The Fall of the Berlin Wall: 25 Years Later: A Look Back

Overview

After nearly three decades as a barrier dividing East and West Germany and serving as a symbol of Soviet might and control, the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, marking the end of a bitter chapter of the Cold War.

From the wall’s construction in the summer of 1961 to its destruction in the fall of 1989, The Associated Press was there to witness and document the impact it had on people living on both sides of it, and far beyond.

A collection of such AP reports is featured in this book, which provides a unique perspective on the era leading up to and beyond the collapse, as reported by AP reporters and as seen through the lens of its photographers.

Introduction

The Fall of the Wall

They Voted with Their Feet

November 13, 1989

By Mike Feinsilber

Berliners sing and dance on top of the Berlin Wall to celebrate the opening of East-West German borders. Thousands of East German citizens moved into the West after East German authorities opened all border crossing points to the West. In the background is the Brandenburg Gate. Built in 1961 of barbed wire and concrete, the wall divided Berlin, becoming the most powerful symbol of The Cold War. It prevented East Germans from freely traveling or migrating to the West. The two nations were reunited as a single country, 45 years after World War II on October 23, 1990. The change – Die Wende – or reunification, created one of the world's strongest economies in the 20th century, November 10, 1989. (AP Photo/Thomas Kienzle)

First barbed wire and cinder blocks, thrown up in panic in the middle of the night. Then concrete and bricks, watchtowers, machine guns, a floodlit mine field and the blood of those trying to cross the Berlin Wall, a gray symbol of the Cold War. Against this obstacle, which sealed the division of a divided city, were hurled eggs, tomatoes and TNT. The wall absorbed curses and graffiti and the ritualistic invective of visiting presidents and prime ministers.

In 28 years, 5,000 East Germans escaped over the wall and 191 people died trying. On May 23, 1987, the border guards carried away a lifeless body. Maybe this person whose name is not known was the last to die.

East Germans ''voting with their feet,'' as Western politicians like to say, caused the wall to be built on Aug. 13, 1961. It ended a hemorrhage.

East Germans voting with their feet - finding routes around the wall, leaving their homes at the rate of 8,333 a day in the final six days - caused the Wall to be rendered meaningless in these last few days.

John F. Kennedy was president when the wall went up. He was spending the weekend at Hyannis Port, Mass. Secretary of State Dean Rusk issued a statement, ''Limitation on travel within Berlin is a violation of the four-power status of Berlin.''

Kennedy did nothing about dismantling the wall, reasoning that such a step would provoke a confrontation with the Soviets; anyway, the East Germans would just rebuild it.

Two years later, Kennedy stood on the Western side of the wall and hurled bricks of oratory at the Communists.

A thrilled shout arose from 150,000 West Berliners when Kennedy said, in German: ''Ich bin ein Berliner'' - ''I am a Berliner.''

Every president since has called on the Communists to tear down the wall.

Ronald Reagan was there June 12, 1987. Addressing himself directly to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Reagan said: ''If you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate ... open this gate ... tear down this wall.''

Speeches like that, replied the East German news agency ADN, ''will not make the wall go away, but on the contrary will cause it to grow higher.''

In Berlin, 13 months ago, American diplomat John C. Whitehead called the wall ''a gray, monstrous snake.'' The West German newspaper Bild called it ''inhumanity cast in stone, bondage poured into cement.''

Long before the wall was built, Berlin had become a focus of East-West confrontation. After the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, the city was divided into American, French, British and Soviet-controlled sectors. The Western powers were assigned land and air corridors for transportation to Berlin across East Germany.

But three years later, the Soviets abruptly cut off overland access to West Berlin. To keep the city alive, the United States and its allies launched the Berlin Airlift on June 26, 1948.

By the time the Soviets halted their blockade and the airlift ended on Sept. 30, 1949, more than 277,000 planeloads of supplies - totaling about 2 million tons of food, coal and other goods - had been delivered to West Berlin.

