The fall of the Berlin Wall - 25 Anniversary - Declassified Documents tell the incredible story!

[Baobab]

http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB490/

Washington, DC, November 9, 2014 – The iconic fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago today shocked international leaders from Washington to Moscow, London to Warsaw, as East German crowds took advantage of Communist Party fumbles to break down the Cold War's most symbolic barrier, according to formerly secret documents from Soviet, German, U.S., Czechoslovak and Hungarian files posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org).

The historic events of the night of November 9, 1989 came about from accident and contingency, rather than conspiracy or strategy, according to the documents. Crowds of East Berliners, already conditioned by months of refugee flights to the West and weeks of peaceful mass protests in cities like Leipzig, seized on media reports of immediate changes in travel restrictions — based on a bumbled briefing by a Politburo member, Günter Schabowski — and inundated the Wall's checkpoints demanding passage. Television coverage of the first crossing that yielded to the self-fulfilling media prophecy then created a multiplier effect and more crowds came, ultimately to dance on the Wall.

[RobertEarl]

1. People power

Even the guards knew they could not resist so many People.

James Earl Carter was the one who got the ball rolling with his Human Rights actions. Much is owed Carter.

[Baobab]

2. The Wall yielded very rapidly to the determined work of thousands of people.

almost overnight it vanished.

I remember watching it at night on cable cheering them on with my friends in San Francisco, a mixed crowd of Americans and Europeans, we knew we were witnessing history being made that day.