By Sue Gloor
In the wake of the anniversary of perhaps one of the greatest indirect US victories—the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of a communist stronghold in Europe—Mary Elise Sarotte points to the fact that the whole event was never supposed to occur in such a sweeping and symbolic manner.
Sarotte writes in The Washington Post that exactly twenty years after the breakdown of the barrier between East and West Germany, much of the world is still unaware about the specific circumstances surrounding that fateful day.
Apparently, the wall was never supposed to come down that quickly—a period of a few hours was all it took for some raucous and rebellious East Berliners to climb their way to freedom—or even at that point in time.
But the East German Politburo, the executive committee for the communist party, had already decided to pacify its repressed citizens by developing more “lenient” travel standards. It delegated a spokesman to explain the reforms during an international news conference.
The reforms were barely significant at all, and rather merely suggested freedom within a “fine print” context riddled with East Germany’s characteristic regulations. The spokesman, Guenter Schabowski, skimmed the new standards before holding the conference and mistakenly led the journalists present to believe that the wall was about to come down.
The ensuing breaking news stories in West Germany were all that was needed to exacerbate the misunderstanding, and soon the great physical divide was no more. It is strange that in an age where news broadcasts are considered the most trusted form of communication worldwide, we are reminded of how falsely reported news once changed the course of history.
It may be true that the Berlin Wall would have come down sooner rather than later in 1989, but the fact that its actual demise was stimulated by a muddled answer to the press is quite remarkable.
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