The Berlin Wall

Budapest, 2004

This is basically a slightly expanded version of something I posted about this time of year in 2009, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Now that the 25th anniversary is upon us, it's time for anther history lesson.

Growing up as I did during the Cold War, I had assumed for the first 35 or so years of my life that, if other things didn't get me first, I would most likely burn to death in the seemingly inevitable thermonuclear war, along with most of the rest of humanity.  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 real credit might go to a now-obscure East German party official, Egon Krenz, who almost single-handedly averted a violent crackdown and opened the way for a peaceful transition from Communism to democracy.  

According to reporting at the time in the New York Times (I've saved the press clippings), the turning point came on October 7, 1989, after the Communist Party leader, Erich Honecker, ordered security forces to be prepared to open fire on demonstrators in Leipzig - a "Chinese solution" to the rising tide of dissent in East Germany. But violence and killing were averted when Krenz, then Politburo member in charge of security, flew to Leipzig and canceled Honecker`s order, allowing the protesters to march unmolested.

What could have become a bloodbath as terrible as China`s Tienanmen Square crackdown instead became a peaceful revolution that changed the face of Europe.  Within 10 days, Honecker had resigned under pressure and the Communist Party was pledging profound changes.  Within a month, the Berlin Wall was demolished.

The frustration that erupted in  October had  been long in gathering.  Gorbachev had set loose yearnings for change throughout Eastern Europe, but in East Germany the old loyalists around Honecker sat entrenched in their isolated villas on Lake Wandlitz, refusing to see any reason to change.  

But a new threat was growing in the south: the rapid drives by Poland and Hungary toward Western models of democracy.  In May 1989, Hungary decided to dismantle the barbed wire from its border with Austria, essentially allowing free emigration out from behind the Iron Curtain.  At first, the exodus from West Germany was a trickle - a few citizens sneaking across the border, a few others seeking asylum at the West German Embassy in Budapest.   But soon East Germans were filling West German embassies in Prague, Warsaw, and East Berlin.  By late August, thousands of East German refugees were camped in Budapest, and the Hungarians declined to send them home by force.  The flow grew to a flood and finally into a frenzied exodus at the end of September, when Hungary threw open its borders.   But with Honecker stricken by a gall bladder ailment, the East German leadership seemed frozen, capable only of snarling at the East Germans.

In a decision  announced on September 10, 1989, Budapest said it would let the emigres go to the west in defiance of a 1967 agreement with East Berlin to prevent East Germans from doing so without written authorization from East Berlin.  Hungary's decision marked a momentous breach in Eastern European unity.  For the first time, a Communist government declared that international covenants on human rights were more important that treaties with Warsaw Pact nations.

Honecker was back at work by then, but his attention was fixed on the gala celebrations planned for October 7, the 40th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic, when Gorbachev was to lead a retinue of Communist leaders to East Berlin.  Desperate to clear the West German Embassy in Prague before his guest arrived, Honecker granted permission on October 1 for the refugees to leave the embassy.  That solution proved disastrous.  Even as the first group left, more East Germans flooded the embassy in Prague, forcing Honecher to authorize a second release and finally to shut down his southern border.

In East Germany, long-gathering discontent metastasized into open protest.   Trains full of emigres riding through Dresden drew thousands of East Germans desperate to join the exodus  On October 4, violent clashes erupted with the police, who tried to clear the Dresden station. 

Against that backdrop, Honecker went to Schoenefeld Airport on October 6 to greet Gorbachev, walking with a deliberate jauntiness to show that he was in good health.  

Gorbachev seemed intent, publicly at least, not to inflame the opposition, but it did not take much. It was enough that he made an off-hand remark that East Germany had to decide its own future to signal to many that Soviet troops would not interfere, and when he said those who did not change with the times would see life punishing them, the comment was seen as a direct rebuke to Honecker,

The Soviet leader was more direct when he met in private  with the East German Politburo. According to an East German diplomat, Gorbachev did not try to prescribe what the East Germans should do, but "He made it very clear that the spectacle of thousands of people running away from the country  and of violence being the only way to keep them in, was not helping him in his own difficult situation," the diplomat said.  According to several party leaders, Honecker was incapable of grasping the situation and reacted with stubborn insistence that he was on the right course.

On Saturday night, October 7, as Gorbachev was leaving for Moscow, there were clashes between protesters and the police in East Berlin, and hundreds were beaten and jailed.  Crowds took to the capital, chanting "Gorby! Gorby!"  The scene was replayed on Sunday night in the same area of East Berlin, as well as in Leipzig and Dresden, and by Monday, October 9, the suspense was tangible.

A weekly Monday peace service, held in the Nikolai Church in Leipzig, had become the launching point for broad protests, and after the weekend clashes, huge crowds were expected at the church. According to Manfred Gerlach, the leader of the small Liberal Democratic Party, and others, a huge force of soldiers, policemen, and secret police agents was assembled in Leipzig and issued live ammunition.  Their order was to shoot if necessary, and the order had reportedly been signed by Honecker himself.

But by then, many in the Politiboro had come to the decision that Honecker must go, and that the situation was explosive.  Finally, Krenz and Wolfgang Herger, the Central Committee department chief under him, flew to Leipzig  and talked with the local Communist officials to "see to it that these things were solved politically."  When tens of thousands took to the streets of Leipzig that night, the police did not interfere.  

The "revolution from below" was under way.  The day after Krenz prevented violence in Leipzig, the Politburo gathered for its regular Tuesday meeting.  Nobody knew how Honecker or his ideological allies would react to the uniateral order by Krenz barring the crackdown, and it was Erich Mielke, the tough 82-year-old security chief, who told Honecker: "Erich, we can't beat up hundreds of people."  But the 77-year-old Communist leader would not be swayed.

Then Kurt Hager, the 77-year-old chief ideologist, said that the young people were right and that the mood on the streets was more defiant than he had ever seen it.  Guenter Schabowski, the respected party secretary for East Berlin, concurred.

Only two members firmly took Honecker's side: Guenter Mittag, the 63-year-old secretary for the economy, who had dominated East German economic planning since the era of Walter Ulbricht, the first party chief, and Joachim Hermannl the 61-year-old secretary for propaganda.  Others wavered or kept silent.

With the Politburo deadlocked, the secretaries of East Germany's 15 districts were called for an unusual expanded meeting of the Party leadership.  The meeting went late into the night of October 10 and continued on October 11.  "The district leaders said that the grass roots wouldn't stand for things to continue the way they were," a Central Committee member said.  Over Honecker's objection, a statement was issued on October 11 declaring that the Politburo was ready "to discuss all basic questions of our society," and acknowledging that those who had fled may have had valid reasons.  

It was clear by now to most of the other Politburo members that Honecker no longer understood what was happening.  Willi Stoph, the 75-year-old premier, finally told Honecker that the time had come for him to resign, a Central Committee member said.

That was the decisive push.  On the next day, October 18, Honecker announced to the Central Committee that he was resigning for reasons of health, and the Politburo moved that Mittag and Hermann be ousted.  Krenz was named the new part chief, 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.  He has received no formal recognition for his role in averting the blood bath.