music] everywhere. In Nicaragua he supported the
29:49Contras who were trying to topple the Soviet-supported government
29:54In the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada he quickly crushed a
29:58communist coup [Music]
30:01And at home he started the greatest peacetime defense buildup ever
30:07He made people feel good about our country that it was strong economically
30:11and strong in defense and that you felt like he could protect you from you know
30:16the the Russians and these other countries. But the world remained a
30:23dangerous place. On June the 14th 1985 TWA flight 847
30:28took off from Athens in Greece on its way to Rome
30:34A few minutes into the flight I look up and there are people walking
30:40down the aisle yelling head down no talk
30:46and I didn't know what was happening really
30:53The flight was hijacked by two Muslim extremists with ties to the
30:58Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. Their latest demand is that all
31:03Shiite Muslim prisoners being held by Israel be released... And I'm watching this
31:09and all of a sudden my brother walked in the door from came downstairs and he
31:14said mom is on that plane. Paula Sukeforth the mother of six was one of 153 people
31:21on board most of them Americans. They were going to kill
31:25someone every 5 minutes if their demands weren't met. The hijackers forced the
31:30plane on a frightening odyssey from Athens to Beirut to Algiers and back to
31:34the darkened airport in Beirut where the plane was refused permission to land.
31:40He has pulled a hand grenade pin and he is ready to blow up the aircraft if he has
31:44to we must I repeat we must land at Beirut. You have no permission to land
31:50Beirut the airport is closed. I expected that we were going to
31:55crash so this is how it was going to end.
32:00When things looked absolutely hopeless the runway at Beirut was finally cleared but
32:05the crisis was far from over. 847 they are threatening to kill the passengers
32:10they are threatening to kill the passengers. Their first victim was Navy
32:15diver Robert Stethem. I just can picture that that body coming out the door and
32:22landing on the tarmac and then thinking oh god they're
32:27they're actually killing people. I wrote my name and address and
32:34telephone number on my stomach just in case
32:39I was found dead somewhere. Unwilling to risk more
32:45American lives Ronald Reagan abandoned his own no negotiations policy with
32:51terrorists and worked out a deal to free some prisoners held in Israeli jails in
32:56exchange for the TWA hostages. I didn't expect the United States to
33:02negotiate. In hindsight I'm glad they
33:09did. I never thought I would see her again and there she
33:13was it was wonderful
33:20The summer of 1987 was not a good one for the Reagan Administration
33:25Congressional hearings that summer revealed that the administration had
33:28illegally sold arms to Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran and funneled the profits to the Contras in
33:35Nicaragua. For the first time President Reagan's popularity plummeted and then
33:41on October the 19th Black Tuesday the stock market went into free fall losing
33:45508 points. And moral empires too came
33:50tumbling down when several televangelists were charged with
33:54financial crimes or personal sins. Suddenly it seemed that not all was well
34:00in the United States. In the Soviet Union on the other hand there was a whole new
34:05sense of optimism
34:10After a succession of old men and old style rule which had left the
34:15Soviet Union in deep stagnation a vigorous new leader
34:20Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985. And Gorbachev soon began to make
34:26changes in a country long long ruled by repression and fear. He instituted glasnost
34:33or openness and suddenly there was freedom of speech
34:36It was discussion openly and I I was there I was right in the middle of
34:42it it was something absolutely incredible. Alexander Zhurbin was a
34:47composer who had a studio in Moscow's Pushkin Square.
34:51At the time it was a center of political discussion thousands of people
34:57one said Gorbachev is terrible he is scoundrel and I said no he is a great man we have
35:03to support him
35:07It was times when you know all the hopes are were open you know we just
35:13were absolutely overwhelmed
35:18But Gorbachev's attempt to restructure the Soviet economy Perestroika did
35:24little to shorten lines for the paltry number of available consumer goods
35:29Soviet hopes for material progress demanded cutbacks in their defense
35:34spending and this led to a series of summit meetings with President Reagan
35:39The first one was in Geneva in 1985. The next one was at Reykjavík in Iceland on a
35:45weekend in October 1986 the leaders got down to the serious business of
35:49disarmament. And they were negotiating frankly. Both sides are going to
35:54give up all their nuclear weapons all their nuclear weapons.
35:59President Reagan's director of communications was Patrick Buchanan.
