And the Wall Came Tumbling Down

This article was originally published in U.S. News & World Report on Nov. 20, 1989.

We know all about crowds of refugees fleeing European cities, of course. It was in all the war movies. There was Humphrey Bogart, standing in the cold rain (or if it wasn't raining, it should have been) as a surging mob desperately tried to clamber aboard the last train out of Paris while the German Army marched in. Refugees mobbing a train station was sort of a fanfare in those films, heralding the real event, which was war.
We know all about East Germans, too. They were the only ones in the spy novels who ever seemed more sinister than the KGB. The Russians were bad, but they at least were human, with human weaknesses (usually American cigarettes and Scotch whisky) that proved, deep down, they shared some of our values, at least the materialistic ones. But the East Germans – they were the soulless ideologues. The masters of psychological tortures. The ones who wore the leather trench coats.
Maybe these images, impressed on our subconsciousness, have kept us from fully grasping the spectacle that unfolded in East Germany last week. An army marching into Paris is a once-in-a-century event, and we know to treat it as such. A declaration of freedom is more cryptic. Yet not even a panzer thrust ever changed the political realities of Europe so swiftly. A state that for 37 years dedicated itself to the systematic imprisonment of its population is panicking, throwing out concessions that only spur hundreds of thousands to turn out into the streets to demand more. Two months ago, the government was still the unflappable propaganda machine, denouncing Hungary for "engaging in the organized smuggling of humans" by opening its border to the West; one month ago, police were still beating demonstrators; last week, without warning, the most elaborate apparatus ever developed by a country to secure its borders against its own citizens crumbled to pieces as the beleaguered government threw open the gates and checkpoints.
These were the borders that since May 26, 1952, had been made, to put it simply, into an efficient machine for killing people. Minefields were sown between a double line of 10-foot-high fences that stretched the entire 860 miles that divide East and West. Attack dogs patrolled the most likely escape routes. And then there were the tripwires. The ones inside the first fence set off alarms. The ones at the second fence set off devices known as SM-70s – automatically firing machine guns. Above all, there was the Wall, the paramount symbol of ruthless oppression, guarded by soldiers who shot to kill, who shortly after the Wall went up in August, 1961, stood by as an 18-year-old East Berliner, hit as he reached the foot of the Wall, bled to death.

In one bewildering instant, almost too fast for us to realize what happened, the Wall and everything it had so grimly stood for were simply gone. The refugees – refugees now, not escapees, or corpses – came by the tens of thousands, by train, by car, by taxi even, some carrying no more than a suitcase, some carrying in those suitcases nothing more than their children's toys. They waited in lines that stretched 3 miles; they waited 7 hours in a cold rain. Most were young; one couple arrived at the border in formal attire, directly from their wedding.
But it is not just a story of individuals reaching a long-yearned-for freedom, as astounding as that is. For it is not just a few malcontents who are leaving. It is the nation's lifeblood – shopkeepers, factory workers, hundreds of doctors and nurses. "If they used repressive force now, that would only fuel the exodus," says Ronald Asmus of the Rand Corporation – risking the literal collapse of the society. The departing columns of citizens have ironically forced the hand of the embattled East German government as no invading columns of troops could have.