WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.180 Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today we are transporting 00:00:03.180 --> 00:00:05.620 you back to one of the most defining and frankly 00:00:05.620 --> 00:00:07.940 freezing depths of the Cold War. Yeah, we're 00:00:07.940 --> 00:00:10.320 heading straight into the tense divided streets 00:00:10.320 --> 00:00:13.759 of Berlin in the summer of 1963. Exactly. And 00:00:13.759 --> 00:00:15.699 if you're tuning in, you probably appreciate 00:00:15.699 --> 00:00:19.320 when the grand sweep of history takes an unexpected 00:00:20.019 --> 00:00:23.460 almost absurd turn. Because today we're unpacking 00:00:23.460 --> 00:00:26.019 one of the strangest historical paradoxes of 00:00:26.019 --> 00:00:28.300 the 20th century. We really are. We're looking 00:00:28.300 --> 00:00:30.780 at a moment of sheer geopolitical brinkmanship, 00:00:31.420 --> 00:00:33.659 a speech that genuinely shook the foundations 00:00:33.659 --> 00:00:37.060 of the global world order. Right. And yet this 00:00:37.060 --> 00:00:40.420 monumental rhetorical masterpiece has become 00:00:40.420 --> 00:00:43.079 permanently inextricably entangled with a rumor 00:00:43.079 --> 00:00:46.420 about, of all things, a jelly -filled donut. 00:00:46.520 --> 00:00:49.119 It remains one of the most remarkably persistent 00:00:49.119 --> 00:00:51.439 historical myths in the modern era, honestly. 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:54.079 But before we even touch on the pastry aspect, 00:00:54.340 --> 00:00:56.439 establishing the sheer gravity of the historical 00:00:56.439 --> 00:00:58.820 stakes is absolutely crucial here. Right. Because 00:00:58.820 --> 00:01:00.899 we aren't just looking at a dry recitation of 00:01:00.899 --> 00:01:03.509 a presidential itinerary today. No, not at all. 00:01:03.570 --> 00:01:06.730 This is a forensic examination of how high wire 00:01:06.730 --> 00:01:10.549 international diplomacy, the idiosyncratic quirks 00:01:10.549 --> 00:01:13.590 of cross -cultural linguistics, and really the 00:01:13.590 --> 00:01:16.189 relentless machinery of pop culture can completely 00:01:16.189 --> 00:01:18.829 rewrite our collective memory. And we are drawing 00:01:18.829 --> 00:01:21.150 from a massive stack of source material for this. 00:01:21.469 --> 00:01:23.370 We've got architectural records from divided 00:01:23.370 --> 00:01:26.769 Berlin, recently declassified archival documents 00:01:26.769 --> 00:01:30.269 from the Kennedy administration, and comprehensive 00:01:30.269 --> 00:01:32.890 historical analyses from scholars. Scholars who 00:01:32.890 --> 00:01:35.549 have spent entire careers untangling the actual 00:01:35.549 --> 00:01:38.409 events of that day from the urban legend that 00:01:38.409 --> 00:01:40.890 just swallowed it whole. Exactly. So our mission 00:01:40.890 --> 00:01:42.689 today is to put you right there in the crowd 00:01:42.689 --> 00:01:45.510 in West Berlin. We're going to trace the incredibly 00:01:45.510 --> 00:01:48.349 fraught the chaotic genesis of President John 00:01:48.349 --> 00:01:50.950 F. Kennedy's ich bin ein Berliner speech. We'll 00:01:50.950 --> 00:01:53.329 analyze the dramatic, highly improvised delivery 00:01:53.329 --> 00:01:55.849 of those words on the steps of the Rathaus Schöneberg. 00:01:56.049 --> 00:01:58.790 And then we are going to systematically dismantle 00:01:58.790 --> 00:02:02.049 the bizarre viral lie that managed to overshadow 00:02:02.049 --> 00:02:05.010 the true history for decades. To truly grasp 00:02:05.010 --> 00:02:07.829 the weight of Kennedy's words, though, you really 00:02:07.829 --> 00:02:10.430 have to feel the absolute pressure cooker that 00:02:10.430 --> 00:02:14.669 was West Berlin in the early 1960s. You do. So 00:02:14.669 --> 00:02:16.620 let's look at the geographical nightmare that 00:02:16.620 --> 00:02:19.180 the post -World War II allied agreements created. 00:02:19.740 --> 00:02:21.900 When the country of Germany was carved up into 00:02:21.900 --> 00:02:25.020 occupation zones by the victorious powers, the 00:02:25.020 --> 00:02:27.000 capital city Berlin was treated as a special 00:02:27.000 --> 00:02:30.219 case. Right, but its location was the ultimate 00:02:30.219 --> 00:02:32.879 geopolitical trap. It wasn't sitting safely on 00:02:32.879 --> 00:02:35.199 the border between the newly formed East and 00:02:35.199 --> 00:02:37.580 West Germany. No, it was situated roughly 100 00:02:37.580 --> 00:02:40.319 miles deep inside Soviet controlled territory. 00:02:40.560 --> 00:02:43.879 Which created a scenario that was entirely unprecedented 00:02:43.879 --> 00:02:46.099 in modern statecraft. I mean, the city of Berlin 00:02:46.099 --> 00:02:48.960 itself was subdivided into four sectors administered 00:02:48.960 --> 00:02:51.960 by the US, the UK, France, and the Soviet Union. 00:02:52.379 --> 00:02:54.620 Right. This meant that the three Western sectors, 00:02:54.719 --> 00:02:57.219 what became known as West Berlin, formed a functional 00:02:57.219 --> 00:03:00.020 exclave. It was this thriving island of Western 00:03:00.020 --> 00:03:02.560 capitalist democracy that was completely and 00:03:02.560 --> 00:03:05.719 entirely surrounded by a sea of Soviet -backed 00:03:05.719 --> 00:03:08.990 East German totalitarian control. The sheer logistics 00:03:08.990 --> 00:03:11.430 of maintaining the city were staggering. Every 00:03:11.430 --> 00:03:13.990 single piece of coal, every loaf of bread, every 00:03:13.990 --> 00:03:17.050 medical supply had to be transported through 00:03:17.050 --> 00:03:20.270 highly regulated transit corridors, highways, 00:03:20.569 --> 00:03:23.349 railways, air corridors that cut directly through 00:03:23.349 --> 00:03:25.590 hostile territory. And the vulnerability of those 00:03:25.590 --> 00:03:28.169 supply lines was tested almost immediately. Oh, 00:03:28.169 --> 00:03:30.909 yeah. The Soviets realized very quickly that 00:03:30.909 --> 00:03:34.349 they had a massive pressure point. In 1948, they 00:03:34.349 --> 00:03:37.169 simply severed those land and water transit routes. 00:03:37.610 --> 00:03:40.530 That initiated the Berlin blockade in an attempt 00:03:40.530 --> 00:03:43.129 to just starve the Western allies out of the 00:03:43.129 --> 00:03:45.250 city entirely. And the response to that, of course, 00:03:45.270 --> 00:03:47.789 was the Berlin airlift. The U .S. and British 00:03:47.789 --> 00:03:50.550 air forces flew millions of tons of supplies 00:03:50.550 --> 00:03:53.389 into the city around the clock for nearly a year, 00:03:53.490 --> 00:03:55.969 which is just a monumental logistical feat. Right. 00:03:56.030 --> 00:03:58.110 And it transformed West Berlin in the eyes of 00:03:58.110 --> 00:04:00.229 the world. It stopped being just a conquered 00:04:00.229 --> 00:04:02.669 enemy capital and became the ultimate global 00:04:02.669 --> 00:04:04.830 symbol of resistance against Soviet expansion. 00:04:05.189 --> 00:04:08.120 That transformation is key because it is an incredible 00:04:08.120 --> 00:04:10.340 psychological bond between the citizens of West 00:04:10.340 --> 00:04:12.680 Berlin and the United States. But while West 00:04:12.680 --> 00:04:15.460 Berlin became this shining symbol for the West, 00:04:16.019 --> 00:04:18.720 it simultaneously became a practical existential 00:04:18.720 --> 00:04:20.660 nightmare for the East German government. Right. 00:04:20.860 --> 00:04:24.779 By 1952, the broader inner German border, the 00:04:24.779 --> 00:04:26.920 massive frontier separating the entire country 00:04:26.920 --> 00:04:29.660 of East Germany from West Germany, was sealed 00:04:29.660 --> 00:04:31.899 shut. The East German authorities fortified it 00:04:31.899 --> 00:04:34.540 with fences, alarms, and guards with shoot to 00:04:34.540 --> 00:04:37.149 kill orders. Everywhere that is except for the 00:04:37.149 --> 00:04:39.269 city limits of Berlin. Because the entire city 00:04:39.269 --> 00:04:41.290 of Berlin was still technically under the joint 00:04:41.290 --> 00:04:43.790 administration of the Four Power Agreement, the 00:04:43.790 --> 00:04:46.230 local sector borders within the city had to remain 00:04:46.230 --> 00:04:49.269 relatively porous. You could live in the Soviet 00:04:49.269 --> 00:04:51.550 sector of East Berlin and just take the subway 00:04:51.550 --> 00:04:53.870 to work in the American sector of West Berlin. 00:04:53.949 --> 00:04:57.230 It created the single largest most glaring loophole 00:04:57.230 --> 00:04:59.970 in the entire Iron Curtain. And the East German 00:04:59.970 --> 00:05:02.410 populace took full advantage of that loophole. 00:05:02.750 --> 00:05:05.269 If you were an East German citizen disillusioned 00:05:05.269 --> 00:05:08.750 with the failing socialist economy, or the oppressive 00:05:08.750 --> 00:05:11.250 Stasi surveillance, you simply traveled to East 00:05:11.250 --> 00:05:13.629 Berlin, walked across the street, or hopped on 00:05:13.629 --> 00:05:16.230 an underground train into West Berlin. And presented 00:05:16.230 --> 00:05:19.250 yourself at a Western Refugee Center. From there, 00:05:19.529 --> 00:05:22.410 you were flown safely over the Soviet zone right 00:05:22.410 --> 00:05:24.709 into West Germany. You look at the sheer numbers, 00:05:24.810 --> 00:05:27.490 and the East German state was literally bleeding 00:05:27.490 --> 00:05:29.970 to death. Between the founding of the state in 00:05:29.970 --> 00:05:35.250 1949, In the summer of 1961, roughly 3 .5 million 00:05:35.250 --> 00:05:37.949 people packed whatever they could carry and just 00:05:37.949 --> 00:05:40.129 walked away from the socialist experiment. Which 00:05:40.129 --> 00:05:43.350 constituted nearly 20 % of their entire population. 