Berliner Mauer

After WWII Germany was divided between the Americans, Soviets, British and later French. Berlin was divided similarly, with the Soviets getting the eastern half, and at first this division only existed on paper. When people began leaving the city, the Soviets tried to prevent this by building a wall around the western border. In other words, they build a wall around the back half of the Allies' territory, but the Allied powers allowed it because then they had something to use in their rhetoric against Communism: "look what they do! They wall people in!" Then the Americans did something very sneaky. They made it known that any East Berliner who approached a U.S. soldier and looked him in the eyes with one hand over their heart and said "I hate Communism" would be given an immediate and free ticket to U.S.-occupied southern Germany. The population drain on East Berlin was sudden and severe. To try to stem the tide of emigrants, a wall was built in 1961 separating east and West Berlin.
At first the wall was only a knee-high roll of barbed wire. Many folks simply found a quiet section of the wall and hopped right over. A year later the wire fence was improved. In 1965 it was replaced by a much taller concrete structure, followed by a bed of nails that would either stop tanks or shred human feet right through their boots. Behind the bed of nails was a death strip, or stretch of open sand that made it easy for the guards perched at one of the 116 watchtowers to spot and pick off runners.

Not wanting to rule with an iron fist, Gorbachev came to power giving a bit of leeway to the eastern European states, and the first thing that happened was that Hungary and Czechoslovakia opened their borders allowing East Berliners to pass around and back into West Berlin by way of Prague. Something had to be done before East Berlin was completely empty, so the government decided to announce the wall would be opened to passport holders. This would give people something to hope for and less of a reason to flee, meanwhile the government could take its sweet time actually issuing the passports -- if ever. It was the perfect solution.

Enter Günter Schabowski. Spokesman for the SED Politburo and party boss in East Berlin, he stepped out to give a public address on live television on 9 November 1989. As he was taking to the podium, someone handed him a note announced the new government plan concerning passports. Günter Schabowski stood before the world and went on for some time about unimportant bureaucratic pablum, but then just as he was about to leave the podium, he withdrew the note from his back pocket and gave it a read. Doing a double-take, he announced that the wall was to be opened. Reporters fell out of their seats. Who would qualify? What documents would be required? "In my opinion," he said as he looked over the sheet of paper and found no further details, "none." The room exploded in confusion. When would this come into effect?! "In my opinion," he said, looking again at the unhelpful piece of paper, "this will come into effect...immediately." Just like that, the Berlin Wall came down.

Folks swarmed the wall by the hundreds of thousands and the guards, not knowing what had happened and faced with the cries of so many insisting a government announcement had been made granting full and immediate access, laid down their guns and let them through. When they got on to the other side, they took hammers and rocks and hands and feet and brought every blocks of the western wall down that they possibly could. The rumors are not true: it wasn't a Hasselhoff song playing over the wall that inspired the whole of East Berlin to tear down the wall. This didn't stop David from complaining when he came to Berlin later though: "I find it a bit sad that there is no photo of me hanging on the walls in the Berlin Museum at Checkpoint Charlie." I'd refer him to the pages of history but hey, no one hassles the Hoff.