Berlin, August 13th, 1961
At midnight, the trucks come.
East German troops and workers disembark,
lining up behind the white lines
that separate East and West Berlin.
The soldiers have orders to fire if approached.
Berlin has been divided since World War II,
the communist German Democratic Republic
surrounding an enclave of the western Federal Republic of Germany.
But that division was political.
People crossed the border to work and see family.
Couples lived on either side.
No more.
East Germany was suffering a brain drain,
doctors, lawyers and professors
fleeing to the west via the easy crossing.
The embarrassment became too much for the Soviets.
The soldiers string barbed wire,
the workers tear up the streets.
Four days later, the first concrete slabs arrive.
They're building a wall.
This episode is sponsored by World of Tanks.
Download the game on PC at the link below
and use the code CHECKPOINTC to claim your $15 starter pack.
28 years later, the wall still stands.
On one side, it’s filled with color, graffiti, political slogans, art.
On the other, bare concrete.
It’s twelve feet high, four feet wide, and 87 miles long.
It encircles the city,
an island linked only to West Germany by rail, road, and air corridors.
But the wall is only one obstacle.
Behind it sits a 110 yard “death strip”
covered with gravel,
the buildings that stood there cleared.
Flood lights glare down on it.
There is no cover.
Machine gun bunkers watch over it
and it’s seeded with mines, anti-vehicle moats, and dogs.
By 1989,
somewhere between 140 and 192 people had died trying to cross.
Five thousand more made it,
digging tunnels, ramming through in cars,
even floating across in hot air balloons.
The wall has become a fact of life.
For West Berliners it was a good place to find parking.
Pubs nearby featured photos
of West and East Berliners clinking steins over the barbed wire.
And rock musicians, from Genesis, to Springsteen, to Bowie
hold concerts close to it so those over the wall can hear.
The wall, people think, will not fall anytime soon.
Some in the west say it shouldn’t,
reunification would be too expensive,
the number of East German refugees
would wreck the economy.
Kennedy had declared himself a Berliner,
and the wall didn't fall.
Reagan challenged Gorbachev to tear it down,
and the wall didn't fall.
As the new president George H.W. Bush comes into office,
he’s decided to focus on Asia,
deeming European problems too static.
Nothing will change there.
In reality, the wall is about to come down.
The people who'd destroy it are mostly unknown in the west.
Mid-range communist officials
and leaders of Eastern Bloc nations,
some looking to sabotage the Iron Curtain,
some to maintain it.
But in the end, the wall would fall by accident.
June, 1989
East Germany is in trouble.
In fact, communism is in trouble in general.
Nearly bankrupt from a multi-decade arms race
and supporting proxy conflicts,
battered from its invasion of Afghanistan
and its image tarnished by the Chernobyl disaster,
the Soviet Union needs change.
Its new leader, Mikhail Gorbachev,
comes to power with two new ideas;
a new economic and social policy called perestroika,
introducing market elements and reforms to the socialist model,
and also glasnost,
a new openness of government.
He’s hailed as a peacemaker in Europe,
especially after negotiating with Reagan
to eliminate a whole class of nuclear weapons.
He talks about giving the governments of Eastern Bloc countries
a freer hand.
No one believes him at first.
The USSR had previously intervened to crush opposition movements
in countries like Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia,
but nations of the Eastern Bloc
realize he’s genuine.
It starts to snowball.
Poland holds its first free elections in June 1989,
kicking out the communists,
and sweeping in the Solidarity Party.
In Hungary, the central committee
picks a Harvard-trained economic minister,
Miklós Németh, to be Prime Minister.
They know he’s reform-minded,
but if his reforms fail
he’ll make a good scapegoat.
But Németh secretly believes
that a reformed communist state will be on economic life support.
He wants Hungary to join the west
before the rest of the Eastern Bloc,
so it gets a few years of special treatment
and development aid.
To make that a reality.
he has to bring down the Iron Curtain, be seen doing it.
The easiest way to do that
is trigger a flood of East German refugees.
He announces, on television,
that it’s become too expensive to maintain
Hungary’s border with Austria.
International news watches
as Hungarian officials switch off the electric fence.
In a meeting with Gorbachev,
Németh has telegraphed this move,
asking if the USSR would intervene.
Gorbachev says no.
But the flood of East German escapees
didn’t arrive.
So Németh pushed it further.
He announces a picnic.
A Pan-European Picnic,
where Hungary would open a gate
and allow visitors from Austria
to cross and join the fun.
A sign of thawing tensions.
A ruse for a great escape.
Németh holds it during tourist season,
when thousands of East Germans are vacationing in Hungary.