00:05:43.490 --> 00:05:47.529 Wow, 20%. And crucially, the crisis wasn't just 00:05:47.529 --> 00:05:49.910 about the raw volume of people leaving, it was 00:05:49.910 --> 00:05:52.790 about the demographic makeup of those defectors. 00:05:52.870 --> 00:05:55.410 Right, the brain drain. Exactly. The East German 00:05:55.410 --> 00:05:57.689 leadership was watching an utterly devastating 00:05:57.689 --> 00:06:00.459 brain drain. The people fleeing were the doctors, 00:06:00.639 --> 00:06:02.800 the university professors, the electrical engineers, 00:06:03.240 --> 00:06:05.779 the young, able -bodied, skilled laborers. They 00:06:05.779 --> 00:06:08.980 were losing the exact demographic you need to 00:06:08.980 --> 00:06:11.980 maintain a functioning industrial society. Walter 00:06:11.980 --> 00:06:14.180 Ulbricht, the East German leader, realized that 00:06:14.180 --> 00:06:15.980 if this hemorrhage wasn't stopped immediately, 00:06:16.439 --> 00:06:18.660 the state of East Germany would face total economic 00:06:18.660 --> 00:06:21.819 and societal collapse. So that desperation culminates 00:06:21.819 --> 00:06:25.790 in the dead of night on August 13th, 1961. The 00:06:25.790 --> 00:06:28.269 operation is executed with staggering speed. 00:06:28.790 --> 00:06:31.290 East German troops and police units deploy along 00:06:31.290 --> 00:06:34.550 the exact demarcation line between East and West 00:06:34.550 --> 00:06:36.670 Berlin. They tear up the paving stones on the 00:06:36.670 --> 00:06:39.230 streets to stop vehicles, and they begin unrolling 00:06:39.230 --> 00:06:41.910 endless coils of barbed wire. Families who lived 00:06:41.910 --> 00:06:43.629 on the same street were suddenly cut off from 00:06:43.629 --> 00:06:45.730 each other. People who worked in the West were 00:06:45.730 --> 00:06:49.050 trapped in the East. And the official state propaganda 00:06:49.050 --> 00:06:52.310 used to justify this brutality was a fascinating 00:06:52.310 --> 00:06:54.930 piece of Orwellian theater. Oh, absolutely. The 00:06:54.930 --> 00:06:57.129 official nomenclature deployed by the East German 00:06:57.129 --> 00:07:00.370 state was the antifascistischer Schutzfall, the 00:07:00.370 --> 00:07:02.589 antifascist protective barrier. They really spun 00:07:02.589 --> 00:07:05.350 it. They did. The narrative they fed their citizens 00:07:05.350 --> 00:07:08.170 was that this drastic measure was entirely defensive. 00:07:08.529 --> 00:07:10.529 They claimed it was urgently required to keep 00:07:10.529 --> 00:07:13.509 Western spies, saboteurs, and fascist provocateurs 00:07:13.509 --> 00:07:16.029 from infiltrating their socialist paradise and 00:07:16.040 --> 00:07:18.339 undermining their economy. It's an incredible 00:07:18.339 --> 00:07:21.279 rhetorical flip considering the universally accepted 00:07:21.279 --> 00:07:24.660 reality. Everyone on both sides of the divide 00:07:24.660 --> 00:07:27.060 knew it was the Berlin Wall and its singular 00:07:27.060 --> 00:07:30.279 undeniable purpose was to turn East Berlin into 00:07:30.279 --> 00:07:33.459 a prison to lock its own citizens inside. Right. 00:07:33.689 --> 00:07:36.170 And over the coming months, that temporary barbed 00:07:36.170 --> 00:07:39.610 wire was systematically replaced by massive concrete 00:07:39.610 --> 00:07:42.029 slabs. Entire apartment buildings that happened 00:07:42.029 --> 00:07:44.550 to sit on the borderline were forcibly evacuated. 00:07:44.990 --> 00:07:47.110 Their windows facing the west were bricked up. 00:07:47.389 --> 00:07:49.230 And eventually, the buildings were demolished 00:07:49.230 --> 00:07:51.610 entirely to create the death strip. This was 00:07:51.610 --> 00:07:54.470 a heavily illuminated raked sand corridor complete 00:07:54.470 --> 00:07:57.089 with anti -vehicle trenches, guard dogs, and 00:07:57.089 --> 00:07:59.610 watchtowers manned by soldiers armed with machine 00:07:59.610 --> 00:08:02.329 guns. The psychological shock to the West Berliners 00:08:02.329 --> 00:08:04.860 was profound. Their city, which had been a beacon 00:08:04.860 --> 00:08:07.600 of escape, was suddenly a besieged fortress. 00:08:07.860 --> 00:08:09.779 And this placed the administration of President 00:08:09.779 --> 00:08:12.319 John F. Kennedy in an agonizing geopolitical 00:08:12.319 --> 00:08:15.120 bind. The citizens of West Berlin, the mayor 00:08:15.120 --> 00:08:17.600 Willy Brandt and many hardliners back in Washington, 00:08:18.019 --> 00:08:19.800 were absolutely screaming for the United States 00:08:19.800 --> 00:08:22.339 to respond with decisive military force. They 00:08:22.339 --> 00:08:25.000 wanted American tanks to roll up to the demarcation 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:27.439 line and crush the barbed wire the moment it 00:08:27.439 --> 00:08:29.579 was laid down. But Kennedy couldn't do that. 00:08:30.040 --> 00:08:32.440 The historical sources outline exactly why his 00:08:32.440 --> 00:08:35.460 hands were tied. Technically the Soviets and 00:08:35.460 --> 00:08:37.740 their East German allies were building this barrier 00:08:37.740 --> 00:08:40.879 entirely on their own sovereign territory within 00:08:40.879 --> 00:08:43.740 their designated sector. If Kennedy ordered American 00:08:43.740 --> 00:08:46.299 tanks to forcefully cross that line and destroy 00:08:46.299 --> 00:08:49.519 the wall he would be initiating a direct kinetic 00:08:49.519 --> 00:08:52.169 military conflict with the Soviet Union. In the 00:08:52.169 --> 00:08:55.129 summer of 1961, with tensions already at a fever 00:08:55.129 --> 00:08:58.450 pitch, that meant risking a global nuclear holocaust 00:08:58.450 --> 00:09:00.850 over municipal access rights in a city half a 00:09:00.850 --> 00:09:03.289 world away. Which is exactly the grim calculus 00:09:03.289 --> 00:09:05.809 Kennedy had to accept. Just weeks before the 00:09:05.809 --> 00:09:08.809 wall became a permanent concrete reality, Kennedy 00:09:08.809 --> 00:09:11.210 delivered a nationally televised address on July 00:09:11.210 --> 00:09:15.190 25, 1961. In it, he vehemently reaffirmed the 00:09:15.190 --> 00:09:17.210 United States' absolute commitment to defending 00:09:17.210 --> 00:09:19.409 West Berlin, stating that any attack on that 00:09:19.409 --> 00:09:21.350 city would be treated as an attack on the U .S. 00:09:21.129 --> 00:09:24.730 He outlined the core non -negotiables, the presence 00:09:24.730 --> 00:09:27.350 of Western troops, free access to the city, and 00:09:27.350 --> 00:09:29.970 the self -determination of West Berliners. But, 00:09:30.309 --> 00:09:32.110 and this is the vital subtext that historians 00:09:32.110 --> 00:09:34.710 highlight, by specifically emphasizing the defense 00:09:34.710 --> 00:09:38.169 of West Berlin, he was implicitly conceding that 00:09:38.169 --> 00:09:40.169 the United States was powerless to intervene 00:09:40.169 --> 00:09:43.250 in what the Soviets did in East Berlin. He essentially 00:09:43.250 --> 00:09:46.789 accepted a massive, highly visible physical defeat. 00:09:47.429 --> 00:09:49.629 The wall was up and it was going to stay up. 00:09:49.610 --> 00:09:51.710 He couldn't tear it down with military hardware, 00:09:52.169 --> 00:09:54.549 which meant that as the years progressed, he 00:09:54.549 --> 00:09:56.370 desperately needed to challenge it with rhetoric. 00:09:56.710 --> 00:10:00.730 He needed a monumental symbolic victory to reassure 00:10:00.730 --> 00:10:03.029 the deeply traumatized citizens of West Berlin 00:10:03.029 --> 00:10:05.350 that the United States had not abandoned them. 00:10:05.809 --> 00:10:08.490 That strategic imperative is the true genesis 00:10:08.490 --> 00:10:11.940 of the 1963 visit. Kennedy is heading to Berlin, 00:10:11.960 --> 00:10:14.960 needing to deliver a message of unshakable emotional 00:10:14.960 --> 00:10:17.460 solidarity to a population that feels incredibly 00:10:17.460 --> 00:10:20.360 isolated and vulnerable, living every single 00:10:20.360 --> 00:10:23.059 day under the shadow of Soviet artillery. Knowing 00:10:23.059 --> 00:10:25.659 those massive geoportical stakes makes the actual 00:10:25.659 --> 00:10:28.159 preparation for this speech absolutely fascinating. 00:10:28.240 --> 00:10:30.320 It really does. When we dig into the archival 00:10:30.320 --> 00:10:32.720 records of how the ich bin ein Berliner speech 00:10:32.720 --> 00:10:35.159 was actually written, the origin story isn't 00:10:35.159 --> 00:10:37.440 born in the tense war rooms of divided Germany. 