November 9, 1989.
The time is 18:54.
In a small, dingy apartment in East Germany, Werner is watching the TV.
He can’t believe what he’s just heard.
Surely not.
Surely, he thinks, we can’t just leave and finally get past that damned wall.
He’s wanted this for so many years.
He tells his daughter and her friend, and they pile into his bashed-up Wartburg car.
They drive right through the security zone.
This is a no-go area, but no one stops them, or like what has happened in the past, shoots
at them.
No uniformed goon pulls them over and says the usual, “Show me your papers.”
Werner pulls up next to a border guard, winds down the window, and asks, “Am I dreaming,
or is this reality?”
The guard tells him, “You are dreaming.”
This isn’t going to be easy, thinks Werner.
He doesn’t fully understand what’s happening.
The guard doesn’t know what’s happening.
What is taking place is the consequence of one of the most world-changing mistakes in
history.
We’ll come back to Werner soon, whose story, by the way, is real.
First, we have some explaining to do.
When World War II came to an end and Germany was down on its bruised knees, there was a
fair bit of chaos in the newly occupied nation.
The US, the UK, France, and the Soviet Union were all there, and in the end the Allies
occupied the west of the country and the Soviets occupied the east.
Things were a bit tricky, though, because of Berlin.
In the West part of Berlin, there were the zones occupied by the French, the Americans,
and the British, and in the eastern part, there was the zone of the Soviets.
This means that West Berlin was surrounded on all sides by Communist East Germany.
The official name became the German Democratic Republic.
Republic in name, but Soviet puppet state in nature.
As we are sure you know, while the Soviet Union had been fighting on the side of the
Allies, soon after the war, divisions between the Communists and the West formed.
These became pretty big divisions, which led to what we call the Cold War.
In 1948, the Western powers set up a federal system of government in the Western zones,
after which the Soviets initiated the Berlin Blockade.
This prevented the West from getting supplies into West Berlin.
It was the start of what would become very bad relations, and was a sign of things to
come.
The western part of Germany adopted democracy and a capitalist system of economy, while
the East embraced Communism.
The West flourished.
Over the years, an “economic miracle” occurred while the East didn’t flourish
very much.
Despite daily consumption of propaganda, many people in the East wanted to get over to the
West and do things like drinking a can of Coca-Cola.
Many of them packed up and crossed the border.
87,000 people in 1950; 165,000 in 1951; 182,000 in 1952; and 331,000 in 1953.
This was not really how Communism worked, though.
It didn’t usually allow freedom of movement, or at least, it made it difficult for people
to move.
So, East Germany, along with most of the Eastern Bloc, then started talking about making leaving
their countries a lot harder.
That’s when some meetings were held, and the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, said this
free movement thing had to stop.
It would be an understatement to say the highly paranoid and exceptionally murderous Stalin
was not a big supporter of human rights.
He suggested to the East Germans that they set up a border defense that would take a
zero-tolerance stance toward leavers.
In his own words, Stalin said: “The demarcation line between East and West
Germany should be considered a border - and not just any border, but a dangerous one ...The
Germans will guard the line of defense with their lives.”
He meant it.
Stalin had millions of his own people executed or sent to Gulags for the most trifling of
matters.
Much of the time, they’d done nothing wrong at all.
The East Germans did what they were told and erected barbed wire fences.
But East Berlin was still kind of easygoing.
People could still pass through to the West, albeit if they a good reason and the right
papers.
The rest of the leavers in East Germany heard about this and flocked to Berlin so they could
jump over to the West.
This was a bad look for the East.
They didn’t like the fact that people wanted to leave their cherished state.
They didn’t even like people talking about the comparisons between capitalism and communism
because they almost always came out worse.
People kept leaving, though.
The East was hemorrhaging its own folks to the West.
By 1961, 3.5 million East Germans had left.
That was 20 percent of the entire Eastern population, and many of them were the smartest
types whose intelligence went to good use in the flourishing West.
