yeah wasn't that something like Local Boss says "yeah take that shit down" but he meant the shrubs near The Wall, then the underlings are like "welp better take this shit down" and start taking down the wall and everybody just sorta rolled with it?
It's one of those things that when you see people say "Oh, the CIA knew it was coming" or they tell you "I totally predicted it" you reach out and slap the fuck out of them.
It was a misspeak during a press conference, thousands marched through the streets, got to a gate in the Berlin Wall, the officer in charge looked at the massive crowds, looked at his orders, and went "No, fuck that, they'll tear us apart and burn the city down" and opened the gate.
Nowadays you see these faggots all talking about "Oh, I predicted it!" or "Oh, it was totally obvious it was going to happen" or "Intelligence services saw it coming" and no. No they fucking didn't.
Nobody did.
One fucking misspeak and the whole fucking thing fell apart like a cheap watch.
Once word started getting back to the rest of the USSR about the food, that you could roll up on a Burger King and grab more food than your family could eat, that it wasn't a bombed out shithole still like Eastern Germany, the writing was on the fucking wall.
So here's the deal with that. The DDR (ever notice how the most hardcore commie states all have "Democratic" in their name?) was bungling travel to and fro. The Wall was meaningless (or almost so) but very symbolic at that point. E. Germany had denied further travel visas to the West, but they weren't denying travel visas to Romania...where people would simply drive, walk, bus, whatever into West Germany and then refuse to go back home. So they tried the whole "Honey, let's just
experiment with open borders." like some cuck from r/polyamory. They were going to attempt to placate the noisy mobs by letting a few trickle out, slowly, then clamp down slowly, again, like a pressure release valve.
At a press conference, Günter Schabowski was asked a question about when these travel reforms would go into effect. Not having the data, he glibly responded "As far as I know, they are effective immediately."
East Germans absolutely MOBBED the border. They pushed through. For about 25 minutes, people were politely getting visas stamped, and then people behind them said "Fuck this 'papers, meinherr' bullshit" but probably angrily with lots of SH's and glottal stops because kraut language you know? And folks just started walking through.
Now, this was a terrifying moment, believe it or not, for a lot of guys on the west side: Americans, French, British. Because
what if the East Germans border control started saying "nein, nein" and dragging people back? And then people resisted? And kept pushing through? And the East German border guards opened fire? They had before, repeatedly. They were notorious for killing people in plain sight of NATO forces who were trying to flee.
But if bullets flew into the Western sector...what was their response to be?
Fortunately, nothing like that happened. Many E. German border guards simply walked over, too, to drink champagne and hug frauleins and pose for ABC TV cameras and sing the
Ode to Joy. It was fucking magical and I choke up thinking about seeing it all unfold one afternoon on TV.
For all the "Ronnie Ray-Gun" stereotypes, Reagan was still a very skilled diplomat, and it was those skills that ultimately helped thaw relations and eased tensions that allowed the Cold War to end. In both Reagan and Gorbachev's memoirs, each man gives great credit to the other for helping bring the standoff to an end.
Reagan was an absolute chad. There was a protest going on outside the hotel he was staying in on an official visit to Spain, and, shirtless, drink in hand, he strolled over to the window and looked out on the crowd, who had no idea who he was from that distance, and said to Bill Buckley (who was traveling with him) "Come over here and look at this! They don't even know why they're angry at me." The Secret Service guys in the room about had kittens.