00:10:37.899 --> 00:10:40.639 The core rhetorical framework was actually recycled 00:10:40.639 --> 00:10:42.820 from a completely different event over a year 00:10:42.820 --> 00:10:46.139 earlier. It is a brilliant detail of presidential 00:10:46.139 --> 00:10:48.879 speech writing. The historian Andreas Daum has 00:10:48.879 --> 00:10:52.080 done incredibly exhaustive work tracing the archival 00:10:52.080 --> 00:10:54.500 evolution of the speech. Right. He points out 00:10:54.500 --> 00:10:56.799 that the fundamental architectural conceit of 00:10:56.799 --> 00:10:59.120 the Berlin address can be found in a speech Kennedy 00:10:59.120 --> 00:11:03.179 delivered in New Orleans on May 4th, 1962. Kennedy 00:11:03.179 --> 00:11:05.000 was speaking at a civic reception addressing 00:11:05.000 --> 00:11:08.139 local leaders, and he deploys this specific historical 00:11:08.139 --> 00:11:11.379 analogy. He uses the Latin phrase, see us from 00:11:11.379 --> 00:11:14.639 on of some. I am a Roman citizen. In that 1962 00:11:14.639 --> 00:11:16.840 context, Kennedy was telling the audience 2000 00:11:16.840 --> 00:11:19.399 years ago, the proudest boast was to say, I am 00:11:19.399 --> 00:11:22.299 a citizen of Rome. Today, I believe in 1962, 00:11:22.460 --> 00:11:24.879 the proudest boast is to say, I am a citizen 00:11:24.879 --> 00:11:27.139 of the United States. He was actively drawing 00:11:27.139 --> 00:11:29.940 a parallel between the ancient overarching protection 00:11:29.940 --> 00:11:32.559 and tried afforded by the Roman Empire and the 00:11:32.559 --> 00:11:34.899 immense burden and honor of American citizenship 00:11:34.899 --> 00:11:37.559 during the Cold War. He specifically used that 00:11:37.559 --> 00:11:40.360 analogy to praise the American soldiers who were 00:11:40.360 --> 00:11:43.200 stationed in far flung outposts like West Berlin, 00:11:43.720 --> 00:11:46.049 standing on the frontier of freedom. He takes 00:11:46.049 --> 00:11:49.370 this grand classical concept equating the modern 00:11:49.370 --> 00:11:51.909 defense of democracy with the ancient might of 00:11:51.909 --> 00:11:54.710 Rome and files it away in his rhetorical toolbox. 00:11:55.190 --> 00:11:58.269 Then when the time comes in June 1963 to draft 00:11:58.269 --> 00:12:01.230 the major address for the Berlin trip, that New 00:12:01.230 --> 00:12:03.590 Orleans blueprint is pulled out and dusted off. 00:12:03.850 --> 00:12:06.049 But the actual drafting process at the White 00:12:06.049 --> 00:12:08.549 House was far from a solitary genius writing 00:12:08.549 --> 00:12:11.830 by candlelight. It was incredibly collaborative. 00:12:12.039 --> 00:12:14.820 iterative and, according to the sources, a bit 00:12:14.820 --> 00:12:17.639 chaotic. The drafting involved some of the heaviest 00:12:17.639 --> 00:12:19.779 hitters of his administration, including his 00:12:19.779 --> 00:12:22.039 trusted counsel and primary speechwriter, Ted 00:12:22.039 --> 00:12:24.600 Sorensen, and advisors like Arthur Schlesinger. 00:12:24.960 --> 00:12:27.019 The records show that a full week before the 00:12:27.019 --> 00:12:29.899 trip, they had already compiled a typed memorandum 00:12:29.899 --> 00:12:31.960 of potential expressions they wanted the president 00:12:31.960 --> 00:12:35.019 to deploy. Right there on that preliminary list 00:12:35.019 --> 00:12:38.039 are the English phrases, I am a Berliner and 00:12:38.039 --> 00:12:41.159 I'm proud to be in Berlin. alongside early attempts 00:12:41.159 --> 00:12:43.820 at phonetic German transcriptions. Which introduces 00:12:43.820 --> 00:12:46.240 one of the most humanizing, relatable elements 00:12:46.240 --> 00:12:49.039 of this entire historical deep dive. Oh, absolutely. 00:12:49.299 --> 00:12:51.220 John F. Kennedy, the commander -in -chief, a 00:12:51.220 --> 00:12:53.620 man renowned for his silver -tongued oratory 00:12:53.620 --> 00:12:57.059 in English, was notoriously, hopelessly terrible 00:12:57.059 --> 00:12:59.259 at foreign languages. He simply did not have 00:12:59.259 --> 00:13:01.639 an ear for it, a fact that was often highlighted 00:13:01.639 --> 00:13:03.919 by the stark contrast with his wife, Jackie, 00:13:04.320 --> 00:13:07.019 who spoke fluent French and Spanish. The internal 00:13:07.019 --> 00:13:09.379 memos and accounts of the practice sessions reveal 00:13:09.379 --> 00:13:12.419 a real struggle. Kennedy was initially presented 00:13:12.419 --> 00:13:14.960 with drafts that included entire paragraphs of 00:13:14.960 --> 00:13:17.120 German text. So he sat down with a dedicated 00:13:17.120 --> 00:13:20.340 team to practice. Margaret Plishkin, a highly 00:13:20.340 --> 00:13:22.419 skilled translator for the U .S. State Department, 00:13:22.820 --> 00:13:25.480 his speechwriter Ted Sorensen, and Robert Lochner, 00:13:25.700 --> 00:13:27.419 an American interpreter who had actually grown 00:13:27.419 --> 00:13:30.580 up in Berlin and possessed a flawless local accent. 00:13:30.759 --> 00:13:32.759 They ran him through the pronunciation drills 00:13:32.759 --> 00:13:34.759 and it quickly became apparent to everyone in 00:13:34.759 --> 00:13:36.919 the room that if the president attempted to deliver 00:13:36.919 --> 00:13:41.019 long, complex German sentences, he was highly 00:13:41.019 --> 00:13:43.860 likely to mangle the pronunciation so badly it 00:13:43.860 --> 00:13:46.559 would become a diplomatic embarrassment rather 00:13:46.559 --> 00:13:50.139 than a triumph. So the team pivoted. They stripped 00:13:50.139 --> 00:13:52.860 the German down to its absolute bare essentials, 00:13:53.279 --> 00:13:56.240 focusing entirely on maximizing the impact of 00:13:56.240 --> 00:13:59.620 a few key repeated phrases. And the physical 00:13:59.620 --> 00:14:02.000 artifact we have from this process is incredible. 00:14:02.480 --> 00:14:05.440 The final typed reading copy of the speech, dated 00:14:05.440 --> 00:14:08.580 June 25, the day before the event, doesn't actually 00:14:08.580 --> 00:14:11.019 contain the phonetic transcriptions. Kennedy 00:14:11.019 --> 00:14:13.539 had to manually add them back in himself. You 00:14:13.539 --> 00:14:15.799 can look at the archival photos of his cue card 00:14:15.799 --> 00:14:18.419 and right there in the margins in Kennedy's own 00:14:18.419 --> 00:14:21.000 handwriting is his personal cheat code. He writes 00:14:21.000 --> 00:14:24.840 it out in English orthography. He literally spells 00:14:24.840 --> 00:14:27.480 out the word briliner using B -E -A -R like the 00:14:27.480 --> 00:14:30.299 animal and leaner at the end, and he adds asterisks 00:14:30.299 --> 00:14:32.039 around it to make sure it catches his eye. He 00:14:32.039 --> 00:14:34.240 even did the same for the Latin phrase, writing 00:14:34.240 --> 00:14:36.919 it phonetically using the classical pronunciation 00:14:36.919 --> 00:14:40.620 as kiwi sramana sum, utilizing a K sound for 00:14:40.620 --> 00:14:44.230 the C and a W sound for the V. That handwritten 00:14:44.230 --> 00:14:46.929 note demonstrates a meticulous dedication to 00:14:46.929 --> 00:14:49.289 mastering the precise auditory delivery of the 00:14:49.289 --> 00:14:52.350 line, recognizing that the emotional resonance 00:14:52.350 --> 00:14:54.889 relied entirely on the crowd understanding those 00:14:54.889 --> 00:14:57.789 four words perfectly. But what happens decades 00:14:57.789 --> 00:14:59.769 later regarding the authorship of those four 00:14:59.769 --> 00:15:02.750 words is a fascinating study in historical memory 00:15:02.750 --> 00:15:06.220 and ego. Because the speech became such a monolithic 00:15:06.220 --> 00:15:08.759 success, multiple people later stepped forward 00:15:08.759 --> 00:15:10.919 to claim they were the true architect of the 00:15:10.919 --> 00:15:13.679 phrase. The competing claims are wild. Let's 00:15:13.679 --> 00:15:15.539 look at the timeline of people trying to take 00:15:15.539 --> 00:15:18.039 credit. First you have the State Department translator 00:15:18.039 --> 00:15:21.220 Margaret Plushney. In 1997, decades after the 00:15:21.220 --> 00:15:23.379 fact, she wrote an account stating that she had 00:15:23.379 --> 00:15:25.419 been called to the White House specifically to 00:15:25.419 --> 00:15:27.639 translate the phrase and teach Kennedy how to 00:15:27.639 --> 00:15:29.840 say it. She claimed the literal translation had 00:15:29.840 --> 00:15:32.340 been hastily provided by another stateside translator 00:15:32.340 --> 00:15:34.659 who was irritated about having his weekend interrupted. 00:15:35.120 --> 00:15:37.580 Then you have Ted Sorensen, one of the most famous 00:15:37.580 --> 00:15:40.740 political wordsmiths of the century. In his 2008 00:15:40.740 --> 00:15:44.279 memoir, Sorensen strongly insinuated his central 00:15:44.279 --> 00:15:47.259 role in crafting the moment. But significantly, 00:15:47.500 --> 00:15:49.179 Sorensen claimed that he was the one who made 00:15:49.179 --> 00:15:52.120 the linguistic choice to insert the word ein 00:15:52.120 --> 00:15:55.830 into the phrase. He was essentially falling on 00:15:55.830 --> 00:15:58.570 his sword, taking the blame for what he mistakenly 00:15:58.570 --> 00:16:01.269 believed was the jelly donut grammatical error, 00:16:01.610 --> 00:16:04.289 which he will thoroughly debunk shortly. Sorensen's 00:16:04.289 --> 00:16:06.230 account was even corroborated at times by the 00:16:06.230 --> 00:16:08.750 former mayor of West Berlin, Willy Brand. And 00:16:08.750 --> 00:16:10.850 if that wasn't confusing enough, you have the 00:16:10.850 --> 00:16:13.710 interpreter, Robert Lochner. In his own memoirs, 00:16:13.929 --> 00:16:15.970 Lochner insisted that the phrase wasn't finalized 00:16:15.970 --> 00:16:18.470 in Washington at all. He claimed that Kennedy 00:16:18.470 --> 00:16:20.909 specifically turned to him right inside Mayor 00:16:20.909 --> 00:16:23.149 Willy Brand's office in Berlin on the day of 00:16:23.149 --> 00:16:25.289 the speech. asked for the German translation 00:16:25.289 --> 00:16:28.230 of I am a Berliner, and that they practice the 00:16:28.230 --> 00:16:30.330 pronunciation together right there on the spot. 00:16:30.629 --> 00:16:32.750 When you have this many conflicting eyewitness 00:16:32.750 --> 00:16:35.909 accounts from highly credible people, historians 00:16:35.909 --> 00:16:39.330 have to rely on the paper trail. Andreas Dome's 00:16:39.330 --> 00:16:42.470 comprehensive synthesis of the archives definitively 00:16:42.470 --> 00:16:44.710 cuts through the confusion. While the various 00:16:44.710 --> 00:16:46.909 translators obviously provided the literal German 00:16:46.909 --> 00:16:50.009 vocabulary, The structural DNA of the speech, 00:16:50.190 --> 00:16:53.309 the comparison to the Roman citizen, was undeniably 00:16:53.309 --> 00:16:56.070 Kennedy's, originating in New Orleans. Furthermore, 00:16:56.370 --> 00:16:58.809 the physical evidence of the June 25th draft 00:16:58.809 --> 00:17:01.149 proves the phrase was established before they 00:17:01.149 --> 00:17:04.190 ever landed in Germany, refuting Lochner's timeline. 