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Cold
War Files:
The Fall of the Wall:
Introduction
The decisive moment of the collapse of East Germany was undoubtedly the fall of the Berlin Wall during the night of 9 November 1989. It served as the turning point for the revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe and accelerated the deterioration of the Soviet empire. Indeed, the Soviet Union collapsed within two years. The fall stands as a symbol of the end of the Cold War, the end of the division of Germany and of the continent of Europe.
Political events of this magnitude have always been the preferred stuff that legends and myths are made of. The fall of the Berlin Wall quickly developed into “one of the biggest paternity disputes ever” among the political actors of that time, and it is not surprising that the course of and background to the events during the night of 9 November 1989 still continue to produce legends.
Was the fall of the Berlin Wall the result of a decision or intentional action by the SED leadership, as leading Politburo members claimed shortly after the fact? Was it really, as some academics argue, “a last desperate move to re-stabilize the country.” Or was it, as disappointed supporters of the GDR civil rights movement suspected, the last revenge of the SED, designed to rob the civil rights movement of its revolution? Did Mikhail Gorbachev or Eduard Shevardnadze order the SED leadership to open the Berlin Wall, or was Moscow completely surprised by the events in Berlin? Were the Germans granted unity by a historical mistake, “a spectacular blunder,” or “a mixture of common sense and bungling”? Was the fall of the Wall—a final conspiracy of the MfS against the SED state?
In the case of the Wall’s demise, reconstruction of the details shows history as an open process. It also leads to the paradoxical realization that the details of central historical events can only be understood when they are placed in their historical context, thereby losing their sense of uniqueness.
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