25. The Weird Ending of the Berlin Wall
Throughout much of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall stood as both a literal dividing line and the era’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 a speech delivered during a 1987 visit to West Berlin, “Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” resonated so well at the time.
Back then, 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. However, the country’s communist leadership had no intention of bringing down the wall for good. Then a weird bureaucratic screwup went and did just that.