00:17:04.829 --> 00:17:06.950 Ultimately, the synthesis shows that while the 00:17:06.950 --> 00:17:09.650 vocabulary was sourced from his staff, the physical 00:17:09.650 --> 00:17:12.349 act of writing the final phonetic cues and the 00:17:12.349 --> 00:17:14.549 decision to hinge the entire emotional climax 00:17:14.549 --> 00:17:17.450 of the address on that specific phrase was entirely 00:17:17.450 --> 00:17:20.109 driven by Kennedy himself. He knew exactly the 00:17:20.109 --> 00:17:22.009 weapon he was wielding, so let's move from the 00:17:22.009 --> 00:17:24.009 strategy sessions to the world stage. The date 00:17:24.009 --> 00:17:28.430 is June 26, 1963. Kennedy spent the morning touring 00:17:28.430 --> 00:17:31.009 the city. He has stood on viewing platforms and 00:17:31.009 --> 00:17:33.289 physically looked over the concrete, the barbed 00:17:33.289 --> 00:17:35.710 wire, and the armed guards of the Berlin Wall. 00:17:35.910 --> 00:17:38.009 By the time his motorcade arrives at the Rathaus 00:17:38.009 --> 00:17:40.789 Schöneberg, the atmosphere in the city is electric. 00:17:41.430 --> 00:17:43.369 The visual spectacle of that afternoon is hard 00:17:43.369 --> 00:17:46.329 to overstate. The Rathaus Schöneberg served as 00:17:46.329 --> 00:17:48.829 the city hall for the West Berlin municipal government. 00:17:49.569 --> 00:17:51.849 In front of the building is a massive public 00:17:51.849 --> 00:17:54.670 square. The historical estimates place the crowd 00:17:54.670 --> 00:17:58.390 at roughly 120 ,000 people. You are looking at 00:17:58.390 --> 00:18:01.710 a vast, tightly packed sea of humanity stretching 00:18:01.710 --> 00:18:04.529 as far as the eye can see. These are people who 00:18:04.529 --> 00:18:06.410 have been living under a state of psychological 00:18:06.410 --> 00:18:08.960 siege for two years. The steps of the Rathaus 00:18:08.960 --> 00:18:11.839 are a who's who of Cold War political titans. 00:18:12.140 --> 00:18:14.500 You have the U .S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk. 00:18:14.619 --> 00:18:17.180 You have the West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer 00:18:17.180 --> 00:18:19.900 and Mayor Willy Brandt. Crucially, you also have 00:18:19.900 --> 00:18:22.220 Lucius D. Clay, the former military governor 00:18:22.220 --> 00:18:24.779 who had orchestrated the Berlin airlift 15 years 00:18:24.779 --> 00:18:27.740 prior, a man who was viewed as an absolute savior 00:18:27.740 --> 00:18:30.220 by the local population. The president of the 00:18:30.220 --> 00:18:33.039 Berlin parliament, Otto Bach, speaks first, delivering 00:18:33.039 --> 00:18:35.339 a grim summary of the recent hardships caused 00:18:35.339 --> 00:18:38.059 by the wall, essentially setting a somber, urgent 00:18:38.059 --> 00:18:40.940 tone. And then John F. Kennedy steps up to the 00:18:40.940 --> 00:18:44.480 podium. He has the meticulously typed, heavily 00:18:44.480 --> 00:18:46.700 vetted reading copy of the speech sitting right 00:18:46.700 --> 00:18:48.839 in front of him. This is a document that the 00:18:48.839 --> 00:18:51.480 national security apparatus has spent weeks refining 00:18:51.480 --> 00:18:54.000 to ensure it strikes the exact right diplomatic 00:18:54.000 --> 00:18:56.759 balance. But Kennedy looks out at those hundred 00:18:56.759 --> 00:18:59.500 and twenty thousand faces. He has the brutal 00:18:59.500 --> 00:19:01.940 reality of the concrete wall he saw that morning 00:19:01.940 --> 00:19:04.940 fresh in his mind, and he makes a momentous decision. 00:19:05.299 --> 00:19:08.640 He abandons the safe, sanitized script. Historians 00:19:08.640 --> 00:19:11.319 point to this as the exact moment Kennedy's raw 00:19:11.319 --> 00:19:14.440 political instinct takes over. The visual reality 00:19:14.440 --> 00:19:16.940 of the wall triggered a visceral anger in him. 00:19:17.140 --> 00:19:19.660 He decides that diplomatic caution is inadequate 00:19:19.660 --> 00:19:22.190 for the moment. He ignores the moderated text 00:19:22.190 --> 00:19:25.190 recommended by his advisors, pulls out his handwritten 00:19:25.190 --> 00:19:27.869 phonetic cheap sheet and begins to improvise. 00:19:27.910 --> 00:19:30.410 Adopting a vastly more aggressive, provocative 00:19:30.410 --> 00:19:33.109 posture than anyone in Washington had authorized. 00:19:33.309 --> 00:19:35.569 Right. He guides the massive crowd through the 00:19:35.569 --> 00:19:37.710 buildup, relying on that New Orleans framework 00:19:37.710 --> 00:19:41.670 and delivers the iconic climax. He says 2000 00:19:41.670 --> 00:19:45.430 years ago, the proudest boast was civis romana 00:19:45.430 --> 00:19:49.170 sum. Today in the world of freedom, the proudest 00:19:49.170 --> 00:19:53.440 boast is Ich bin ein Berliner. The crowd roared 00:19:53.440 --> 00:19:56.380 and Kennedy kept pushing, building to an incredible 00:19:56.380 --> 00:19:59.059 crescendo that linked the fate of every democratic 00:19:59.059 --> 00:20:02.920 citizen to this single besieged city. He concluded, 00:20:03.380 --> 00:20:06.200 all free men, wherever they may live, are citizens 00:20:06.200 --> 00:20:08.720 of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take 00:20:08.720 --> 00:20:11.529 pride in the words Ich bin ein Berliner. The 00:20:11.529 --> 00:20:14.390 delivery is a masterclass in cadence and emotional 00:20:14.390 --> 00:20:17.069 resonance. But if we analyze the archival audio 00:20:17.069 --> 00:20:19.250 of the exact moment he first drops the German 00:20:19.250 --> 00:20:21.829 phrase, the sequence of the crowd's reaction 00:20:21.829 --> 00:20:24.250 is absolutely vital to understanding how the 00:20:24.250 --> 00:20:26.710 later myths evolved. When you listen to the tape, 00:20:27.009 --> 00:20:29.559 it is an instantaneous pandemonium. There is 00:20:29.559 --> 00:20:31.740 a distinct multi -second beat of silence after 00:20:31.740 --> 00:20:34.200 Kennedy says the German words. Why? Because standing 00:20:34.200 --> 00:20:36.279 right next to him on the podium is Heinz Weber, 00:20:36.480 --> 00:20:38.339 the official translator from the U .S. mission 00:20:38.339 --> 00:20:40.920 in Berlin. Kennedy speaks and the crowd waits 00:20:40.920 --> 00:20:42.920 patiently for Weber to translate the surrounding 00:20:42.920 --> 00:20:45.079 English context and then repeat the president's 00:20:45.079 --> 00:20:47.599 German punchline. Only after Weber finishes the 00:20:47.599 --> 00:20:50.900 translation does the crowd truly erupt. The sheer 00:20:50.900 --> 00:20:53.200 volume of the cheers washing over the square 00:20:53.200 --> 00:20:55.680 is deafening. You can see the visible relief 00:20:55.680 --> 00:20:59.440 wash over Kennedy's face. He had taken a massive 00:20:59.440 --> 00:21:02.440 linguistic gamble on the world stage, and he 00:21:02.440 --> 00:21:04.799 knew he had nailed the pronunciation. In a moment 00:21:04.799 --> 00:21:08.000 of genuine, unscripted relief, he turns to Heinz 00:21:08.000 --> 00:21:10.799 Weber and publicly thanks him. Kenny jokes into 00:21:10.799 --> 00:21:13.500 the microphone saying, I appreciate my interpreter 00:21:13.500 --> 00:21:16.799 translating my German. Weber, functioning as 00:21:16.799 --> 00:21:19.180 a consummate professional, dutifully translates 00:21:19.180 --> 00:21:21.420 the president's self -deprecating joke about 00:21:21.420 --> 00:21:23.940 his own terrible language skills into German 00:21:23.940 --> 00:21:26.839 for the crowd. And that is the exact moment the 00:21:26.839 --> 00:21:29.779 crowd bursts into sustained laughter. They are 00:21:29.779 --> 00:21:31.759 laughing with the president at his own charming 00:21:31.759 --> 00:21:34.640 self -awareness, not at a linguistic blunder. 00:21:34.980 --> 00:21:37.980 Kennedy stands there, visibly thrilled, adjusting 00:21:37.980 --> 00:21:40.960 his suit jacket. As Down described it, he was 00:21:40.960 --> 00:21:42.900 grinning like a schoolboy who had just successfully 00:21:42.900 --> 00:21:45.319 pulled off a massive coup. He had captured the 00:21:45.319 --> 00:21:47.619 heart of the city. But while the crowd was cheering, 00:21:47.799 --> 00:21:49.579 the mood among his senior staff standing right 00:21:49.579 --> 00:21:52.000 behind him was rapidly approaching sheer panic. 