THE YEAR THAT CHANGED THE WORLD: THE UNTOLD STORY BEHIND THE FALL OF THE PDF, EPUB, EBOOK

Michael Meyer | 272 pages | 05 Aug 2010 | Simon & Schuster Ltd | 9781847394347 | English | London, United Kingdom Berlin Wall - History, Dates & The Fall - HISTORY

The student demonstrations in Beijing that broke out first in December and recurred recently … were only the beginning of what will inevitably be mounting pressure for change in the political system as well. Yes, China has continued with its market-based reforms and m people have been lifted out of poverty. But there has been nothing to suggest that it will reform politically. Liberal democracy is as far away today as it was in Anti- globalisers challenged the new world order in the late s and anarchists, socialists, anti-poverty campaigners and religious groups came together to reject the emerging global order that put profit before people. Even though no coherent idea emerged to unite the various groups, the post environment helped bring people together to discuss shaping the world along different socio-economic and political lines. So rather than taking as the point when history ended, we can see it as the point when it moved into a new stage. Instead, in the 30 years since the , a rapacious capitalism emerged from the neoliberal turn of the s and the gap between rich and poor has grown ever wider. The weakness of the neoliberal economic model that had developed in the s became evident in , with the most serious global financial crisis since the Great Depression. This inspired new thinking about globalisation and gave currency to concerns about inequality and a deregulated financial sector. But as yet, there is no consensus as to which way liberalism, democracy and capitalism will go. After the global crash, there was a renewed interest in both Keynesianism and Marxism. Electoral victories for politicians on like Jacinda Arden in New Zealand and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the US suggests a wider disillusionment with neoliberalism. Discussions about a Green New Deal also ties new thinking about capitalism to the most serious problem the world faces. The prevailing wind in global politics may be with the right, but there is no agreement over the future shape of global capitalism among supporters of open economies and borders and advocates of economic nationalism. A new opinion poll also finds that many citizens from these countries feel that democracy is being threatened. Fukuyama spoke too soon. At the news conference, he read it out as item four or five from a list of the various announcements. It had to do with passports. Every East German would now, for the first time, have a right to one. For a nation locked so long behind the , it was tremendous news. At the press conference, there was a sudden hush, followed by a ripple of whispers. Schabowski droned on. Schabowski scratched his head, mumbled to aides on either side. Without delay. At this, the room erupted. He had been on vacation during the preceding days when the decision was taken; he was out of the loop. Krenz had handed him the memo, without further explanation; Schabowski simply read it off to the press. For the reporters in the room, the impact was tremendous. At that very moment, thousands of East Germans were illegally fleeing the country, driving their sputtering two-stroke East German—made cars, the infamous , across the border to neighboring , and from there over the mountains to . Earlier that summer, hundreds of thousands of other East Germans had escaped via . Of all the ills of communism, as they saw it, the most onerous was that they could not travel beyond the Iron Curtain. Like anyone else, they, too, wanted to see the world. They, too, wanted to see the West. A passport represented their right to live free. Thus the uproar in the pressroom. Amid the instantaneous hubbub of shouted questions, one rang sharp and clear. Schabowski, what is going to happen with the Berlin Wall? That has to be the last question. Thank you for your understanding. The damage had been done, however. In fact, this was not at all what the regime had in mind. Yes, East Germans would be granted passports. Yes, they would be allowed to travel. But to use them, they would first have to apply for an exit visa, subject to the usual rules and regulations. And the fine print said they could do that only on the next day, November Certainly, the last thing Krenz intended was for his citizens to just get up and go. They only knew what they heard on TV, which circulated like wildfire through the city. Thanks to Schabowski, they thought they were free. By the tens of thousands they flocked to the crossing points to the West. Strangely oblivious to the earthquake his words had caused, Schabowski headed home for dinner. Other senior officials went to the opera, or to the bowers of their mistresses. Overwhelmed by the crowds, receiving no instructions from the military or party elite, border guards at the Wall were left to act on their own. Like Schabowski, the Checkpoint Charlie border guard shrugged—literally—and threw open the gates. And so the Wall came down. From afar, it was as Ronald Reagan decreed. But was it? Seen up close, on the ground, it looked very different from how we remember it. No big international crisis set the stage for November 9, It did not spring from any great-power confrontation. There was no stirring rhetoric, no rattling of sabers, no politicians playing to the cameras. To Americans, particularly, this decisive moment of the Cold War came unexpectedly, seemingly out of the blue. No Western leader was on hand to witness the event or greet the victims of so many years of communist oppression as they found their way, wide-eyed and bewildered, to freedom and the West. German chancellor was on a state visit to Poland. President George H. Bush learned of it from his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, who heard it on the news. Gosh, Bush remarked to aides. World War II ended with formal surrenders at Allied headquarters in Belgium and on the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay in , signed by the representatives of a defeated emperor, in top hat and tails, flanked by ranks of their conquerors. By contrast, the Cold War ended with a spontaneous whoop, or more accurately a street party. Ordinary people, demanding change, took matters into their own hands. They brought down the Wall, not armies or world statesmen. And then they danced atop it. Accident played an enormous role. It was the shrug that changed the world. And what of the commander of the East German border guard at Checkpoint Charlie? Another shrug, another bit