17. The Berlin Wall Fell Because a Bureaucrat Misspoke
For decades, the Berlin Wall stood as both a literal dividing line, and the Cold War’s ultimate symbolic separator, marking off a dour communist East from a vibrant capitalist West. There was a reason why Ronald Reagan’s admonition in speech delivered during a 1987 visit to West Berlin, “Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” resonated so well back then. At the time, few could have predicted that, little more than two years later, the Berlin Wall would come down with such suddenness so as to catch politicians and pundits alike off guard.
As the late 1980s saw communism begin to crumble in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, East Germany’s communist leaders began to grudgingly ease their citizens’ travel restrictions. On November 9th, 1989, East Berlin’s communist party boss Gunter Schabowski held a press conference to explain some minor revisions to the travel code. However, he flubbed it, and mistakenly implied that travel restrictions were being completely removed. When a reporter asked when the changes would take effect, Schabowski shrugged and replied: “immediately, right away“. That hit the news, and when East Germans heard it, they swarmed the border, demanding the promised free passage. The border guards had received no such instructions, but rather than deal with a riot, they stepped aside, and the wall came down in a rapturous celebration – Berlin’s greatest citywide party, ever.
