The Morning of the Abrams Tanks

One of my best friends in Berlin used to live in Lichterfelde West, about 200 yards from train tracks where an American supply depot loaded and unloaded its goods.  Mostly this went unnoticed by the community of picture-perfect half-timbered houses, with modern and clean shops and charming cobblestone streets.  But on one morning in the early 1990’s, that all changed.  On that Saturday (the actual date and circumstance long forgotten) I visited and ended up staying in the guest room overnight.  In the wee morning hours of the dawning Sunday, however, instead of enjoying a good sleep-in, I was awoken suddenly by a deep, disorienting rumbling resonating up through the floor.  As I came to, the echo of mechanized tracks over cobblestone and sounds of powerful tank engines became increasingly louder until they drowned out all attempts at conversation.  My bed was jumping across the floor, and when we were able to see them from her windows, there was a long line of American tanks coming to be loaded up and shipped out. There were dozens that we could see, and they just kept coming.

Russian Tanks Invade Berlin 1945

It didn’t matter that I was American, and that as a good taxpayer, these loud and powerful beasts were “mine”.  For several hours while they were in our midst, they kept people from the streets and generated awe and silence.  I don’t doubt that every resident who had lived through World War II in Berlin and who experienced these strong whole-body shaking tremors remembered that time 50 years before.  For me, in a very visceral way it generated empathy for those Berlin residents in 1945 who had heard and felt the same type of terrifying rumble when the Soviet tank columns took the city.