This was called the “brain drain.”
Spies belonging to the Western powers did a lot of moving about, too.
This was a matter of concern for the communists.
We don’t know for sure who came up with the idea of erecting a wall between East and
West Berlin, but it was very likely the Russian leader, Nikita Khrushchev.
He was irked that the West hadn’t done as he’d asked and left Berlin for good.
On Saturday, August 12, 1961, East German leaders gave the wall the greenlight.
At midnight that day, East German cops stood protecting the border.
In the morning, workers were already putting up the barbed wire so no one could pass, not
on foot or in a car.
Later, they started laying the foundations of what would become known as the Berlin Wall,
a kind of Iron Curtain.
This was some 27 miles (43 km) long through wall that split the city in half, protected
by armed border guards who would not think twice about setting their dogs on people.
This heavily guarded wall stretched for another 75 miles (120 km) around the rest of West
Berlin.
Still, people in West Berlin could travel to other parts of West Germany.
There was a no-go zone next to the wall and something like 55,000 landmines scattered
around, not to mention the barbed wire on top of a structure that was already 4.2 meters
(13.7 feet) high.
If someone got as far as no-man’s land, they could easily be shot for it.
It was almost impossible to get over or get permission to go through one of the gates.
It tore families apart since some people had legally moved from East to West before.
Some folks had legally worked on one side, and now they were stuck on the other side.
Many families also had relatives on both sides.
Over the years, about 100,000 people tried to flee East Germany.
600 of them died.
Many were shot, but some died in other ways, although not all these casualties were at
the wall alone.
Some were trying to breach other borders in East Germany.
It's said 251 people ended up dead after getting stopped close to the wall and being told to
produce their papers.
It’s also said some people, missing their loved ones, died from grief.
Eight guards were murdered over the years, but you don’t have to feel too sorry for
them.
They had orders of shoot-to-kill, and some were happy to do it, since shooting a fugitive
could lead to a nice bonus or a commendation. 191 people were killed during the actual crossing
part of the wal.
An order the guards were given went as follows, “Do not hesitate to use your firearm, not
even when the border is breached in the company of women and children, which is a tactic the
traitors have often use.”
Let’s go back to 1961 and the building of the wall.
On October 27 that year, Red Army tanks at Checkpoint Charlie told the Americans they
were not allowed in the Eastern sector.
This came on the back of Americans being hassled like hell by East German cops.
Even though many of the Americans actually were spies, the incident at Checkpoint Charlie
was the last straw.
Soon American M48 tanks were pointed toward almost the same number of Russian T55 tanks.
Tensions were so high that people started talking about a third world war, but after
18 hours of talks, the Americans agreed to back down.
This was about as tense as relations had gotten so far between the Soviet-led communists and
the Americans, although things would get much hairier a year later with the Cuban missile
crisis.
As you can imagine, there were protests on the East German side.
Many people struggled while hearing stories about how great the West was.
As the years passed, the protests got louder, but the shoot-to-kill order was still a very
serious threat.
One of those people who grew up among the turmoil was Werner, the guy we introduced
at the start.
He watched on as the Soviet Union, spending big on the space race and the arms race, started
to flounder economically.
Times were hard for many citizens in the Soviet Union.
Life was equally tough in East Germany, but change was afoot.
Then in 1986, the Chornobyl power station disaster in Ukraine became global news, and
let’s just say that communism was not standing in a good light.
It was failing catastrophically.
All over the Eastern Bloc, there were protests.
In East Germany, revolt was brewing.
About 5,000 people did successfully defect over the years, but as you know, many were
killed trying.
When that happened, there was often more resentment and more protests.
Werner was among the thousands of people who went to the wall when David Bowie put on a
concert close to the West side in 1987.
Many years later, when Bowie died, the German Foreign Office thanked him, writing, “Good-bye,
David Bowie.
You are now among #Heroes.
