The Fall of the Berlin Wall

NOV 09 1989 · 12:00

West and East Germans at the Brandenburg Gate the morning after the wall opened, 10 November 1989. Place: Bornholmer Straße crossing; later the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin Figures: Günter Schabowski, East German Politburo spokesman · Harald Jäger, Bornholmer crossing commander · the crowd, growing through the evening The Mistake At a 6 p.m. press conference, Günter Schabowski reads a hastily-drafted travel-regulation document. An Italian journalist asks when the regulations take effect. Schabowski, who has not read the document carefully, shuffles his papers and says ab sofort — immediately. The document had specified the following morning, with prior application for visas. Schabowski's misreading is broadcast live across both Germanies on the 8 p.m. news. Crowds gather at the Berlin crossings by 9 p.m. Border commanders have no orders. At Bornholmer Straße, Harald Jäger telephones for guidance for hours, receives no useful instruction, and at 11:30 p.m. opens the barrier on his own authority. The Wall falls because an East German Politburo spokesman misread his notes and a colonel decided not to shoot. End of the Cold Equilibrium Within two years, the Soviet Union dissolves into fifteen sovereign states. The bipolar Westphalia that the UN Charter (see [[un-charter-1945]]) had codified for forty-five years ceases to exist. The veto-structured Security Council becomes effectively a Western-dominated body, until China and a recovering Russia begin asserting their vetoes again in the 2010s. Francis Fukuyama publishes The End of History? in the summer 1989 issue of The National Interest, then a 1992 book. The argument: liberal democracy has won the great ideological contest, and history (in the Hegelian sense of conflict over fundamental principles) is over. The Westphalian state, briefly, looks like the final destination. The post-Cold-War decade is shaped by that briefly-credible reading. Video: Associated Press news flash from the morning after the border opened, reporting that East Germany had begun dismantling the Wall. Crowds at the Brandenburg Gate, 10 November 1989.