On Nov. 9, 1989, East German border guards opened the Berlin Wall and changed the trajectory of history. The fall of the wall marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War. It was also a moment of hope and possibility. Even before the wall came down, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was making the case for a “common European home” in which the United States and the Soviet Union would both play a role, winning cautious praise from Western leaders. “I think we have come out of a period of cold war, even if there are still some chills and drafts,” Gorbachev said in June of 1989. “We are simply bound to a new stage of relations, one I would call the peaceful period in the development of international relations.”
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Katrina vanden Heuvel: From the hope of 1989 to a new Cold War
East German border guards stand on a section of the Berlin wall with the Brandenburg gate in the background on November 11, 1989 in Berlin. On November 9, Gunter Schabowski, the East Berlin Communist party boss, declared that starting from midnight, East Germans would be free to leave the country, without permission, at any point along the border, including the crossing-points through the Wall in Berlin. The Berlin concrete wall was built by the East German government in August 1961 to seal off East Berlin from the part of the city occupied by the three main Western powers to prevent mass illegal immigration to the West. According to the "August 13 Association" which specialises in the history of the Berlin Wall, at least 938 people - 255 in Berlin alone - died, shot by East German border guards, attempting to flee to West Berlin or West Germany.
