History Lesson

Growing up as I did during the Cold War, I had assumed for the first 35 years of my life that, if other things didn't get me first, I would most likely burn to death in a seemingly inevitable thermonuclear war, along with most of the rest of humanity. The world political situation at the time seemed like the climax of a Quentin Tarantino film, with the world superpowers all pointing their guns at each other and loudly barking increasingly harsh rhetoric. It seemed obvious that sooner or later someone was going to blink and the shooting would begin, and when the smoke cleared there would be no one left standing.

So I followed the events of 1989 with great interest, and when I saw a bunch of protesters on CNN taking sledge hammers to the Berlin Wall, I realized that we might not all be doomed to a nuclear death after all (although we're all still going to eventually die, to be sure). Many have given credit to various world leaders, some citing Mikhail Gorbachev and others Ronald Reagan, but the credit might go to a now-obscure East German party official, Egon Krenz, who almost singlehandedly averted the firing of that dreaded first shot.

Gorbachev had set loose yearnings for change throughout Eastern Europe, resulting a series of rapid drives by Poland and Hungary toward Western styles of democracy, and by May of 1989, Hungary decided to dismantle the barbed wire from its border with Austria. But in East Germany, the old loyalists sat entrenched in their isolated villas on Lake Wandlitz, refusing to see any reason for change.

The East German citizens responded by increasing their flight to the West. East Germans were soon seeking asylum at West German embassies in Prague, in Budapest, and in East Berlin, and what was once a trickle - a few random citizens sneaking across the border - grew exponentially and with every week, more and more East Germans fled westward, especially through the now-open borders in Hungary. The flow grew to a flood and finally into a frenzied exodus.

By late August of 1989, thousands of East Germans were camped in Budapest seeking asylum. The Hungarians refused to send them home. On September 10, Budapest announced that it would allow the East Germans to go to the West, defying a 1967 agreement with East Berlin to prevent East Germans from doing so without East Berlin's authorization. Hungary's momentous decision marked the first time a Communist government determined that international covenants on human rights were more important than treaties with other Warsaw Pact nations. Eventually, more than 30,000 emigres swept out of East Germany through Hungary. All told, hundreds of thousands left after the exodus had begun.

Back in East Berlin, Communist Party leader Erich Honecker was struggling to maintain at least the appearance of control, especially with an upcoming visit to East Berlin by Soviet President Gorbachev to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic. Desperate for a solution, he granted permission on October 1 for the crowd of refugees to leave the West German Embassy in Prague before Gorbachev was to arrive. But that solution backfired because as soon as the first group left, more East Germans flooded the embassy forcing Honecker to authorize a second release, and finally to shut his southern border altogether.

Worse, the trains leaving for the West drew thousands of East Germans desperate to join their compatriots in their exodus to West Germany. Violent clashes erupted on October 4 between the police trying to clear the station in Dresden and East Germans trying to storm the trains.

When Gorbachev's visit finally occurred on October 6, crowds of East Germans took the streets of the capital, chanting "Gorby! Gorby!" and seeking any indication of his support for their situation. Although he tried not to inflame the situation, when he said that East Germany had to decide its own future for itself, it was perceived as a signal to many that Soviet troops would not interfere, and when he said that those who did not change with the times would see life punishing them, it was seen as a direct indictment of Honecker himself.

On Saturday night, October 7, 1989, as Gorbachev was heading back to Moscow, there were clashes in the streets between the police and protesters. Hundreds were beaten and jailed. The protests increased on Sunday night, spreading from East Berlin to Leipzig and Dresden.

By Monday, the tension was palpable. A weekly peace service at a church in Leipzig, which had become a launching point for broader protests, was expected to draw huge crowds that night. The government, with Gorbachev now out of the way, assembled a large force of soldiers, policemen and secret police agents in Leipzig, and issued them live ammunition with orders to shoot if necessary - a "Chinese solution" to the rising tide of discontent and protests. The order allowing open fire had reportedly been signed by Honecker himself.

But according to news accounts from that time, violence and killing were avoided at the last minute when Egon Krenz, the Politburo member in charge of security, personally flew to Leipzig and cancelled Honecker's order. Tens of thousands took to the streets of Leipzig that night and marched unmolested, without interference from the police. Due to Krenz's lone intervention, defying Party orders, what could have been a bloodbath as terrible as China's Tienanmen Square crackdown in June instead became a peaceful protest.

The "revolution from below" had begun. Within 10 days, Honecker was forced to resign and Krenz himself became the new Party chief, the head of state, and Chairman of the Defense Council. Within a month of the averted bloodbath, the Berlin Wall came down. In the following years, the U.S. and Russia began sincere negotiations on nuclear disarmament. Had Honecker succeeded with his plans for a bloody crackdown, there is no predicting how the world powers would have reacted and what the consequences might have been.

For his role in previous crimes of the East German regime, Krenz was sentenced to a six-and-a-half-year sentence for manslaughter after the German reunification. He served his time in the Berlin-Spandau Prison and was released in December 2003.