Thank you for helping to bring down the #wall.”
Because what he did was important.
After that concert, thousands of East Germans rioted in the streets.
They’d had enough.
Politicians all over the world started calling for the wall to be torn down.
Then more musicians got on the anti-wall bandwagon.
It was like Live Aid, but with more food in the background and a better long-term outcome.
Change would come to the people of East Berlin mainly due to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last
leader of the Soviet Union.
In the USA, the news media said this guy represents change, a “new generation.”
Gorbachev introduced a reform policy called “glasnost,” which meant embracing a new
kind of openness.
He also introduced “perestroika,” which meant restructuring.
The Soviet Union was unfolding in front of the world’s eyes.
Werner was starting to feel confident that things were also going to change in East Germany.
The East German leadership knew they could no longer hold onto the way things were.
They also had to be more open to change.
That’s why they planned to introduce laxer controls regarding people’s movement, but
it has to be said, not that lax.
That night when Werner was watching TV, the words that shocked him were issued by Günter
Schabowski, the leader of the East Berlin Communist Party.
In front of a crowd of journalists, he said travel restrictions would soon be eased.
The thing was, he didn’t really know just how eased.
He’d only just been handed a note with the details.
The party had intended to give the East German people a little bit more freedom of movement,
only because of the protests.
Nonetheless, things weren’t supposed to change much at all.
When Schabowski was asked by a journalist when this would take effect, confused, he
replied, “It takes effect, as far as I know... it is now... immediately.”
Werner saw this, and like many people, thought it meant he was free to pick up and go.
The Politburo had meant nothing of the sort.
They had only wanted to change how visa rules worked.
But with Schabowski being so vague and telling people the new rules were already in effect,
massive crowds soon started turning up at the wall.
They thought the new rules meant they were free to leave.
Lt. Col. Harald Jäger was on guard that night and had no idea what was happening.
What were all these people doing?
Werner went up to him and said he wanted to go through the gate.
Jäger called his bosses and asked what he should do.
He told them: “I just want to make you aware of the fact
that hundreds of citizens are standing here and that the order has become a bit more problematic
following the police announcement.”
There were hundreds of them, and it was looking like they might explode into violence at any
minute.
He could hardly start shooting at them all.
The Politburo didn’t really know what to do.
Jäger kept calling them back, saying now more people had turned up.
When he asked them what he should do, they didn’t give him any clear answer.
They just told him to keep the gates locked and only to open fire if his life was in danger.
At one point, he got frustrated and shouted down the phone, “If you don’t believe
me, then just listen!”
He then held the receiver out in front of him where all the people were.
Werner, still standing with his daughter and her buddy, shouted over to Jäger, “Hey
pal, what’s the score here?
We want to leave, so let us leave, Goddamnit.”
Jäger had had enough.
Someone was going to get hurt if he didn’t act fast.
He opened the gate.
It was the first gate opened that night, but many more would be opened soon after.
People were soon standing on it, jumping for joy, opening champagne, hugging, and kissing.
A bloodless night of revolt was unheard of within the circles of communist nations.
No guns were fired, no tanks arrived, no one got beat up.
There was happiness all around.
A witness later said, “It was a peaceful revolution, the first of its kind.
They were prepared for everything, except candles and prayers.”
Remember that about five months before this happened in Germany, there was a massacre
against democracy protesters in China’s Tiananmen Square.
What happened in Germany reverberated throughout Eastern Europe.
The end of the Soviet Union was nigh.
As for Werner, he drove across the border with his daughter.
They both had wide smiles on their faces as they did so.
Werner’s daughter was actually pregnant.
At one point, she asked him to pull over.
She’d never stepped foot on the West side.
Now with a baby growing inside her, she wanted to stand and look around.
This was a new beginning for her and the child to be.
Werner later told the New York Times, “It was like the moon landing.
A kind of Neil Armstrong moment.”
Piece by piece, the Berlin Wall was about to come down.
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