of happenstance that through the ages has shaped history and decided the fates of men. Peter Robinson, a White House speechwriter, tells how Reagan planned to attend the annual summit of G7 industrialized nations in Venice. Could Robinson please write up something to say on foreign policy? Robinson spent a day and a half in Berlin gathering material. Settling finally on the words we now know by heart, Robinson circulated the speech to the State Department and the National Security Council. In all, the speech went through seven drafts. Each time the policy experts elided the offending line. The fight raged all the way to Berlin, when Reagan resolved the flap with Kenneth Duberstein, his deputy chief of staff, en route to the Wall in the presidential limo. I am the president? To the contrary, Ronald Reagan would have been appalled at the uses to which his words have been put. The truth is that, in , he faced a new phenomenon—a challenge to which confrontation, he came to conclude over time, was no answer. That was the ascent of as general secretary of the communist party of the on March 11, Gorbachev hit the Soviet landscape like a giant meteor from outer space, transforming everything on impact. He was that rarest and most powerful force in history: the singularity, the wild card, what scientists call an exogenous variable, the unprecedented element that changes all theories and throws off all calculations and, with them, changes the world as it is known. Aside from a certain softness around the eyes, Gorbachev looked little different from his old-guard predecessors. Gray-suited and stockily built, the son of peasant farmers in Stavropol in remote southern Russia, he had risen through the ranks of the party by virtue of bureaucratic smarts and hard work. Only a sharp sense of humor, a certain outspokenness and the birthmark on his forehead, looking nothing so much as a large bird- dropping, seemed to distinguish him from the communist pack. And yet, this new Soviet man came to office full of indignation and a passion for change. At fifty-four, he was the youngest general secretary, promoted by his mentor, head of the KGB secret police, Yuri Andropov. Like Andropov, he saw the flaws of the Soviet system: an economy that was stalled, that soaked up money for military use but left little for civilian expenditures, a society that was sinking ever deeper into backwardness and stagnation. Unlike Andropov, he was determined to do something about it. He saw the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, in early , precisely for what it was: an indictment of the Soviet system, poisonous and broken and a threat to all humanity. It had to be changed, he knew. He was convinced that it could be reformed. Nyet, and replaced him with the charismatic Eduard Shevardnadze. Gorbachev began reaching out to Europe and the United States, cultivating personal ties with Western leaders. Just as he would seek to reform Russia from within, so too should they work to reform their own societies. I think the more interesting walls that are being built today are virtual walls such as regulatory walls to trade, or with the internet, new barriers are being built to digital communication which affect your capacity to access information. The border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, and the presence of enforcement mechanisms along the border, has become a key issue in the Brexit negotiations. How much of the debate over this is about the symbolism of the border against its economic implications? The Irish border carries great symbolic importance because it reflects the reality of the separation of two sovereign states. On the island of Ireland, the British and Irish governments have wanted to minimize this reality to the greatest extent possible. They even went as far as removing all types of barriers as part of the Good Friday Agreement. This is the same sort of fiction the European Union created when it removed any physical manifestations of the existence of borders between those member states in its Schengen agreement on borderless travel. Brexit has thrown a huge spanner into this arrangement. The British government proposed to do all the checks behind the border somewhere. On the other hand, recreating a border of some sort, whether physical or not, would reignite the differentiation between the two nations — running counter to the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement. By the end of the Cold War there were just 15 walls and fences along borders around the world, but today, there are at least How effective, do you think, building barriers are as a political and military strategy to defence and security issues given their financial — and human — cost? The separation wall between Israel and the Palestinian territories has reduced the level of terrorist violence being perpetrated in Israel, but the cost has been the impoverishment of many Palestinians, and is another nail in the coffin of a two-state solution. Yet many Israelis are saying that, maybe, being entirely separate is the best way to achieve peace between the two sides. However, the walls around the Gaza Strip have not prevented, for various reasons, the Hamas government from developing rockets and firing them into Israel. You could argue that the border between China and North Korea, which is severely patrolled, has been a tool of continued political control protecting the Kim Jong-un regime from collapse — as has its virtual border preventing internet penetration. So walls in all of their shapes and forms can work. They are like sanctions — sanctions are easy to impose but difficult to remove. But my view would be that they still only work temporarily. Fall of the Berlin Wall - Wikipedia

