Why does the berlin wall came down

No-one knew the fall of the Wall was weeks away. In late October parliament in Hungary, which had been among the first to hold mass demonstrations, adopted legislation providing for direct presidential elections and multi-party parliamentary elections.

And then on 31 October, the numbers demanding democracy in East Germany swelled to half a million. Mr Krenz flew to Moscow for meetings - he recently told the BBC that he had been assured German reunification was not on the agenda. Find out more about East Germany, On 4 November, a month after the East German protests had begun, around half a million people gathered in Alexanderplatz in the heart of East Berlin. Three days later, the government resigned. But there was no intention to give way to democracy and Egon Krenz remained head of the Communist Party and the country's de facto leader.

He would not be there long. Five days later, Mr Schabowski gave his world-changing press conference. Earlier in '89, Beijing demonstrators in Tiananmen Square who had called for democracy in China were crushed in a major military crackdown. The USSR had used its military to put down rebellions before. So why not now? Within the Soviet Union itself, it did, killing 21 pro-independence protesters in the Soviet republic of Georgia.

But elsewhere in the communist bloc, they did not. In a break with Soviet policy, Mikhail Gorbachev decided against using the threat of military might to quell mass demonstrations and political revolution in neighbouring countries. Student demonstrators in Prague clashed with police, triggering the Velvet Revolution which overthrew Czechoslovak communism within weeks. In Romania, demonstrations ended in violence and saw the fall of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

A new government took over as the ousted leader fled his palace and angry crowds stormed it. He and his wife Elena were captured and executed on Christmas Day. More than 1, people were killed in unrest before and after the revolution, setting Romania apart from the largely bloodless events elsewhere.

In , Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia took advantage of their new-found political freedoms to vote out their communist governments and make moves towards independence. Instead of retreating, however, the United States and its allies supplied their sectors of the city from the air.

This effort, known as the Berlin Airlift , lasted for more than a year and delivered more than 2. The Soviets called off the blockade in After a decade of relative calm, tensions flared again in Summits, conferences and other negotiations came and went without resolution. Meanwhile, the flood of refugees continued. The following month, 30, fled. In the first 11 days of August, 16, East Germans crossed the border into West Berlin, and on August 12 some 2, followed—the largest number of defectors ever to leave East Germany in a single day.

That night, Premier Khrushchev gave the East German government permission to stop the flow of emigrants by closing its border for good. In just two weeks, the East German army, police force and volunteer construction workers had completed a makeshift barbed wire and concrete block wall —the Berlin Wall—that divided one side of the city from the other.

Before the wall was built, Berliners on both sides of the city could move around fairly freely: They crossed the East-West border to work, to shop, to go to the theater and the movies. Trains and subway lines carried passengers back and forth. Eventually, the GDR built 12 checkpoints along the wall. History Magazine These 3,year-old giants watched over the cemeteries of Sardinia. Magazine How one image captures 21 hours of a volcanic eruption. Science Why it's so hard to treat pain in infants. Science The controversial sale of 'Big John,' the world's largest Triceratops.

Science Coronavirus Coverage How antivirals may change the course of the pandemic. Science Coronavirus Coverage U. Travel A road trip in Burgundy reveals far more than fine wine. Travel My Hometown In L. Travel The last artists crafting a Thai royal treasure.

Subscriber Exclusive Content. Why are people so dang obsessed with Mars? How viruses shape our world. The era of greyhound racing in the U. See how people have imagined life on Mars through history. See More. I had spent some time during vacations in the Eastern part of the country, but my father was not able to see his mother for more than twenty years. In many parts of the country, there was a huge desire for the wall to come down, but very little hope, because we were very much aware that the Soviet Union had rudely crushed an uprising in all of East Germany in More than 10 percent of the East German population then had turned to the streets and had demonstrated for freedom, unity, and justice.

The same had happened in in Hungary and in in Czechoslovakia. There was very little hope that the Soviet Union would ever allow Germany to reunite.

What was the immediate impact of the barrier coming down, in German society and German politics? There was of course unlimited travel. The East had already lost, before then, two million people. That was one reason why the wall was built, to stop that. Immediately after it came down, another million left East Germany for the West. Also it led to the all-German election on December 2, , when those who had argued for German unification won an overwhelming victory.

It changed everything in German politics. The legacy is that a peaceful revolution can make a difference. I say courageous because it was quite likely that the police would clamp down on these demonstrations and all these people demonstrating would be beaten and would end up in jail.

They made it a little bit more likely that this would happen. Then later on, we have the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. It was the end of the Iron Curtain in Europe. That had been totally unforeseeable. It was a huge historical development. Was there difficulty as well, unifying a relatively poor East Germany with a much more prosperous West Germany?

Yes, and to a certain extent that still exists. The latest figures are for —salaries in the East are now Unemployment went down from fifteen years ago, 18 percent in the East to now 6 percent, still a bit higher than in the West, but only marginally.