Find out more about East Germany, On 4 November, a month after the East German protests had begun, around half a million people gathered in Alexanderplatz in the heart of East Berlin. Three days later, the government resigned. But there was no intention to give way to democracy and Egon Krenz remained head of the Communist Party and the country's de facto leader.
He would not be there long. Five days later, Mr Schabowski gave his world-changing press conference. Earlier in '89, Beijing demonstrators in Tiananmen Square who had called for democracy in China were crushed in a major military crackdown.
The USSR had used its military to put down rebellions before. So why not now? Within the Soviet Union itself, it did, killing 21 pro-independence protesters in the Soviet republic of Georgia. But elsewhere in the communist bloc, they did not. In a break with Soviet policy, Mikhail Gorbachev decided against using the threat of military might to quell mass demonstrations and political revolution in neighbouring countries. Student demonstrators in Prague clashed with police, triggering the Velvet Revolution which overthrew Czechoslovak communism within weeks.
In Romania, demonstrations ended in violence and saw the fall of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. A new government took over as the ousted leader fled his palace and angry crowds stormed it. He and his wife Elena were captured and executed on Christmas Day. More than 1, people were killed in unrest before and after the revolution, setting Romania apart from the largely bloodless events elsewhere. In , Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia took advantage of their new-found political freedoms to vote out their communist governments and make moves towards independence.
The Soviet Union was falling apart, but Mr Gorbachev made one last ill-fated attempt to reform it by calling together the leaders of the 15 Soviet republics. Hardline communists opposed to his reforms pre-empted him, attempting a coup while he was on holiday in Crimea in August and putting him under house arrest.
The coup was defeated in three days as pro-democracy forces rallied round Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian republic. But it was the death knell for the USSR, and one by one its constituent republics declared independence. As they celebrated with champagne, music, and tears, Berliners began to literally tear down the wall with sledgehammers and chisels. Less than a month later, the GDR collapsed entirely, and in , Germany reunified.
Today, a double row of cobblestones marks the place where the wall once stood. All rights reserved. Share Tweet Email. Why it's so hard to treat pain in infants. This wild African cat has adapted to life in a big city.
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Animals Wild Cities Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London. 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.
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. This new policy of openness had already resulted in contested elections in Poland in May as well as reforms in Hungary.
It was becoming increasingly clear that the Soviet Union was no longer prepared to support hardline Communist regimes in Eastern Europe. It was amid that atmosphere of reform that, on the evening of Nov. Since the late s, the two stations broadcast to nearly all of East Germany, and the programs appeared there as well.
The GDR has announced that, starting immediately, its borders are open to everyone. The gates in the Wall stand open wide. This was all the East German populace needed to hear. Citizens flocked to the border en masse sometime around pm and found that, after initial confusion, the border guards were indeed letting people cross. This was a crucial flashpoint in the history between the two sides, as the guards could have easily fired on the crowd.
However, according to historian Mary Elise Sarotte in her book The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall , no one among the East German authorities wanted to take the personal authority of issuing orders leading to the use of lethal force. By pm, Harald Jager, the commander of the Bornholmer Strasse border crossing, let the guards open the checkpoints, allowing people to pass without their identities checked.
To Jager, it was obvious that the five dozen men guarding the border were grossly outnumbered. He repeatedly attempted to contact his superior, Rudi Ziegenhorn, in order to ascertain how to handle the increasingly chaotic situation, as more and more people gathered at the gates.
He was unable to get any clear guidance on how to proceed, but a superior in the background called Jager a coward for being unable to handle the situation.
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