00:21:52.190 --> 00:21:54.710 McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy's national security advisor, 00:21:55.269 --> 00:21:57.509 was listening to the improvisation with mounting 00:21:57.509 --> 00:22:00.349 horror. Bundy's entire job was to manage the 00:22:00.349 --> 00:22:02.970 geopolitical fallout. And he realizes Kennedy 00:22:02.970 --> 00:22:06.410 is throwing gasoline on an already raging diplomatic 00:22:06.410 --> 00:22:09.849 fire. During the improvisation, Kennedy had practically 00:22:09.849 --> 00:22:12.769 challenged the Soviet Union to a physical confrontation. 00:22:13.670 --> 00:22:21.160 He ad -libbed the line. He aimed that specific 00:22:21.160 --> 00:22:24.279 barb directly at anyone, including allies, who 00:22:24.279 --> 00:22:26.039 argued that the West should try to negotiate 00:22:26.039 --> 00:22:28.380 or compromise with the communists. He was basically 00:22:28.380 --> 00:22:30.460 shouting to the world, you think we can compromise 00:22:30.460 --> 00:22:33.230 with these people? Come look at this wall. Bundy 00:22:33.230 --> 00:22:35.750 immediately recognized that this level of aggressive 00:22:35.750 --> 00:22:38.250 rhetoric was going to infuriate the Kremlin and 00:22:38.250 --> 00:22:41.369 potentially destabilize ongoing delicate negotiations 00:22:41.369 --> 00:22:43.690 on other fronts like nuclear test bands. The 00:22:43.690 --> 00:22:45.849 moment Kennedy stepped off the podium and into 00:22:45.849 --> 00:22:48.690 the motorcade, Bundy confronted him. They had 00:22:48.690 --> 00:22:50.730 a matter of hours before Kennedy was scheduled 00:22:50.730 --> 00:22:53.269 to deliver a second major address that afternoon 00:22:53.269 --> 00:22:56.240 at the Frey University at Berlin. The ride from 00:22:56.240 --> 00:22:59.220 the Rathaus to the university turns into a frantic 00:22:59.220 --> 00:23:02.240 session of political damage control. They tear 00:23:02.240 --> 00:23:04.779 into the text of the upcoming university speech, 00:23:05.359 --> 00:23:07.920 furiously crossing out aggressive language and 00:23:07.920 --> 00:23:10.539 softening the tone. The speech Kennedy ultimately 00:23:10.539 --> 00:23:13.299 delivers at the free university is dramatically 00:23:13.299 --> 00:23:16.019 different in character. It is highly conciliatory, 00:23:16.200 --> 00:23:18.880 focusing on academic cooperation, the shared 00:23:18.880 --> 00:23:21.779 pursuit of knowledge, and carefully walking back 00:23:21.779 --> 00:23:23.900 the fire and brimstone he had just unleashed 00:23:23.900 --> 00:23:26.299 at the city hall. But the genie was already out 00:23:26.299 --> 00:23:28.619 of the bottle. If we analyze the geopolitical 00:23:28.619 --> 00:23:31.119 fallout from the Soviet perspective, their reaction 00:23:31.119 --> 00:23:33.940 was a mixture of deep confusion and profound 00:23:33.940 --> 00:23:37.359 anger. Just 16 days prior to the Berlin speech 00:23:37.359 --> 00:23:40.440 on June 10th. Kennedy had delivered what is arguably 00:23:40.440 --> 00:23:43.019 his most important foreign policy address at 00:23:43.019 --> 00:23:45.279 American University in Washington. He was titled, 00:23:45.299 --> 00:23:48.140 A Strategy of Peace. In that American University 00:23:48.140 --> 00:23:50.690 speech, Kennedy was revocably progressive. He 00:23:50.690 --> 00:23:52.869 called for a re -examination of American attitudes 00:23:52.869 --> 00:23:55.250 toward the Soviet Union, urging empathy for the 00:23:55.250 --> 00:23:57.150 devastating losses the Russian people suffered 00:23:57.150 --> 00:24:00.029 in World War II. And actively advocating for 00:24:00.029 --> 00:24:03.349 a path toward mutual understanding to avoid the 00:24:03.349 --> 00:24:06.650 sheer madness of mutually assured nuclear destruction. 00:24:06.789 --> 00:24:09.369 It was a highly diplomatic olive branch. So when 00:24:09.369 --> 00:24:11.930 the Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, hears 00:24:11.930 --> 00:24:14.569 the American university speech, he thinks he 00:24:14.569 --> 00:24:17.690 has a partner for de -escalation. Two weeks later, 00:24:18.009 --> 00:24:20.140 he watches the same American president stand 00:24:20.140 --> 00:24:24.099 at the Berlin Wall, rallying a crowd of 120 ,000 00:24:24.099 --> 00:24:27.039 people and aggressively talking the Soviet bloc 00:24:27.039 --> 00:24:31.039 with, let them come to Berlin. utterly bewildered 00:24:31.039 --> 00:24:34.000 by the whiplash. Shortly after the Berlin address, 00:24:34.339 --> 00:24:36.799 Khrushchev publicly scoffed at the erratic messaging, 00:24:37.119 --> 00:24:39.259 remarking to the international press that one 00:24:39.259 --> 00:24:40.960 would think the two speeches had been delivered 00:24:40.960 --> 00:24:43.400 by two different presidents. The diplomatic waters 00:24:43.400 --> 00:24:45.779 were certainly muddied. But in terms of historical 00:24:45.779 --> 00:24:48.319 legacy, the speech at Radau -Schöneberg was an 00:24:48.319 --> 00:24:51.079 unmitigated triumph. It permanently cemented 00:24:51.079 --> 00:24:53.819 Kennedy's image as the ultimate defender of the 00:24:53.819 --> 00:24:56.359 free world. In fact, the sheer power of that 00:24:56.359 --> 00:24:58.940 moment created an inescapable mandatory playbook 00:24:58.940 --> 00:25:00.960 for every American president that followed him. 00:25:01.160 --> 00:25:04.319 It became a geopolitical necessity. If you occupied 00:25:04.319 --> 00:25:06.440 the Oval Office during or immediately following 00:25:06.440 --> 00:25:09.720 the Cold War and you traveled to Europe, a pilgrimage 00:25:09.720 --> 00:25:13.960 to the Berlin Wall to deliver a soaring symbolic 00:25:13.960 --> 00:25:16.799 address was a mandatory requirement of the job. 00:25:16.859 --> 00:25:18.619 You had to prove you could stand where Kennedy 00:25:18.619 --> 00:25:21.579 stood. The echoes of 1963 are deafening when 00:25:21.579 --> 00:25:24.279 you look at the historical timeline. In 1987, 00:25:24.380 --> 00:25:26.480 you have Ronald Reagan standing at the Brandenburg 00:25:26.480 --> 00:25:30.000 Gate utilizing that exact same strategy of aggressive, 00:25:30.079 --> 00:25:33.440 highly - symbolic rhetoric demanding, Mr. Gorbachev, 00:25:33.680 --> 00:25:36.480 tear down this wall. And even after the Soviet 00:25:36.480 --> 00:25:38.920 Union collapsed and the wall was physically dismantled, 00:25:39.059 --> 00:25:41.900 the template remained. When Bill Clinton visited 00:25:41.900 --> 00:25:45.740 a reunified Berlin in 1994, he deliberately channeled 00:25:45.740 --> 00:25:48.339 Kennedy's cadence, delivering the German phrase, 00:25:48.480 --> 00:25:51.450 Berlin is free. Berlin is free. They were all 00:25:51.450 --> 00:25:53.369 chasing the rhetorical high of that original 00:25:53.369 --> 00:25:55.390 perfect moment. And the city of Berlin itself 00:25:55.390 --> 00:25:57.930 has enshrined that moment in its physical geography. 00:25:58.549 --> 00:26:00.890 The massive square where the crowd gathered was 00:26:00.890 --> 00:26:04.369 rapidly renamed John F. Kennedy Platz. If you 00:26:04.369 --> 00:26:06.849 visit the Rathaus Schöneberg today, you can see 00:26:06.849 --> 00:26:09.170 the enormous commemorative plaque mounted on 00:26:09.170 --> 00:26:11.670 a column at the main entrance and the room directly 00:26:11.670 --> 00:26:13.750 above the entrance is permanently dedicated to 00:26:13.750 --> 00:26:16.259 his visit. The physical artifacts of the speech 00:26:16.259 --> 00:26:18.839 are treated with the reverence of sacred relics. 00:26:19.200 --> 00:26:21.779 The Checkpoint Charlie Museum features the video 00:26:21.779 --> 00:26:24.839 of the delivery as a centerpiece of their exhibition. 00:26:25.160 --> 00:26:28.359 And that single sheet of paper, the heavily annotated 00:26:28.359 --> 00:26:30.940 hand -corrected reading copy where Kennedy scrawled 00:26:30.940 --> 00:26:33.940 his phonetic cheat codes, is preserved in the 00:26:33.940 --> 00:26:36.240 climate -controlled vaults of the National Archives 00:26:36.240 --> 00:26:39.359 in the United States. We have established, without 00:26:39.359 --> 00:26:42.559 a shadow of a doubt, that this event was a monumental 00:26:42.559 --> 00:26:46.180 triumph of Cold War statecraft. It was a soaring, 00:26:46.519 --> 00:26:49.599 deeply moving assertion of solidarity that fundamentally 00:26:49.599 --> 00:26:52.240 altered the morale of a besieged city. So with 00:26:52.240 --> 00:26:54.740 all of that profound historical weight established, 00:26:55.039 --> 00:26:57.240 how on earth do we end up talking about a jelly 00:26:57.240 --> 00:26:59.799 donut? It is time to dissect the urban legend, 00:26:59.799 --> 00:27:02.339 because the reality is that for a massive segment 00:27:02.339 --> 00:27:04.640 of the population, the myth is the only thing 00:27:04.640 --> 00:27:06.859 they actually associate with the speech. The 00:27:06.859 --> 00:27:09.180 famous legend claims that by adding the indefinite 00:27:09.180 --> 00:27:13.119 article, Ein, the German word for A, Kennedy 00:27:13.119 --> 00:27:15.980 committed a catastrophic grammatical error. The 00:27:15.980 --> 00:27:18.660 myth asserts that instead of saying, I am a citizen 00:27:18.660 --> 00:27:22.359 of Berlin, his inclusion of ein fundamentally 00:27:22.359 --> 00:27:24.779 altered the meaning of the sentence to, I am 00:27:24.779 --> 00:27:27.299 a jelly donut. And the cherry on top of this 00:27:27.299 --> 00:27:30.380 myth is the claim that the crowd of 120 ,000 00:27:30.380 --> 00:27:33.140 Germans instantly recognized the pastry gaff 00:27:33.140 --> 00:27:35.579 and burst into laughter at the president's expense. 