Fall of the Berlin Wall

The Fall of the Berlin Wall was the day a famous wall in Germany was opened after almost 30 years. It happened on the night of November 9, 1989, in the city of Berlin. The wall had divided the city in two since 1961. Its fall is one of the most important events of the late twentieth century. It marked the near end of the Cold War.

After World War II, Germany was split into two countries. West Germany was a democracy, allied with the United States and Western Europe. East Germany was a communist country, controlled by the Soviet Union. The city of Berlin sat inside East Germany, but it was also split in half. West Berlin belonged to the democratic side, and East Berlin belonged to the communist side.

So many people fled from East to West that the East German government built a wall to stop them. Construction began on August 13, 1961. The Berlin Wall was about 96 miles long and up to 12 feet tall. It had guard towers, dogs, floodlights, and a wide strip of sand called the "death strip." More than 130 people were killed trying to cross it.

By 1989, things were changing. The Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, was loosening his country's tight control over Eastern Europe. People in East Germany started holding huge protests. They wanted freedom to travel and the right to vote in fair elections.

On November 9, 1989, an East German official held a press conference. He announced new travel rules. A reporter asked when they would start. Confused, the official said, "As far as I know, immediately." That was a mistake. The new rules were not supposed to start until the next day.

The news spread quickly on radio and television. Thousands of East Berliners rushed to the wall. Border guards had no orders and did not know what to do. Around 11:30 p.m., one guard finally raised the gate. Crowds poured through. Strangers hugged each other. People climbed on top of the wall and danced. Some brought hammers and chisels and started chipping away at the concrete.

Within a year, the wall was almost completely torn down. East and West Germany became one country again on October 3, 1990. The Soviet Union itself fell apart in 1991.

Today, only small sections of the Berlin Wall still stand. Some have been turned into open-air museums and painted with art. A line of bricks runs through Berlin's streets to show where the wall once cut the city in half, a reminder of how quickly a divided world can change.