BERLIN: Did you know there are also Woodrow Wilson boulevards in Bries, France (where Van Gogh painted many scenes) and also in front of the Art Nouveau train station in Prague, Czech Republic?
Perhaps had President Wilson’s League of Nations been ratified by our Congress, and if the Treaty to Versailles, which ended World War I, not been as vengeful, embarrassing and punishing toward Germany (as Wilson warned) … perhaps then we might have been spared the horror of World War II.
It is a bit disconcerting to hear the report of a millennium firecracker here, given that 80-90 percent of the entire city was destroyed by Allied bombs. Our greatest generation, including many war heroes trained by our nationally recognized ROTC program at Woodrow, truly did save the world and made it safe for democracy.
Anyway, Berlin is more full of construction cranes than Dallas! Though little history remains architecturally, Berliners now acknowledge its dark past much as Dallas does with the assassination.
But Berlin is on the move, always recreating itself. And they’ve already hosted an Olympics (there is Jesse Owens Blvd. here). Perhaps our hometown will as well.