East German Communist leader Erich Honecker put the wall up 28 years ago and the wall brought Erich Honecker down last month.

None saw its swift demise. Last Aug. 13, a West German official, Ottfried Henning, predicted the wall might come down by the end of the century.

Last January, Honecker said it would ''still be standing in 50 years and even in 100 years if the reason (for its existence) are not set aside.''

The reason for its existence?

At the time, the East German explanation was that it was needed to prevent a planned attack from the West. On the day of its construction, the newspaper Berlin Zeitung, said, ''As the day dawned, the border was made safe.''

In the days before its construction, the flow of East Germans to West German became so great that it threatened to cripple the East German economy.

In the days before its symbolic destruction, the flow of East Germans had become so great that the authorities acknowledged they had to let their people go if they had any hope of keeping them home.

Last summer, Falk Turba, 20, a border guard who himself had defected to West Germany, gave an interview. His message was that sometimes even a jack booted trooper listens to his heart.

He said the shoot-to-kill orders had been rescinded. But even before they were, ''only about 10 percent of the hard-core, gung-ho troops would shoot at an unarmed civilian attempting to flee.''

But it was a great risk not to shoot, he said.

''If you let someone escape, you go to prison. It's also very risky because you patrol in pairs, and you never know what the other guy is thinking.''

On July 12, 1989, Turba told his comrades he had problems with his motorcycle and needed to take it for a test drive. He roared over a hill, coasted to the border barriers - and bounded for freedom.

''I just couldn't take it anymore,'' he said.

1

Cold War and East Germany

The Victors and the Division of Germany

February 13, 1990

By Alexander G. Higgins

Demonstration of the Free German Youth organization, carrying a huge portrait of Joseph V. Stalin and other communist leaders after the election of Wilhelm Pieck, Socialist Unity Party of Germany Chairman as President of the German Democratic Republic in East Berlin, Germany, on October 11, 1949. (AP Photo)

The four nations that defeated Nazi Germany in World War II have maintained their rights as victors and legally have the final say 45 years later on the 1990 reunification of the divided nation.

The disclosure in Ottawa that the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France had agreed to a two-stage plan aimed at reunifying Germany provides the international framework to close the final chapter of the war. The four principal victors - the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union - all ended their state of war with Germany during the 1950s. The three western powers made agreements with West Germany, the Soviet Union with East Germany. Further agreements followed in the 1970s.

No peace treaty was ever signed, and it is not clear there will be a formal treaty like the Versailles Treaty that ended World War I.

Germany was never supposed to be divided, and the allies agreed to administer the country as a unit. But to avoid confusion, zones of occupation were established for the country, and separately for the capital, Berlin, even before the allied armies entered the country from East and West.

Despite pressure from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to hold what he had, the western commander, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, insisted on adhering to the occupation zones, even pulling back U.S. troops that had driven much further to the East in many places.

Differences arose almost before the shooting stopped. The Soviet Union dismantled whole factories in its occupation zone, carting them home over the objections of the western allies.

The introduction of a new currency in the western zones over Soviet objections in 1948 led the Soviets to stop all rail, road and water access to Berlin, which lay 110 miles inside their occupation zone.

An airlift by the western powers that flew coal and food into Berlin 'round the clock eventually led to the lifting of the blockade, one of the tensest episodes of the Cold War.

In 1961 East Germany built the Berlin Wall, that only began to be removed in 1989, around West Berlin to stop the flow of East Germans to West Berlin which was threatening to deprive the communist state of some of its best-trained people.

At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States agreed that pending a peace settlement, some former German territories in the east would be taken over by Poland and the Soviet Union. Many Germans living there fled to the West.

East and West Germany joined in the 35-nation Helsinki accords of 1975 that specified European borders could be changed only peacefully, and West Germany has signed separate treaties with the Soviet Union and Poland that addressed the border issues.

But not all German political parties