How significant was the Berlin Wall during the Cold War — was it more important physically or psychologically? The Berlin Wall was important physically, as well as psychologically, because Berlin was the only city that was divided physically by the Cold War between the Soviet Union and its allies in the and the West. Given the disparity that quickly emerged between the two sides in economic wealth, freedom of expression and so on, the fear was that, without that wall, there would've been a unification of Berlin in a way that the Soviet side would have lost. But it was also very important psychologically because it became the symbol of the division between two ideologies that saw each other as inimical to each other. That meant that if you wanted to visualize the Cold War, and the separation between the capitalist, democratic system of the West and the communist, command-and-control system of the East, Berlin offered a place where you could physically walk from one world, through a checkpoint, into the other. The whole Cold War could be reduced to this one nexus point. Because of its psychological as well as its physical significance, the fall of the Berlin Wall quickly became the symbol of the collapse of the communist ideology it had shielded. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, European countries have reportedly built over 1, kilometres of walls — the equivalent of more than six times the total length of the Berlin Wall — along their borders. Why has Europe been building more walls and how effective have they been? Have they been used more as symbols to appeal to political bases, and if so, has it worked with voters? The walls that have been built in Europe recently have been for a very specific reason. The countries of central and eastern Europe were delighted that the Berlin Wall collapsed because it allowed them to unify with western Europe. They had been vassal states of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and by joining the EU, they re-discovered personal freedom and re-gained national sovereignty. They thought they had become masters of their own future again. And, as hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees began arriving, they suddenly realised they were in a union that did not respect their sovereignty. Has it worked? The flow of migrants has been reduced drastically. This is partly because the EU paid Turkey to hold back the over three million migrants based there. But the walls also acted as a physical and psychological deterrent. Trains and subway lines carried passengers back and forth. Eventually, the GDR built 12 checkpoints along the wall. At each of the checkpoints, East German soldiers screened diplomats and other officials before they were allowed to enter or leave. Except under special circumstances, travelers from East and West Berlin were rarely allowed across the border. The construction of the Berlin Wall did stop the flood of refugees from East to West, and it did defuse the crisis over Berlin. Though he was not happy about it, President John F. In all, at least people were killed trying to get over, under or around the Berlin Wall. Escape from was not impossible, however: From until the wall came down in , more than 5, East Germans including some border guards managed to cross the border by jumping out of windows adjacent to the wall, climbing over the barbed wire, flying in hot air balloons, crawling through the sewers and driving through unfortified parts of the wall at high speeds. At midnight, they flooded through the checkpoints. Soon the wall was gone and Berlin was united for the first time since The reunification of East and West Germany was made official on October 3, , almost one year after the fall of the Berlin Wall. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Berlin, the German capital city, was located deep in the Soviet zone, but it was also divided into four In June , the simmering tensions between the Soviet Union Great events do not always have great causes. The original structure stretched more than 70 miles across the northern English countryside from the River Tyne near the city of Newcastle Although Krenz promised reforms in his first public speech, [10] he was considered by the East German public to be following his predecessor's policies, and public protests demanding his resignation continued. On 1 November, Krenz authorized the reopening of the border with Czechoslovakia , which had been sealed to prevent East Germans from fleeing to West Germany. On 6 November, the Interior Ministry published a draft of new travel regulations, which made cosmetic changes to Honecker-era rules, leaving the approval process opaque and maintaining uncertainty regarding access to foreign currency. The draft enraged ordinary citizens, and was denounced as "complete trash" by West Berlin Mayor Walter Momper. On 19 October, Krenz asked Gerhard Lauter to prepare a new travel policy. At a Politburo meeting on 7 November, it was decided to enact a portion of the draft travel regulations addressing permanent emigration immediately. Initially, the Politburo planned to create a special border crossing near Schirnding specifically for this emigration. It stipulated that East German citizens could apply for permission to travel abroad without having to meet the previous requirements for those trips. Later the same day, the ministerial administration modified the proposal to include private, round-trip, travel. The new regulations were to take effect the next day. Die Genehmigungen werden kurzfristig erteilt. The decree from 30 November about travel abroad of East German citizens will no longer be applied until the new travel comes into force. Starting immediately, the following temporary transition regulations for travel abroad and permanent exits from East Germany are in effect:. The travel authorizations will be issued within a short period of time. Grounds for denial will only be applied in particularly exceptional cases. It is still possible to apply for permanent exit in the departments for internal affairs [of the local district or city councils]. The attached press release explaining the temporary transition regulation will be issued on 10 November. Berlin ADN. As the Press Office of the Ministry of the Interior has announced, the East German Council of Ministers has decided that the following temporary transition regulation for travel abroad and permanent exit from East Germany will be effective until a corresponding law is put into effect by the :. Schabowski had not been involved in the discussions about the new regulations and had not been fully updated. The text stipulated that East German citizens could apply for permission to travel abroad without having to meet the previous requirements for those trips, and also allowed for permanent emigration between all border crossings—including those between East and West Berlin. Schabowski gave a confusing answer that asserted it was necessary because West Germany had exhausted its capacity to accept fleeing East Germans, then remembered the note he had been given and added that a new law had been drafted to allow permanent emigration at any border crossing. This caused a stir in the room; amid several questions at once, Schabowski expressed surprise that the reporters had not yet seen this law, and started reading from the note. Crucially, a journalist then asked if the regulation also applied to the crossings to West Berlin. Schabowski shrugged and read item 3 of the note, which confirmed that it did. Schabowski sat frozen before giving a rambling statement about the Wall being