I am a child of the 1980’s, as well the Cold War, and in 1989 I witnessed an event that many never thought they would see, the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Backing up to before the fall, Germany was divided into East and West occupation zones after the defeat of Nazi Germany at the end of World War II. It became the first battlefield of the Cold War, where the East was Soviet and the West was aligned with democratic countries. Within this divided nation was a divided city, Berlin. By 1961, the East German government was tired of losing citizens to West Berlin and the freedom that it offered. In order to stem the flow, the East German government built a wall to keep their people in, which became the Berlin Wall.
By 1985, it looked like the Cold War was starting to thaw. There was a new leader in the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, who saw that the Soviet Union could no longer continue along the path they were on. Gorbachev introduced “perestroika” (“restructuring”) and “glasnost” (“openness”). These were changes in economic practice, internal affairs and international relations. With the new openness for the Soviet bloc nations, they began to question their leaders and government like never before since the Cold War began in 1945.
In the fall of 1989, I was going to school at Fort Hays State University, experiencing the college life and watching as the people of East Germany stood up to their government for more economic freedom. In November, West Germans attacked oppressive Berlin Wall with hammers, chisels and jackhammers. East German border guards, who had been ordered to kill 600 people as they tried to escape to the West, now stood by as the gates to the West opened. East Germans poured through Checkpoint Charlie, the only legal way into East Germany until then, and through the opening cut in the Wall. Families that had been separated for 30 years reunited. It was a party with the Wall coming down as young people stood on the Wall, helping their East German counterpart over to West Berlin and David Hasselhoff, a huge singer in Germany, played his hit “Looking for Freedom” from on top of the Wall.
By 1990, East and West Germany were gone, reunified as one nation again.