Description of the event
The progressive internal flaking of the USSR brings as an outward effect a movement that de-stabilizes the hole Eastern Europe; this has as outcome the falling, in the course of a few months, of all the European communist regimes.
As well as in the other Warsaw Pact’s countries (except Poland and Hungary), in the DDR the transition towards a democratic system is not leaded by the Institutes, but essentially carried out by the people. Initially the mobilization has the form of a mass-escape from the DDR to West Germany, carried out through Hungarian territory. By there is possible to reach Austrian borders or refugee in West Germany’s embassies in Eastern Europe’s capital cities. The mass-escape is so wide that, in summer-autumn 1989, is not any more possible to hide this phenomenon to the world’s eyes. Though the promises made by Gorbacev to Honecker (East Germany’s head of state) during his visit in the DDR (October 6th, 1989), USSR troops stranding there do not move to prevent escapes.
At the end of the visit of Gorbacev, East Berlin is thrown into confusion by extraordinary manifestations, never seen before. People claims democracy and reforms.
The few reforms made by Honecker do not satisfy DDR people and manifestations go on until the evening of November 9th, when an unknown manages to open a breach in the Berlin Wall. After verifying that the Police would not intervene, hundreds begin to break the Wall and happen the first fraternization scenes among Germans of the East and of the West. Here begins to fall, 28 years after its building, the Berlin Wall, the most significant symbol of the “cold war”. This is the first step towards the re-unification of Germany, into force since October 3rd, 1990.