tied to the larger disarmament question. After the press conference, Schabowski sat for an interview with NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw in which he repeated that East Germans would be able to emigrate through the border and the regulations would go into effect immediately. The news began spreading immediately: the West German Deutsche Presse-Agentur issued a bulletin at which reported that East German citizens would be able to cross the "immediately". Excerpts from Schabowski's press conference were broadcast on West Germany's two main news programs that night—at on ZDF 's heute , which came on the air as the press conference was ending, and as the lead story at on ARD 's Tagesschau. As ARD and ZDF had broadcast to nearly all of East Germany since the late s, were far more widely viewed than the East German channels, and had become accepted by the East German authorities, this is how most of the population heard the news. The GDR has announced that, starting immediately, its borders are open to everyone. The gates in the Wall stand open wide. In , Ehrman claimed that a member of the Central Committee had called him and urged him to ask about the travel law during the press conference, but Schabowski called that absurd. Nicholas Church for prayer since After hearing the broadcast, East Germans began gathering at the Wall, at the six checkpoints between East and West Berlin , demanding that border guards immediately open the gates. At first, they were ordered to find the "more aggressive" people gathered at the gates and stamp their passports with a special stamp that barred them from returning to East Germany—in effect, revoking their citizenship. However, this still left thousands of people demanding to be let through "as Schabowski said we can". Mary Elise Sarotte in a Washington Post story characterized the series of events leading to the fall of the wall as an accident, saying "One of the most momentous events of the past century was, in fact, an accident, a semicomical and bureaucratic mistake that owes as much to the Western media as to the tides of history. Soon afterward, a crowd of West Berliners jumped on top of the Wall and were soon joined by East German youngsters. Walking through Checkpoint Charlie , 10 November At the Brandenburg Gate , 10 November Another border crossing to the south may have been opened earlier. Removal of the Wall began on the evening of 9 November and continued over the following days and weeks, with people nicknamed Mauerspechte wallpeckers using various tools to chip off souvenirs, demolishing lengthy parts in the process, and creating several unofficial border crossings. Crowds gathered on both sides of the historic crossings waiting for hours to cheer the bulldozers that tore down portions of the Wall to reconnect the divided roads. While the Wall officially remained guarded at a decreasing intensity, new border crossings continued for some time. Initially the East German Border Troops attempted repairing damage done by the "wallpeckers"; gradually these attempts ceased, and guards became more lax, tolerating the increasing demolitions and "unauthorized" border crossing through the holes. Thus, in the weeks between 9 November and 23 December, East Germans could actually travel more freely than Westerners. According to estimates by the border troops, a total of around 1. These were equipped with trucks, 65 cranes, 55 excavators and 13 bulldozers. Virtually every road that was severed by the Berlin Wall, every road that once linked from West Berlin to , was reconstructed and reopened by 1 August What remained were six sections that were to be preserved as a memorial. Painted wall segments with artistically valuable motifs were put up for auction in in Berlin and Monte Carlo. On 1 July , the day East Germany adopted the West German currency , all de jure border controls ceased, although the inter-German border had become meaningless for some time before that. The fall of the Wall marked the first critical step towards , which formally concluded a mere days later on 3 October with the dissolution of East Germany and the official reunification of the German state along the democratic lines of the West German Basic Law. An East German guard talks to a Westerner through a broken seam in the wall in late November A crane removes a section of the Wall near Brandenburg Gate on 21 December This would lead to a change to postwar borders and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security," Thatcher told Gorbachev. On 25 December , Leonard Bernstein gave a concert in Berlin celebrating the end of the Wall, including Beethoven's 9th symphony Ode to Joy with the word "Joy" Freude changed to "Freedom" Freiheit in the lyrics sung. The poet Schiller may have originally written "Freedom" and changed it to "Joy" out of fear. Over the years, there has been a repeated controversial debate [52] as to whether 9 November would make a suitable German national holiday, often initiated by former members of political opposition in East Germany, such as Werner Schulz. However, 9 November is also the anniversary of the execution of Robert Blum following the Vienna revolts , the Beer Hall Putsch and the infamous Kristallnacht pogroms of the Nazis in Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel criticised the first euphoria, noting that "they forgot that 9 November has already entered into history—51 years earlier it marked the Kristallnacht. On 9 November , the 10th anniversary was observed with a concert and fireworks at the vid Brandenburg Gate. Wreaths were placed for victims shot down when attempts to escape to west , and politicians delivered speeches. History didn’t end with the fall of the Berlin Wall – but only now is the new battleground clear