He even busses some in for the event
and gives them maps,
so they knew where the border is.
For safety, you know!
Because the border is right there.
And the gates are very open.
And the guards are so busy checking Austrian passports
you might accidentally wander into Austria.
No one wants that, right?
Because Austria is so close to West Germany.
Chaos. 600 East Germans take off at a run,
through the open gate.
West German officials and Red Cross volunteers
wait on the other side.
Hungary, claiming to be “overwhelmed” by East German refugees
lets thousands cross the border each day.
After the East Germans bar the border with Hungary,
the “great escape” spreads to Czechoslovakia.
The West German embassy in Prague
gives out asylum visas,
allowing East Germans to cross the Czech-Austrian border
and head to the west.
By November 9th, 250 000 have fled East Germany.
30-mile traffic jams snarl the autobahn.
Mass protests calling for democracy,
economic reform, and the right to free travel,
explode in Leipzig and East Berlin.
But the East German leader Erich Honecker,
who built the wall
and who controls the Stasi,
one of the most feared secret police,
refuses to make reforms.
When Gorbachev visits Honecker in Berlin,
a crowd gathers, chanting:
“Gorby, save us! Gorby, save us!”
It's the moment Honecker’s subordinates have waited for.
They vote him out in a coup,
planning to save East Germany with reforms
to keep it running and them in power.
The first thing on the agenda?
A new travel law.
November 9th, 1989 A Press Conference in East Berlin
Günter Schabowski, a communist party boss,
reads the press briefing on live TV.
He doesn’t realize that this speech,
unrehearsed and unscripted,
will do what no speech before
has ever accomplished.
It will bring down the wall.
He reads off new dull regulations,
saving the new travel law for last.
East Germans will be able to apply at checkpoints to go to West Berlin.
They will need a visa in their passport,
or a special stamp on their ID card.
Next item.
“Wait,” said a journalist.
“Effective when?”
Around Berlin, everyone stopped,
staring at the TV.
The press release was supposed to be dated the next day,
November 10th.
The idea was
that people would line up to get their visas.
If Schabowski had known that,
and said so,
maybe that would’ve happened.
Instead, he just shuffled the paper,
found the wording, shrugged and said:
“As far as I know, immediately.
Without delay.”
East Berliners stood, stunned.
Then they went.
Dropped everything and left.
Closed shops, left telephone switchboards,
snatched up passports and thronged the checkpoints.
The first woman at Checkpoint Charlie,
crossing to the former American sector,
wore a coat thrown over her bathrobe.
She had curlers in her hair.
They insisted the guards let them cross.
Schabowski had said they could on TV.
Immediately. Without delay.
Panicked border guards went into their booths
and tried to dial officials for confirmation.
There were thousands of people outside.
But Schabowski had gone home,
unaware of the firestorm he’d created.
Most of the party leaders were at the opera.
So after a few hours
the border guards shrugged.
"Okay, open up."
The first people through the wall didn’t walk,
the surging crowd carried them.
And they were met by West Germans holding flowers and champagne.
A spontaneous party started.
Boom boxes and pop music.
East and West Germans kissed,
climbed the wall, chanted to tear it down.
They were climbing both sides now,
the colorful and the blank.
Hammers and chisels came out.
People took turns pecking at the wall.
It was wild. It went on for days.
Woodstock with sledgehammers.
The Cold War ended
not with nuclear annihilation,
but a street party.
The celebration did more
to undermine the German Democratic Republic
than anything else.
The images of partying refugees were hard to dismiss,
and weakened East Germany
so that reunification became inevitable.
Not with a melding of states,
but with East Germany absorbed into the Federal Republic.
And the party continued.
in a month, Czechoslovakia’s last communist leader
fell to the Velvet Revolution.
Bulgaria had ousted its hardline leaders and called elections.
The next year, it was Russia itself.
Not everywhere was it easy or peaceful.
Street fighting rocked Romania,
and the breakup of Yugoslavia
would roil the Balkans for over a decade.
But considering that Europe had lived 44 years,
divided and fearing world war,
it seemed almost unreal
how quickly the barriers melted away.
Though the wall’s destruction meant great things for geopolitics,
it meant even more to everyday people.
Families reunited.
East German children
tasted oranges and bananas for the first time.
Europeans once again
could travel and learn from each other
without artificial divisions.
They had torn down the wall
and could now build a future.
Thank you to World of Tanks for Sponsoring this episode.
They've been rolling over virtual walls since 2010,
and from the looks of this tank action,
they're showing no signs of stopping.
Literally!
If that looks up your alley,
download the game for free at the link below
and use the invite code CHECKPOINTC
to claim your 15$ starter pack.