00:27:35.859 --> 00:27:38.480 As a piece of historical folklore, it has incredible 00:27:38.480 --> 00:27:42.019 staying power. It's humorous, it humanizes a 00:27:42.019 --> 00:27:44.579 powerful figure by deflating his grandest moment, 00:27:44.880 --> 00:27:47.220 and it perfectly encapsulates the anxieties of 00:27:47.220 --> 00:27:54.710 trying to speak a foreign language. unequivocally 00:27:54.710 --> 00:27:57.490 false. It fails on a grammatical level, it fails 00:27:57.490 --> 00:27:59.529 on a regional linguistic level, and it fails 00:27:59.529 --> 00:28:01.509 on the basic timeline of the historical audio. 00:28:01.769 --> 00:28:03.670 Let's systematically tear down the pillars of 00:28:03.670 --> 00:28:05.630 this myth, starting with the German grammar itself. 00:28:06.089 --> 00:28:08.549 Where does the confusion over the word ein actually 00:28:08.549 --> 00:28:11.569 come from? The foundation of the myth rests on 00:28:11.569 --> 00:28:14.329 a fundamental misunderstanding by English speakers 00:28:14.329 --> 00:28:18.460 of a specific rule in German syntax. It is entirely 00:28:18.460 --> 00:28:20.700 true that in the German language, when you are 00:28:20.700 --> 00:28:23.400 stating your literal profession or your literal 00:28:23.400 --> 00:28:27.079 city of origin, you generally omit the indefinite 00:28:27.079 --> 00:28:29.420 article. If you were born and raised in Berlin 00:28:29.420 --> 00:28:31.480 and you want to tell someone where you were from, 00:28:31.579 --> 00:28:34.339 you simply say, ich bin Berliner. The same way 00:28:34.339 --> 00:28:37.059 a doctor would say, ich bin Arzt. You do not 00:28:37.059 --> 00:28:39.700 use the word A. So the people who created the 00:28:39.700 --> 00:28:42.420 myth learned that one specific rule and thought 00:28:42.420 --> 00:28:45.299 they had caught the president in a mistake. Precisely. 00:28:45.529 --> 00:28:48.170 but they ignored the crucial caveat to that rule. 00:28:49.009 --> 00:28:51.630 The omission of the article ein applies only 00:28:51.630 --> 00:28:53.589 when the speaker is making a literal statement 00:28:53.589 --> 00:28:56.650 of fact. When a speaker is using the noun figuratively, 00:28:57.210 --> 00:29:00.029 utilizing the indefinite article ein is not only 00:29:00.029 --> 00:29:03.190 grammatically acceptable, it is absolutely required 00:29:03.190 --> 00:29:05.569 to convey the correct meaning. And the context 00:29:05.569 --> 00:29:08.470 of the speech makes it painfully obvious to every 00:29:08.470 --> 00:29:10.569 single person in that square that Kennedy was 00:29:10.569 --> 00:29:13.359 speaking figuratively. The crowd was fully aware 00:29:13.359 --> 00:29:15.500 that the president of the United States was a 00:29:15.500 --> 00:29:18.200 wealthy patrician born in Brookline, Massachusetts. 00:29:18.700 --> 00:29:21.079 He was not claiming he possessed a local birth 00:29:21.079 --> 00:29:23.920 certificate. Exactly. He was utilizing the phrase 00:29:23.920 --> 00:29:26.619 as a powerful metaphor. He was telling the crowd, 00:29:26.720 --> 00:29:29.559 I share your democratic values. I recognize your 00:29:29.559 --> 00:29:32.279 struggle. And in spirit, I stand alongside you. 00:29:32.420 --> 00:29:34.940 By deliberately employing the phrase, Ich bin 00:29:34.940 --> 00:29:37.539 ein Berliner, he was grammatically indicating 00:29:37.539 --> 00:29:40.859 that he was a Berliner in spirit. not by birth. 00:29:41.259 --> 00:29:44.420 If he had actually omitted the ein and said ich 00:29:44.420 --> 00:29:47.059 bin Berliner, it would have sounded incredibly 00:29:47.059 --> 00:29:49.440 strange, as if he were genuinely confused about 00:29:49.440 --> 00:29:52.140 his own literal nationality. His grammar was 00:29:52.140 --> 00:29:54.359 utterly flawless for the figurative metaphor 00:29:54.359 --> 00:29:56.500 he was executing. So the grammatical foundation 00:29:56.500 --> 00:29:59.220 of the myth is completely destroyed. Now let's 00:29:59.220 --> 00:30:01.700 address the second pillar, the pastry itself. 00:30:01.930 --> 00:30:04.269 Because even if he had made a grammatical error, 00:30:04.809 --> 00:30:07.390 the geography of German baked goods completely 00:30:07.390 --> 00:30:09.710 ruins the joke. Is a jam -filled donut actually 00:30:09.710 --> 00:30:12.170 called a Berliner? The answer is heavily dependent 00:30:12.170 --> 00:30:14.210 on precisely where you're standing in Germany. 00:30:14.509 --> 00:30:17.049 Germany has incredibly diverse regional dialects, 00:30:17.049 --> 00:30:19.430 especially regarding food. If you walk into a 00:30:19.430 --> 00:30:22.450 bakery in the north, the west, or the southwest 00:30:22.450 --> 00:30:25.430 of the country and ask for a jam -filled pastry, 00:30:26.109 --> 00:30:29.069 they will indeed hand you a Berliner, which is 00:30:29.069 --> 00:30:32.680 short for Berlinerfunkuchen. But where was Kennedy 00:30:32.680 --> 00:30:35.660 standing? He was standing in Berlin. And in the 00:30:35.660 --> 00:30:37.579 city of Berlin, as well as the surrounding region 00:30:37.579 --> 00:30:40.299 of Brandenburg, the local dialect refers to that 00:30:40.299 --> 00:30:43.980 specific pastry simply as a fankuchen, which 00:30:43.980 --> 00:30:46.880 translates literally to pancake. This is the 00:30:46.880 --> 00:30:49.460 ultimate geographical irony. If you went into 00:30:49.460 --> 00:30:52.660 a bakery in West Berlin in 1963 and asked the 00:30:52.660 --> 00:30:55.039 baker for a Berliner, they wouldn't have the 00:30:55.039 --> 00:30:56.839 faintest idea why you were asking for a jelly 00:30:56.839 --> 00:30:58.880 donut. They would think you were asking to purchase 00:30:58.880 --> 00:31:01.809 a local citizen. The local audience wouldn't 00:31:01.809 --> 00:31:04.049 have even made the associative leap between the 00:31:04.049 --> 00:31:06.369 word Kennedy used at the pastry because that 00:31:06.369 --> 00:31:08.569 word was simply not part of their daily culinary 00:31:08.569 --> 00:31:11.089 vocabulary. It is the equivalent of a foreign 00:31:11.089 --> 00:31:14.009 dignitary giving a speech in New York City declaring, 00:31:14.349 --> 00:31:17.069 I am a Frankfurter, to express solidarity and 00:31:17.069 --> 00:31:19.589 a rumor starting decades later that the entire 00:31:19.589 --> 00:31:21.630 crowd thought the dignitary was calling themselves 00:31:21.630 --> 00:31:24.309 a hot dog. The local terminology simply doesn't 00:31:24.309 --> 00:31:26.710 support the punchline. And that brings us to 00:31:26.710 --> 00:31:30.349 the final fatal blow to the myth. The laughter. 00:31:31.170 --> 00:31:33.210 The myth relies heavily on the narrative that 00:31:33.210 --> 00:31:35.589 the crowd instantly laughed at the paster joke, 00:31:35.930 --> 00:31:37.890 humiliating the president. But as we already 00:31:37.890 --> 00:31:40.589 established when analyzing the audio tapes, the 00:31:40.589 --> 00:31:43.269 timeline of the laughter completely contradicts 00:31:43.269 --> 00:31:45.930 the myth. The archival audio is unambiguous. 00:31:46.369 --> 00:31:48.569 Kennedy delivers the line. The crowd is silent. 00:31:48.839 --> 00:31:52.259 Heinz Weber translates it, the crowd cheers rapturously. 00:31:52.539 --> 00:31:54.980 It is only moments later when Kennedy steps back 00:31:54.980 --> 00:31:57.740 to the mic and makes a completely separate, self 00:31:57.740 --> 00:32:00.480 -deprecating joke thanking his translator that 00:32:00.480 --> 00:32:02.759 the crowd laughs. The laughter was a shared moment 00:32:02.759 --> 00:32:05.440 of warmth regarding his accent, not a massive 00:32:05.440 --> 00:32:08.460 collective mockery of a pastry error. So the 00:32:08.460 --> 00:32:10.480 grammar is perfectly correct, the regional dialect 00:32:10.480 --> 00:32:12.720 for pastry is completely wrong, and the audio 00:32:12.720 --> 00:32:14.759 evidence proves the laughter was about a completely 00:32:14.759 --> 00:32:18.200 different joke. The myth is definitively factually 00:32:18.200 --> 00:32:21.240 dead. But to me, that realization opens the door 00:32:21.240 --> 00:32:23.859 to the most fascinating question of this entire 00:32:23.859 --> 00:32:26.980 deep dive. If this story is so easily disproven, 00:32:27.180 --> 00:32:29.019 how on earth did it become one of the most famous 00:32:29.019 --> 00:32:31.539 historical anecdotes in the world? How do we 00:32:31.539 --> 00:32:34.819 trace the anatomy of this viral lie? To understand 00:32:34.819 --> 00:32:37.099 the contagion, we have to look for patient zero. 00:32:37.460 --> 00:32:40.140 And what makes the spread of this myth so extraordinary 00:32:40.140 --> 00:32:42.640 is that it did not originate contemporaneously 00:32:42.640 --> 00:32:45.660 with the event. There were no newspaper columns 00:32:45.660 --> 00:32:47.839 the next day mocking the president. There were 00:32:47.839 --> 00:32:50.039 no political cartoons featuring talking donuts 00:32:50.039 --> 00:32:53.880 in 1963. The myth lay completely dormant for 00:32:53.880 --> 00:32:57.119 20 years. Two entire decades pass before the 00:32:57.119 --> 00:32:59.779 jelly donut even enters the historical conversation. 