Learn how to enable JavaScript on your browser. NOOK Book. American and westen European resoluteness had brought an evil empire to its knees. Michael Meyer, in this extraordinarily compelling account of the revolutions that roiled Eastern Europe in , begs to differ. Drawing together breathtakingly vivid, on the ground accounts of the rise of Solidarity in Poland, the stealth opening of the Hungarian border, the Velvet Revolution in , and the collapse of the infamous wall in Berlin, Meyer shows that western intransigence was only one of the many factors that provoked such world-shaking change. More important, Meyer contends, were the stands taken by individuals in the thick of the struggle, leaders such as poet and playwright Vaclav Havel in Prague, Lech Walesa, the quietl determined reform prime minister inBudapest Miklos Nemeth, and the manwho realized his empire was already lost and decided, with courageand intelligence, t let it goin peace, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. Michael Meyer captures these heady days in all their rich drama and unpredictability. In doing so he provides not just a thrilling chronicle of perhaps the most important year of the 20th century but also a crucial refutation of American mythology and a misunderstanding of history that was deliberately eployed to lead the United States into some of the intractable conflicts it faces today. Between and , he was Newsweek 's Bureau Chief for Germany , Central Europe and the Balkans, writing more than twenty cover stories on the break-up of communist Europe and German unification. He previously worked at the Washington Post and Congressional Quarterly. He is the author of the Alexander Complex Times Books, , an examination of the psychology of American empire builders. He lives in New York City. Every true leader has a defining vision. The problem begins when life and the narrative fall out of joint. The greater the disjuncture, the more fatal the problem. George W. Bush idolized Ronald Reagan. From the outset he modeled his presidency upon him. Advisers drew the comparison at every opportunity. Eulogizing him in , he evoked a legacy he clearly saw as his own. He called evil by its name. As Reagan stood up to confront communist tyranny, so would he stand up to a more modern challenge. Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy pursues totalitarian aims… Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy is dismissive of free peoples. Less than a year before he left office, on a day in early February , when his approval ratings were around 30 percent, he drew cheers at the American Conservative Union. Everyone knows the reference. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! A generation of statesmen wish they had uttered it, among them many who belittled it at the time. Video clips of the speech can be watched on YouTube. For a generation of Americans, it has become a defining moment of the twentieth century, a turning point in the long struggle to win the Cold War. This one line, the epochal phrase in the most memorable speech of a presidency, grew over the years to become the touchstone of the Reagan legacy, the man and his ideas distilled to their essence—his optimism, his faith, his willingness to confront the conventional order, his bedrock belief in American values, most of all freedom and democracy and the power of people to change their lives and the world for the better. Reagan delivered it on a warm spring afternoon in the divided city of Berlin, June 12, Behind him rose the famed Brandenburg Gate, its arches and columns still blackened and pockmarked from the smoke and shrapnel of the last European battle of World War II. It was a dramatic proscenium for a bit of geopolitical theater. Snaking through the background, one hundred yards behind the dais where Reagan stood, was the Wall—the crude, blunt twelve-foot barrier of gray cement and barbed wire that divided East from West, the world of democratic freedom from that of totalitarian oppression, the literal embodiment of the Cold War. A guard tower poked up from the death strip running behind the Wall. Armed East German border guards surveyed the scene through binoculars. Large sheets of bulletproof glass shielded the president from the rear. Unseen from the Western side, crowds of East Germans gathered to hear Reagan, hoping loudspeakers would project his voice across the divide. East German police pushed them back, the president was told. This in itself was a demonstration of all that Reagan hated about communism, and he punched out his words with angry force—a direct exhortation, delivered personally, to the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Reagan began slowly, speaking of other American presidents who had come to Berlin, John F. And he spoke of the winds of change he knew to be blowing, coming from the East as and perestroika, openness and reform, authored by none other than Gorbachev himself. Then, a little after 2 p. Is this talk to be believed or trusted? General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Gorbachev, open this gate! Some waved American flags, though most of these had been planted by the U. After it was done and the president had gone, along with the ten thousand or so West Berliners who had come to hear him, local TV carried highlights. Not many Germans watched. Few admired Reagan and a large majority actively disliked him, especially in liberal and often anti-American Berlin. Most far preferred Gorbachev, seen as the peacemaker, who would arrive a few weeks later to be mobbed like a rock star. Gorbimania, they called it. Major U. And that was that until two years, four months, twenty-eight days and nine hours later—long after Reagan had left office—when the Berlin Wall actually came down. Abruptly, it was as if word were deed. Ronald Reagan became not only a prophet, foreseeing what no one else had, but the prime mover in a stunning geopolitical transformation. Overnight, it seemed, the world changed. The Cold War was over. We won! At least, this is the spin we Americans put on it. In recent years, particularly among U. As president, Reagan did what no one else had done before him: he confronted the enemy—and triumphed. Reagan had no patience with the old order. With his arms race and tough talk, he pushed the Soviet Union to the point of collapse, creating a new axiom of American foreign policy: stand tall and confront the enemy, as Reagan did that day in Berlin. From this axiom flowed a contemporary corollary—that all dictatorial regimes are similarly hollow at the core and will crumble with a shove from the outside. All it takes is faith and a little Reagan spunk, backed by U. Indeed, the word became one of the most popular verbs in his rhetorical arsenal. Be resolute, and the enemy will blink. Goodness and light will triumph. The fall of the Berlin Wall serves as proof and inspiration. Let us return to that fateful moment. It was the night of November 9, The Wall loomed up, grim and forbidding. People were gathering at all the checkpoints to the West, confused but exhilarated. They called out to one another and, increasingly, to the guards, who only moments before they feared. No one knew what to do. The crisis had materialized from nowhere. It was dangerous, for the police had no orders except to use deadly force to keep people from fleeing to the West. The crowds kept their good humor. But what if that changed, or if they tried to storm the gates? Would the police shoot? They had begun gathering shortly after 7 p. They came tentatively, huddled