36:03I just couldn't believe that a decision of this magnitude was being made by two men
36:08on a Sunday afternoon
36:11This late in the afternoon they' taken a break and so I got right
36:16out there I wanted to see exactly how he looked.
36:21He looked as tough as any customer I have seen
36:26We're not through. Gorbachev told Reagan we're going to do the deal but
36:30you've got to give up SDI the Soviets had spent a trillion
36:35dollars building the greatest land-based missile force on Earth and here was
36:41Ronald Reagan who was developing a system it was going to turn it into junk
36:46And they believed he could do it.
36:51Ronald Reagan slammed down his hand on the table got up and left. No.
37:01That was the end of the summit. But not of good relations between the two leaders
37:10A year later Mr. Gorbachev came to Washington
37:15Sidestepping the issue of the Strategic Defense Initiative the
37:20leaders signed a more limited arms reduction treaty
37:25Mr. Gorbachev was very popular in America
37:29Gorbachev's motorcade came around the corner on the Connecticut
37:33Avenue and suddenly the motorcade stopped and then the door opened and
37:38Gorbachev got out and began working the crowd along Connecticut Avenue like an
37:41American politician. People around me were rapped
37:45I remember a young woman uh looking out through the crowd and smiling on her
37:50face and she said God bless you Mr. Gorbachev
37:54[Applause] I I couldn't believe it it it's great
37:59that he came out to meet us all like that that was very special he didn't
38:03have to do it and he did it I am very surprised then pleased. What do you think
38:06of Gorbachev? The guy is a PR genius I mean jumping out of the car like that
38:11unbelievable. Who got to shake his hand? I did.
38:16Six months later President Reagan went to Moscow
38:22There was a sense that this long nightmare of of the threat of nuclear
38:27holocaust of the of the the Cold War somehow that that was coming to an end.
38:32We find ourselves standing like this.
38:36We meant to change a nation and instead we changed a world.
38:46[Music]
38:511989 was a momentous year first in China where just at about the time that
38:59Mikhail Gorbachev was paying a visit Chinese students occupied their country's most
39:04important Square. What I'm seeing on television cannot be
39:09happening. Chinese students marching into Tiananmen Square uh carrying a large plaster
39:14goddess of democracy very similar to the Statue of Liberty
39:20In the heart of the largest communist country in the world the
39:24American symbol of freedom towered over demonstrations for democracy
39:29[Applause] [Music]
39:32There clearly was a historic significant event
39:36I had a feeling it wasn't going to last very long
39:41And it did not. On June the 4th the demonstrations
39:47were crushed. Hundreds of people were killed
39:51But what the students and workers had attempted would change China forever
39:59[Applause] All over Eastern Europe that
40:03summer democracy movements for gathering strength Poland was gearing up for free
40:08elections it was happening in Hungary in Czechoslovakia and behind the walls in
40:13East Germany there were pro-democracy demonstrations. People were demanding change
40:19[Music] On November the 9th the East
40:24German government finally gave in to the pressure
40:32You wanted to see what's really behind the wall what have they've been hiding
40:36over there and it's just people on the other
40:41side waiting to see loved ones [Music]
40:45The Berlin Wall was breached the Iron Curtain had been lifted the hopes
40:51for freedom kindled by Gorbachev's reforms in the Soviet Union proved
40:56mightier than walls. [Music]
41:10We were crying watching them tear down this this thing that had haunted
41:15them for so long
41:19And I remember thinking what joy you you could just feel it coming
41:24through the television on these people
41:29And I thought well that's what it's all about you know conquering your ghosts.
41:33[Music] [Applause]
41:40[Music] Having gone into war to prevent
41:47the spread of Communism and now a decade and a half later the Wall comes
41:52down it causes you to stop caused me to stop and think
41:58wow this sacrifice that people made 58,000 in Vietnam I don't know the
42:04statistics from Korea. I think they made a contribution
42:09It would be too heartbreaking to think that they didn't
42:18Many historians actually believe that the 20th century ended with the
42:22fall of the Berlin wall and that the '90s represent the first decade of New
42:27Era. Why don't you judge for yourself when we take a look at the century's
42:32last decade that's the next episode of The Century America's Time. Thank you for
42:38joining us I'm Peter Jennings [Music]

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