00:33:00.220 --> 00:33:02.660 And when it finally does appear, it doesn't come 00:33:02.660 --> 00:33:04.960 from a declassified document or a historian's 00:33:04.960 --> 00:33:08.559 memoir. It emerges in 1983 from the pages of 00:33:08.559 --> 00:33:11.019 a spy novel. That is the astonishing truth. The 00:33:11.019 --> 00:33:13.140 genesis of the global myth can be traced back 00:33:13.140 --> 00:33:16.240 to a work of pure fiction, specifically a Cold 00:33:16.240 --> 00:33:19.380 War espionage thriller titled Berlin Game, written 00:33:19.380 --> 00:33:21.940 by the highly successful British author Len Dayton. 00:33:22.400 --> 00:33:25.359 In the text of the novel, the protagonist, a 00:33:25.359 --> 00:33:27.839 cynical British intelligence officer named Bernard 00:33:27.839 --> 00:33:31.079 Sampson, is having a conversation and he drops 00:33:31.079 --> 00:33:34.640 this specific dialogue. Ich bin ein Berliner, 00:33:34.740 --> 00:33:37.940 I said. It was a joke. A Berliner is a doughnut. 00:33:38.200 --> 00:33:40.859 The day after President Kennedy made his famous 00:33:40.859 --> 00:33:43.680 proclamation, Berlin cartoonists had a field 00:33:43.680 --> 00:33:47.799 day with talking donuts. simply invents this 00:33:47.799 --> 00:33:50.339 amusing cynical anecdote and puts it into the 00:33:50.339 --> 00:33:52.759 mouth of his character to add some weary flavor 00:33:52.759 --> 00:33:55.240 to the dialogue. Any basic literary analysis 00:33:55.240 --> 00:33:57.460 will tell you that Bernard Sampson is a classic, 00:33:57.619 --> 00:33:59.980 unreliable narrator. You're not supposed to take 00:33:59.980 --> 00:34:02.339 his cynical quips as heavily researched historical 00:34:02.339 --> 00:34:05.160 fact. Yet that is precisely the error that initiates 00:34:05.160 --> 00:34:07.960 the media contagion. The transition from a fictional 00:34:07.960 --> 00:34:10.519 character's quip to an accepted historical fact 00:34:10.519 --> 00:34:13.360 begins almost immediately upon the book's publication. 00:34:13.659 --> 00:34:15.400 The catalyst was the book review section of the 00:34:15.400 --> 00:34:18.820 New York Times. In December 1983, a reviewer 00:34:18.820 --> 00:34:20.900 writing about Berlin game decided to treat Bernard 00:34:20.900 --> 00:34:23.420 Sampson's fictional dialogue as an authentic 00:34:23.420 --> 00:34:25.840 historical anecdote. The reviewer essentially 00:34:25.840 --> 00:34:28.539 stripped away the fictional context and presented 00:34:28.539 --> 00:34:30.940 the doughnut story to the Times readership as 00:34:30.940 --> 00:34:33.480 a quirky piece of real history. And the reviewer 00:34:33.480 --> 00:34:36.679 didn't just repeat the claim, they actively embellished 00:34:36.679 --> 00:34:39.309 it to make it sound more plausible. They added 00:34:39.309 --> 00:34:41.309 the detail that the audience found the remark 00:34:41.309 --> 00:34:44.550 highly amusing, explicitly writing that Kennedy 00:34:44.550 --> 00:34:47.969 amused the city's populace because in the local 00:34:47.969 --> 00:34:50.909 parlance, a Berliner is a donut. They took a 00:34:50.909 --> 00:34:54.050 completely fabricated premise, validated it with 00:34:54.050 --> 00:34:56.250 the institutional authority of the New York Times, 00:34:56.389 --> 00:34:59.510 and then retroactively invented the crowd's amusement 00:34:59.510 --> 00:35:02.309 to justify the story. And once that anecdote 00:35:02.309 --> 00:35:04.829 was legitimized in print by the paper of record, 00:35:05.309 --> 00:35:08.360 the guardrails completely fell away. By 1988, 00:35:08.719 --> 00:35:11.039 just five years later, the mutation of the lie 00:35:11.039 --> 00:35:14.039 was complete. It escalated from a passing mention 00:35:14.039 --> 00:35:16.900 in a book review to the central thesis of a full 00:35:16.900 --> 00:35:19.119 -blown New York Times op -ed. The writer of the 00:35:19.119 --> 00:35:21.059 op -ed presented the event as an established 00:35:21.059 --> 00:35:24.039 historical blunder. They explicitly claimed that 00:35:24.039 --> 00:35:26.239 the president's highly paid speech writers had 00:35:26.239 --> 00:35:28.780 made a catastrophic error, asserting that the 00:35:28.780 --> 00:35:31.280 citizens of Berlin reserved the term exclusively 00:35:31.280 --> 00:35:33.860 for a breakfast confection. The writer even painted 00:35:33.860 --> 00:35:36.920 a vivid, completely fabricated picture of the 00:35:36.920 --> 00:35:39.360 crowd's reaction, stating that the residents 00:35:39.360 --> 00:35:42.300 pittered among themselves when Kennedy exclaimed, 00:35:42.519 --> 00:35:45.980 literally, I is a jelly -filled donut. Notice 00:35:45.980 --> 00:35:48.679 the incredible specificity of the phrase tittered 00:35:48.679 --> 00:35:51.860 among themselves. It is a brilliant, evocative 00:35:51.860 --> 00:35:54.280 piece of writing that paints a crystal clear 00:35:54.280 --> 00:35:57.059 image in the reader's mind of an event that literally 00:35:57.059 --> 00:35:59.719 never happened. It is the perfect example of 00:35:59.719 --> 00:36:02.920 how adding granular, specific details to a false 00:36:02.920 --> 00:36:05.500 narrative makes it exponentially more believable. 00:36:06.039 --> 00:36:09.079 From that moment on, the myth bypassed all critical 00:36:09.079 --> 00:36:11.559 filters and exploded across the global English 00:36:11.559 --> 00:36:14.099 -speaking media landscape. It became an unstoppable 00:36:14.099 --> 00:36:16.980 virus. The legendary British broadcaster Alastair 00:36:16.980 --> 00:36:20.079 Cook repeated the anecdote as absolute fact on 00:36:20.079 --> 00:36:22.659 his massively influential BBC radio program, 00:36:22.739 --> 00:36:24.559 Letter from America. It was published in The 00:36:24.559 --> 00:36:27.199 Guardian. It was broadcast on MSNBC and CNN. 00:36:27.340 --> 00:36:29.920 and it was printed in Time Magazine. The contagion 00:36:29.920 --> 00:36:32.579 even breached the walls of serious peer -reviewed 00:36:32.579 --> 00:36:36.059 historical scholarship. Robert Dalek, an incredibly 00:36:36.059 --> 00:36:39.099 respected, authoritative historian, included 00:36:39.099 --> 00:36:41.920 the doughnut myth as an undisputed fact in his 00:36:41.920 --> 00:36:45.420 monumental 2003 biography of Kennedy, An Unfinished 00:36:45.420 --> 00:36:48.239 Life. Dalek wrote that in the midst of the soaring 00:36:48.239 --> 00:36:50.880 rhetoric, no one was ready to complain that Kennedy 00:36:50.880 --> 00:36:53.059 should have said, Isch bin Berliner, instead 00:36:53.059 --> 00:36:56.139 of In Berliner, which was colloquial German for 00:36:56.139 --> 00:36:58.800 a jelly donut. When one of the premier historians 00:36:58.800 --> 00:37:01.280 of the era includes the myth in a definitive 00:37:01.280 --> 00:37:04.400 biography, it effectively becomes canonized as 00:37:04.400 --> 00:37:06.420 truth for the general public. And once it was 00:37:06.420 --> 00:37:08.980 legitimized by historians and the media, pop 00:37:08.980 --> 00:37:11.219 culture cemented it into the collective consciousness 00:37:11.219 --> 00:37:13.780 permanently. David Foster Wallace, one of the 00:37:13.780 --> 00:37:15.960 most brilliant literary minds of his generation, 00:37:16.559 --> 00:37:19.519 integrated the myth into his 1996 magnum opus, 00:37:19.519 --> 00:37:21.980 Infinite Jest, writing that the German crowd 00:37:21.980 --> 00:37:24.579 greeted Kennedy's speech, quote, with a delight 00:37:24.579 --> 00:37:27.780 only apparently political. The masterful satirist 00:37:27.780 --> 00:37:30.599 Terry Pratchett parodied the concept brilliantly 00:37:30.599 --> 00:37:34.400 in his Discworld novel Monstrous Regiment. He 00:37:34.400 --> 00:37:37.179 creates a scenario where an invading commander 00:37:37.179 --> 00:37:40.219 attempts to express deep solidarity with a conquered 00:37:40.219 --> 00:37:43.260 nation only to be politely informed by an aide 00:37:43.260 --> 00:37:45.719 that his translation was slightly off and he 00:37:45.719 --> 00:37:47.900 had just aggressively declared himself to be 00:37:47.900 --> 00:37:50.260 a cherry pancake. And you can't talk about the 00:37:50.260 --> 00:37:52.360 pop culture impact without mentioning the comedian 00:37:52.360 --> 00:37:56.039 Eddie Izzard. In his legendary 1998 stand -up 00:37:56.039 --> 00:37:58.880 special Dressed to Kill, Izzard dedicated an 00:37:58.880 --> 00:38:02.730 entire hilarious routine to dissecting the absurdity 00:38:02.730 --> 00:38:05.409 of the moment, acting out the supposed confusion 00:38:05.409 --> 00:38:07.909 of the German crowd as they tried to figure out 00:38:07.909 --> 00:38:09.829 why the American president was comparing himself 00:38:09.829 --> 00:38:12.250 to a pastry. The joke was everywhere. But here 00:38:12.250 --> 00:38:14.869 is the ultimate mind bending punchline to this 00:38:14.869 --> 00:38:17.610 entire saga. While the entire English speaking 00:38:17.610 --> 00:38:20.210 world spent decades laughing at this historical 00:38:20.210 --> 00:38:22.550 blooper. The actual citizens of Germany had absolutely 00:38:22.550 --> 00:38:24.710 no idea what we're talking about. It represents 00:38:24.710 --> 00:38:27.130 one of the most profound transatlantic cultural 00:38:27.130 --> 00:38:29.449 disconnects of the modern era. The jelly donut 00:38:29.449 --> 00:38:31.849 myth was practically nonexistent within the borders 00:38:31.849 --> 00:38:35.610 of Germany. And the reason is simple. As we established. 