in small clusters some distance from the police, asking timid questions and holding out identity cards. But as their numbers grew—first by the dozens, then by the hundreds, finally by the thousands—they grew bolder. By 10 p. The countries of central and eastern Europe were delighted that the Berlin Wall collapsed because it allowed them to unify with western Europe. They had been vassal states of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and by joining the EU, they re-discovered personal freedom and re-gained national sovereignty. They thought they had become masters of their own future again. And, as hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees began arriving, they suddenly realised they were in a union that did not respect their sovereignty. Has it worked? The flow of migrants has been reduced drastically. This is partly because the EU paid Turkey to hold back the over three million migrants based there. But the walls also acted as a physical and psychological deterrent. It also worked politically. What is hypocritical, however, is that many of the governments in western Europe which criticized the Hungarian government for building its wall have actually been rather grateful that they did so as it slowed down the flow of migrants to their countries. For it cannot withstand [freedom]. How does this reflect the political evolution of the US and what effect does that have across the rest of the world? He knew that the fall of the wall would undermine the Soviet Union. President Trump is way beyond the Cold War. Building a new wall is his response to the growing sense of economic dislocation that segments of America, like Britain and other parts of Europe and the developed world, have experienced on the back of the rise of globalization, which was partly the result of the end of the Cold War but also the rise of China. Have inflows of Mexican immigrants or immigrants through the Mexico border been the principal driver of economic insecurity? Construction site for a secondary border fence following the length of the primary border fence separating the US and Mexico in the San Diego in the US. Photo: Getty Images. Politically how do these types of barriers compare to physical ones? This four-way occupation of Berlin began in June The Russians began maneuvering to drive the United States, Britain and France out of the city for good. In , a Soviet blockade of West Berlin aimed to starve the western Allies out of the city. Instead of retreating, however, the United States and its allies supplied their sectors of the city from the air. This effort, known as the Berlin Airlift , lasted for more than a year and delivered more than 2. The Soviets called off the blockade in After a decade of relative calm, tensions flared again in Summits, conferences and other negotiations came and went without resolution. Meanwhile, the flood of refugees continued. The following month, 30, fled. In the first 11 days of August, 16, East Germans crossed the border into West Berlin, and on August 12 some 2, followed—the largest number of defectors ever to leave East Germany in a single day. That night, Premier Khrushchev gave the East German government permission to stop the flow of emigrants by closing its border for good. In just two weeks, the East German army, police force and volunteer construction workers had completed a makeshift barbed wire and concrete block wall —the Berlin Wall—that divided one side of the city from the other. Before the wall was built, Berliners on both sides of the city could move around fairly freely: They crossed the East-West border to work, to shop, to go to the theater and the movies. Trains and subway lines carried passengers back and forth. Eventually, the GDR built 12 checkpoints along the wall. At each of the checkpoints, East German soldiers screened diplomats and other officials before they were allowed to enter or leave.

How significant was the Berlin Wall during the Cold War — was it more important physically or psychologically? The Berlin Wall was important physically, as well as psychologically, because Berlin was the only city that was divided physically by the Cold War between the Soviet Union and its allies in the Eastern Bloc and the West. Given the disparity that quickly emerged between the two sides in economic wealth, freedom of expression and so on, the fear was that, without that wall, there would've been a unification of Berlin in a way that the Soviet side would have lost. But it was also very important psychologically because it became the symbol of the division between two ideologies that saw each other as inimical to each other. That meant that if you wanted to visualize the Cold War, and the separation between the capitalist, democratic system of the West and the communist, command-and-control system of the East, Berlin offered a place where you could physically walk from one world, through a checkpoint, into the other. The whole Cold War could be reduced to this one nexus point. Because of its psychological as well as its physical significance, the fall of the Berlin Wall quickly became the symbol of the collapse of the communist ideology it had shielded. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, European countries have reportedly built over 1, kilometres of walls — the equivalent of more than six times the total length of the Berlin Wall — along their borders. Why has Europe been building more walls and how effective have they been? Have they been used more as symbols to appeal to political bases, and if so, has it worked with voters? The walls that have been built in Europe recently have been for a very specific reason. The countries of central and eastern Europe were delighted that the Berlin Wall collapsed because it allowed them to unify with western Europe. They had been vassal states of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and by joining the EU, they re-discovered personal freedom and re-gained national sovereignty. They thought they had become masters of their own future again. And, as hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees began arriving, they suddenly realised they were in a union that did not respect their sovereignty. Has it worked? The flow of migrants has been reduced drastically. This is partly because the EU paid Turkey to hold back the over three million migrants based there. But the walls also acted as a physical and psychological deterrent. Hill , the author of the novel Voices Under Berlin , was presented to the Museum by David Guerra, Berlin veteran and webmaster of the site www. The stamps splendidly illustrate that even twenty years on, veterans of service in Berlin still regard their service there as one of the high points of their lives. Berlin planned a weeklong arts festival from 4 to 10 November and a citywide music festival on 9 November to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan deliberately chose this date of 9 November to announce the long-awaited opening of the Kartarpur Corridor , allowing Sikh devotees from India a visa-free border crossing to visit a site especially holy to their religion in Pakistani territory. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Historical event. Germans stand on top of the Wall in front of Brandenburg Gate in the days before the Wall was torn down. Part of a series on the. Further information: Monday demonstrations in East Germany. Play media. Almost all of the remaining sections were rapidly chipped away. December West Germans peer at East German border guards through a hole in the wall on 5 January Revolution The Fall of the . New York City: Pantheon Books. Retrieved 6 July BBC News. Retrieved 1 April Deutsche Geschichte in Objekten. November Chronik der Mauer". Retrieved 2 November Retrieved 18 June Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Retrieved 1 November Spiegel Online in German. Die Presse in German. . Archived from the original on 2 February Retrieved 2 February Spiegel Online. Retrieved 14 October Al Jazeera America. The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 7 November Retrieved 19 June Chicago Tribune. The Telegraph. Retrieved 24 May The Times. Retrieved 8 November Retrieved 9 November Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2 July Retrieved 26 November Ultimate Classic Rock. November Nationalfeiertag werden? Die Welt Online. Archived from the original on 25 June Retrieved 22 February . New York Times. Washington Post. Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH. Retrieved 9 April Archived from the original on 8 November Hu, tear down this firewall! The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 6 August Archived from the original on 28 December Al Jazeera English. Communist-Era ? Car and Driver. Retrieved 24 January The Guardian. Another strength of Meyer's work is that he was the only Newsweek reporter for Germany and the whole Eastern bloc at the time, so he covered the whole story. He shuttled from one hot spot to the next, and observed most of the key events himself. He gives you first hand versions of meetings with the Hungarians, Honnekar, Ceaucescu, Havel, and dozens more of the men all men, in his version who nudged revolution forward, at hyperspeed. Another strength is that he covers not only the political environment but describes the economic disaster that pervaded almost all of these countries. In Poland and Hungary, for example, the looming economic disaster prompted the ruling party to take steps toward reform or collaboration with the opposition. The book ends with brief descriptions of changes that didn't go so well, in particular Romania, with a few paragraphs on Yugoslavia. I have no doubt that a different writer would have carved up the credit and blame differently, but for this reader Meyer crafted a compelling story and a politically congenial attitude toward the disastrous mis-reading of the meaning of the end of the Cold War US hegemony-- we have only to will change for it to happen. Excellent first-hand account of events leading up to and during the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe from a reporter who was on the ground at the time. Mar 14, Shawn Brace rated it it was amazing. This is a fantastic book, offering a lot of interesting details and analysis of what led up to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. It really provides a needed balance to the common American perspective, which is highly reductionist, of what precipitated these events and America's role in it all. My two big complaints, which still don't cause me to lower my rating, is that there is absolutely no discussion of Pope John Paul II's role in the fall of Communism. This, to me, is incre This is a fantastic book, offering a lot of interesting details and analysis of what led up to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. This, to me, is incredibly negligent. Secondly, I could have really done without Meyer's insistence on trying to connect history with modern at least events contained in the opening pages and in the epilogue. I'm fine with a purely historical work, without feeling the need to make it relevant to the contemporary context. But, again, this was just a minor part of the book, mostly addressed in the opening and closing pages - which the reader can breeze over or skip altogether. A compelling, first-hand recount of the events that brought upon the fall of the Berlin Wall and of comunism in Eastern Europe. I believe the book works as a reality check on who were the key players in this very confusing time. It also does a great job at arguing that the misconception of how things unfolded in mis-shaped the USA's foreign policy for the years to come. Feb 19, Al Berry rated it liked it. Book is harmed by the author trying to draw parallels to the Iraq War and present times. Dec 27, Elise rated it really liked it Shelves: non-fiction. Fabulous first hand account of the fall of Communism from the perspective of Michael Meyers. At the time, Meyers was based in Germany for Newsweek covering Germany and Central Europe in the years leading up to and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We all remember Vaclav Havel in Prague and the "Velvet Revolution" and the Solidarity movement in Poland, but we don't always remember how it all fit together and the lesser known leaders and individuals that put into motion the reform that ultimately Fabulous first hand account of the fall of Communism from the perspective of Michael Meyers. We all remember Vaclav Havel in Prague and the "Velvet Revolution" and the Solidarity movement in Poland, but we don't always remember how it all fit together and the lesser known leaders and individuals that put into motion the reform that ultimately lead to the fall of Communism; individuals such as Miklos Nemeth of Hungary and Lech Walesa in Poland. Many would like to think that when Reagan said to Gorbachev "Mr. He shows us how very little a role the US actually played and how change was occurring so rapidly there wasn't time for the US to react or be involved. These Soviet Statelite countries proceeded with the understanding that Gorbachev would be tolerant of change and not do anything drastic to prevent these nations from moving forward. It also shows how this distorted self view of the US role and foreign diplomacy lead Bush II to think the "War on Terror" could be "won" as easily as the "Cold War" and why the US is still struggling with some of their international conflicts today. Jan 27, Michael Gerald rated it it was amazing. A concise yet great read, this book reveals the events that led to the democratic revolutions that toppled Communism in Eastern Europe in , as seen from a correspondent's eyes. It's like a classic movie with a plethora of characters. Villains like Honecker and Ceausescu. And heroes like Walesa, Havel, and the lesser known Nemeth. On one side, a repressive system. On the other, peoples yearning for freedom, democracy, and prosperity. A thrilling read about those heady days of and a remin A concise yet great read, this book reveals the events that led to the democratic revolutions that toppled Communism in Eastern Europe in , as seen from a correspondent's eyes. A thrilling read about those heady days of and a reminder not to take those democratic values for granted. Jul 13, Mark rated it it was ok. I only got about pages in and quit. The author hardly talks about what happened and focuses on what he thinks is going through peoples minds. It is all a romanticized version of events of which I quickly got tired of. I'm sure if the events were written by another author I would be completely engrossed in it. Dec 01, Spencer Braatz rated it really liked it. This story was about the fall of the Berlin wall and all of the events and stories surrounding it. The majority of the story focuses on the events leading up to the fall of the Berlin wall. It tells about Hungary and Romania and their reforms. It tells about the leadership in the GDR and how it crumbled in a way. This book kind of reminds me of current events that are happening in the world today. I really liked the way the author added in first person encounters and used conversation to make the story come to life. My favorite part of the book is when Germans are protesting and about to riot on both sides of the wall and the security guard just shrugs and opens the gates. One thing I think the author could have done better is make a few parts more interesting. Sometimes the story got a little slow and it was a little dry. Other than that, the story was really good and I learned a lot by reading it too. I would recommend this to a friend. Jan 31, Nana rated it it was amazing. I read this book for a class on political conflict as a poli sci novice without a ton of knowledge of the specifics of this particular set of events, but if you are looking for an informed and captivating explanation of them, this one does not disappoint. You could scarcely imagine someone more in the thick of these events then Micheal Meyer, who seems to have been blessed to be at almost all the most pivotal place at the pivotal moments, from being at the right hand and confidence of the variou I read this book for a class on political conflict as a poli sci novice without a ton of knowledge of the specifics of this particular set of events, but if you are looking for an informed and captivating explanation of them, this one does not disappoint. You could scarcely imagine someone more in the thick of these events then Micheal Meyer, who seems to have been blessed to be at almost all the most pivotal place at the pivotal moments, from being at the right hand and confidence of the various reformers to present at the first rush through the Wall and the demonstrations of the Velvet Revolution. He paints a highly compelling and artful description of them all, and maps out what is a pretty complicated series of events very effectively. Though this was class reading, I found myself tearing though this book. Jan 16, Ed Zirkwitz rated it it was amazing Shelves: history. The Berlin Wall came down on November 9, but much more happened that year and leading up to that year that got much less attention. In the summer of Michael R. He operated out of West Berlin and interviewed and wrote about political leaders and events. F was a pivotal political year in communist eastern Europe. For its time, this had profound implications for the world as a whole that literally did change the world. This is a must read for history buffs for the time and geographical sphere and politics to find out what really happened. This definitely changed the world in so many ways. Mar 04, Maria rated it really liked it Shelves: history , overdrive-army , non-fiction , audio- books , politics. Meyer was assigned as a Newsweek bureau chief, to Eastern Europe. He recounts his experiences interviewing various Communist leaders and the revolutionists from multiple countries that worked to bring down the Iron Curtain. From Hungary, to Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania, Meyer's introduces the American public to the real history of the fail of communism Why I started this book: I've been on a Berlin kick and when this popped up as an Overdrive audio, I put myself on the wait list. In , they and many Americans believed that the Cold War would continue for years and so were unprepared and surprised when it crumbled. And because they failed to imagine this possibility, they also failed to see just how many people had worked behind the scene to accomplish it Jun 07, Neal Skorka rated it really liked it. So much that I did not know that was behind the wall coming down. There must have been so much that the author had to leave out to make this a readable work with just enough detail. A little dry at times, the book is filled with history, the personality of world leaders, and a glimpse into the world of a reporter. Important as it is to see things in hindsight, it is equally important to think of these events from the perspective of today with our influence the relatively good kind waini So much that I did not know that was behind the wall coming down. Important as it is to see things in hindsight, it is equally important to think of these events from the perspective of today with our influence the relatively good kind waining, as our government retracts towards isolation and our president continues his attempts to grab the brass ring of authoritarianism. An interesting, mostly firsthand look at the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Iron Curtain, told in an easy to follow narrative. I found it informative, and would definitely recommend it. The fall of East Germany and the Wall within the contemporary context of the other Eastern-bloc countries and their respective revolutions. I still get weepy whenever I read about the Wall coming down and East meeting West. I never thought it would happen in my lifetime. May 16, Sam Otten rated it liked it.

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