Overjoyed citizens flocked to the Berlin Wall and began pulling it down with sledgehammers, chisels or their hands.

This became the physical embodiment of the “Iron Curtain” which the USSR was said to have created between East and West Europe. I was in school on the day that it was announced that the borders were open, and everyone in the school was put on a bus, and taken to a nearby border crossing point. Suddenly, there was some enormous sound, which turned out to be some construction labourers hammering at the wall with some heavy equipment, which I could not see. But, as Anne Applebaum reports, in those early days a dark and uncertain mood had enveloped the city Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . On 3 December, Mr Gorbachev and US President George HW Bush sat side by side in Malta, and released a statement saying the Cold War between the two powers was coming to a close. Things eventually came full circle when the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991. So why not now? I was a US Army intelligence officer working for Allied Forces. They sealed off West Berlin in 1961. For anyone, who didn't experience the Wall, it will be hard to imagine what an overwhelming feeling of relief, of joy, of unreality filled one that this monster was dead, and people had conquered it.

Here's what we know. When he read the note aloud for the first time, reporters were stunned. Between these two walls there was a ‘death strip’ approximately 160 yards wide. We were both 17 years old then.Wulf-Dieter Krüger, Thailand, I was 16 living in Romania (still in the darkness) when the wall came down.

This is always in my mind as it is my birthday. Increasingly, civil rights activists felt emboldened to push for glasnost and perestroika in their own countries. Five days later, on November 9, 1989, it was Schabowski who announced East Germany's new travel policy. Walked over to a curb stone. Germany reunited on 3 October 1990, 11 months after the fall of the Berlin Wall. With Gorbachev, said Klausmeier, suddenly there was a new policy: "No matter what happens in our socialist brother countries, these states are responsible for themselves." Germany was reunified in October 1990. Privacy Policy | Left and right people were hacking away at the fortification and no one tried to stop them. I was a US Army intelligence officer working for Allied Forces.

Shuffling through his notes, Mr Schabowski said that as far as he was aware, it was effective immediately. (the famous Berlin department store). "The Sun", "Sun", "Sun Online" are registered trademarks or trade names of News Group Newspapers Limited.

I remember our school German teacher telling us that he doubted the Berlin Wall would come down in his day, but he hoped it would come down in ours. The images of people celebrating together on both sides of the border flashed across the world, poignantly marking the end of German division. Signs of an impending watershed were also seen in other countries across the bloc. With Czechoslovakia and Hungary now providing escape routes for those trapped in East Germany, the Soviet’s hold on it was loosening. I was picked up for the return journey by a British friend who worked for an embassy in the East but lived in the West. Our journalists strive for accuracy but on occasion we make mistakes. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011. Some half a million people cheered and applauded as opposition figures addressed them — and booed when SED politicians, including Günter Schabowski, director of the party's East Berlin district, spoke. For weeks after the 9th people would stand by the gates and cheer on every Trabbi (East German car) that came through to the west. The Soviet decision not to march into Poland, Hungary or East Germany as calls for democratic reform grew louder and louder was a decidedly different approach than in decades past. The door to freedom was flung wide open — and it could never be shut again. More than 40,000 wall sections were recycled and used for German reconstruction projects. In doing so, whether intentionally or not, he had ordered the toppling of the Berlin Wall. The course of history, however, was set in motion by decisive events outside the country long before that. I thought that there was a real sense of change going to happen.

The Berlin U-Bahn looked more like the Tokyo Subway at rush hour, with people packed in like sardines. My school-mate wanted to return to Germany at once because he feared there was going to be a war. It was a forbidding and impenetrable barrier between two states and between the world's opposing political ideals. How did the Wall come down? More broadly speaking, the collapse of the wall signalled the end of the Cold War which had kept the world on tenterhooks for decades. Saturday 9 November will mark 30 years since the Berlin Wall fell in one of the most famous moments in recent history. On 9 November 1989, an announcement was scheduled regarding fairly minor changes to Berlin Wall’s emigration policy. East Germans could travel to the neighbouring socialist nation without restriction, and began to flood the West German embassy there by the hundreds, eventually being evacuated to the West by train. The Wall was finally breached by jubilant Berliners on 9 November 1989, unifying a city that had been divided for over 30 years. I tell you, it was a giddy, delirious feeling - even for someone completely sober. Sharsh, UK. East German authorities began patrolling the inner-German border in 1952. The changes were meant to be fairly minor - but the way they were delivered had major consequences.

Video, What my ME could teach long Covid sufferers, The exile sacrificing everything for her country. The west side of this wall was covered in graffiti but the east side was not. I was on the Indonesian island of Lombok, staying at Pondok Santai, a wonderful little hideaway on the west coast of Lombok. Michael Flynn was among former aides convicted in an investigation into Russian election interference. I helped to destroy that symbol of fear...I helped carry away the rubble, in my luggage. The 1989 wave of revolutions was not over yet. There we handed out flowers, provided by the RAF Base commander, to all people crossing from the East. It was on 9 November 1989, five days after half a million people gathered in East Berlin in a mass protest, that the Berlin Wall dividing communist East Germany from West Germany crumbled.