00:38:35.849 --> 00:38:38.130 The joke doesn't fundamentally work in the German 00:38:38.130 --> 00:38:41.050 language. It is entirely a product of an English 00:38:41.050 --> 00:38:44.130 speaker fundamentally misunderstanding German 00:38:44.130 --> 00:38:46.989 grammar. Therefore there was no reason for a 00:38:46.989 --> 00:38:49.510 German to ever invent or perpetuate the joke. 00:38:49.829 --> 00:38:52.969 So you have this bizarre parallel universe situation. 00:38:53.449 --> 00:38:56.750 For 40 years Americans and the British are constantly 00:38:56.750 --> 00:39:01.010 giggling about JFK's ridiculous pastry gaff while 00:39:01.010 --> 00:39:03.510 the Germans are earnestly, solemnly remembering 00:39:03.510 --> 00:39:06.190 one of the most beautiful, vital moments of Cold 00:39:06.190 --> 00:39:08.449 War solidarity in their nation's history. You 00:39:08.449 --> 00:39:10.610 can see the stark divergence in the historical 00:39:10.610 --> 00:39:12.449 realities when you look at the media coverage 00:39:12.449 --> 00:39:14.389 surrounding the anniversaries and related events. 00:39:14.929 --> 00:39:17.469 Look at the year 2003, which marked the passing 00:39:17.469 --> 00:39:20.070 of Robert Lochner, the interpreter who had been 00:39:20.070 --> 00:39:22.369 so instrumental in helping Kennedy practice this 00:39:22.369 --> 00:39:24.289 speech. When you read the obituaries published 00:39:24.289 --> 00:39:26.190 in the German press, they retold the story of 00:39:26.190 --> 00:39:28.630 the speech's creation with immense respect and 00:39:28.630 --> 00:39:31.119 historical accuracy. They didn't mention the 00:39:31.119 --> 00:39:33.159 jelly donut myth at all simply because the German 00:39:33.159 --> 00:39:34.960 journalists writing the obituaries had never 00:39:34.960 --> 00:39:37.480 heard of it. But if you cross the Atlantic and 00:39:37.480 --> 00:39:39.559 picked up the New York Times obituary for Robert 00:39:39.559 --> 00:39:42.400 Lochner on that exact same day, the American 00:39:42.400 --> 00:39:45.079 paper prominently featured the jelly donut myth, 00:39:45.480 --> 00:39:48.239 stating it as an undisputed historical fact of 00:39:48.239 --> 00:39:51.239 his career. two allied nations living in two 00:39:51.239 --> 00:39:53.579 completely different historical realities regarding 00:39:53.579 --> 00:39:56.239 the exact same event. The collision of those 00:39:56.239 --> 00:39:58.920 two realities didn't really occur until the widespread 00:39:58.920 --> 00:40:01.599 maturation of the internet in the mid -2000s. 00:40:01.920 --> 00:40:04.639 As digital platforms began enhancing cross -cultural 00:40:04.639 --> 00:40:07.300 exchange, Germans started interacting heavily 00:40:07.300 --> 00:40:09.940 on the English -speaking social web and suddenly 00:40:09.940 --> 00:40:12.829 realized, wait a minute. Why do millions of Americans 00:40:12.829 --> 00:40:15.630 genuinely believe that John S. Kennedy called 00:40:15.630 --> 00:40:18.090 himself a baked good in our capital city? The 00:40:18.090 --> 00:40:20.269 digital footprint of this collision is fascinating 00:40:20.269 --> 00:40:22.489 to track, particularly through the edit history 00:40:22.489 --> 00:40:25.329 of Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia page for 00:40:25.329 --> 00:40:27.630 the speech had users debating the jelly donut 00:40:27.630 --> 00:40:30.670 myth as early as 2001. But the myth was entirely 00:40:30.670 --> 00:40:33.130 absent from the German Wikipedia article until 00:40:33.130 --> 00:40:36.880 May of 2005. And it was finally introduced. It 00:40:36.880 --> 00:40:39.460 wasn't added as a historical fact. It was added 00:40:39.460 --> 00:40:41.920 specifically to explain the bizarre American 00:40:41.920 --> 00:40:44.460 misconception to confuse German readers. The 00:40:44.460 --> 00:40:48.000 confusion grew so prevalent that by 2007, the 00:40:48.000 --> 00:40:50.599 editors of the German Wikipedia had to create 00:40:50.599 --> 00:40:53.519 an entirely separate, dedicated subsection titled, 00:40:53.900 --> 00:40:55.940 Misconception in the English -Speaking World, 00:40:56.260 --> 00:40:58.760 simply to contain and address the relentless 00:40:58.760 --> 00:41:01.340 influx of the myth. They practically had to issue 00:41:01.340 --> 00:41:03.639 a public service announcement saying, Attention 00:41:03.639 --> 00:41:06.550 German citizens. Please be aware that the Americans 00:41:06.550 --> 00:41:09.349 have invented a highly specific, entirely fake 00:41:09.349 --> 00:41:11.750 story about our history. Even the physical museums 00:41:11.750 --> 00:41:14.170 in Berlin were forced to adapt to the sheer volume 00:41:14.170 --> 00:41:17.889 of American ignorance. In 2003, the German Historical 00:41:17.889 --> 00:41:20.190 Museum hosted a massive exhibition detailing 00:41:20.190 --> 00:41:22.210 the history of the speech, and there was not 00:41:22.210 --> 00:41:24.429 a single mention of the myth anywhere in the 00:41:24.429 --> 00:41:27.389 curation. But by 2008, the Kennedy's Museum in 00:41:27.389 --> 00:41:29.829 Berlin found themselves so overwhelmed by English 00:41:29.829 --> 00:41:32.570 -speaking tourists constantly asking to see the 00:41:32.570 --> 00:41:35.309 Donut Speech exhibit. that the curators actually 00:41:35.309 --> 00:41:38.230 had to construct a brand new display explicitly 00:41:38.230 --> 00:41:40.710 dedicated to debunking the myth. Just to stop 00:41:40.710 --> 00:41:43.010 the questions. It is a profound demonstration 00:41:43.010 --> 00:41:45.230 of the resilience of an entertaining narrative 00:41:45.230 --> 00:41:48.369 over empirical truth. When a story is sufficiently 00:41:48.369 --> 00:41:51.010 amusing, the facts become almost irrelevant. 00:41:51.449 --> 00:41:54.329 It is truly a wild ride. Let's synthesize the 00:41:54.329 --> 00:41:56.889 incredible journey we have taken today. We started 00:41:56.889 --> 00:41:59.489 by examining the brutally stark reality of a 00:41:59.489 --> 00:42:02.210 physically divided city. A city completely cut 00:42:02.210 --> 00:42:04.590 off from the democratic world, entirely surrounded 00:42:04.590 --> 00:42:07.139 by hostile forces, desperately waiting for a 00:42:07.139 --> 00:42:09.300 sign of American resolve in the face of Soviet 00:42:09.300 --> 00:42:11.579 aggression. We observed an American president 00:42:11.579 --> 00:42:14.219 deeply insecure about his linguistic abilities, 00:42:14.559 --> 00:42:16.920 painstakingly sounding out a handwritten phonetic 00:42:16.920 --> 00:42:19.380 cheat sheet to deliver an ad -libbed, highly 00:42:19.380 --> 00:42:21.920 provocative masterpiece of Cold War rhetoric. 00:42:22.139 --> 00:42:24.739 A speech that terrified his own national security 00:42:24.739 --> 00:42:27.780 advisors and infuriated the Soviet leadership, 00:42:28.099 --> 00:42:30.940 but ultimately provided an immeasurable injection 00:42:30.940 --> 00:42:33.440 of hope to the besieged people of West Berlin. 00:42:33.639 --> 00:42:37.699 And then we traced how 20 years later a completely 00:42:37.699 --> 00:42:40.699 fabricated cynical joke born in the pages of 00:42:40.699 --> 00:42:43.340 a British spy novel somehow breached the walls 00:42:43.340 --> 00:42:45.639 of fiction. We watched it launder itself through 00:42:45.639 --> 00:42:48.599 the New York Times, infiltrate legitimate historical 00:42:48.599 --> 00:42:52.159 biographies, and hijack the legacy of that incredible 00:42:52.159 --> 00:42:54.960 moment, spreading relentlessly until the entire 00:42:54.960 --> 00:42:57.000 English -speaking world confidently believed 00:42:57.000 --> 00:43:00.019 a lie. Which leaves us with a genuinely unsettling 00:43:00.019 --> 00:43:02.039 realization about the nature of our historical 00:43:02.039 --> 00:43:04.519 record. Consider how comfortable we are with 00:43:04.519 --> 00:43:06.800 historical bloopers. Why did the English -speaking 00:43:06.800 --> 00:43:09.239 world so eagerly embrace a fiction that undermined 00:43:09.239 --> 00:43:11.239 one of their own leader's greatest triumphs? 00:43:11.280 --> 00:43:13.260 That's a great question. Perhaps it's because 00:43:13.260 --> 00:43:16.739 in the terrifying high stakes era of the Cold 00:43:16.739 --> 00:43:19.639 War, where global nuclear annihilation was a 00:43:19.639 --> 00:43:22.440 daily threat, we desperately craved a moment 00:43:22.440 --> 00:43:25.679 of absurd human comedy, even if we had to invent 00:43:25.679 --> 00:43:28.599 it ourselves. How many other historical facts 00:43:28.599 --> 00:43:31.340 that we accept today are just well -traveled 00:43:31.340 --> 00:43:33.360 punchlines from a forgotten novel? It makes you 00:43:33.360 --> 00:43:35.699 want to go back and forensically audit the footnotes 00:43:35.699 --> 00:43:38.059 of everything you think you know. That is all 00:43:38.059 --> 00:43:40.300 the time we have for today. Thank you for joining 00:43:40.300 --> 00:43:42.659 us on this exhaustive journey through the geopolitical 00:43:42.659 --> 00:43:45.480 high wire act, the linguistic intricacies, and 00:43:45.480 --> 00:43:47.679 the enduring pastry myths of divided Berlin. 00:43:48.079 --> 00:43:49.940 Keep questioning the fundamental stories you 00:43:49.940 --> 00:43:51.940 accept as fact, and we will catch you next time 00:43:51.940 --> 00:43:52.639 on the deep dive.