November 9, 1989 and After: Berlin Wall Falls, Cold War Comes to Symbolic End

West and East Germans come together as the Berlin Wall is torn down. [Source: FreedomAgenda (.com)]The Berlin Wall, the fortified network of guarded walls and fences that separates East and West Berlin, is officially breached. East Germany’s communist government gives reluctant permission for gates along the Wall to be opened after hundreds of protesters in the East, and thousands in the West, converged on crossing points and demanded that the Wall be opened. When the gates open, hundred of East Berliners surge through to be welcomed by their Western fellows; shortly thereafter, crowds of people clamber atop the Wall and begin tearing it apart, chunk by chunk. The 28-mile Wall has stood since 1961, and has served as a symbol of the so-called “Iron Curtain” forcibly separating the communist East from the democratic West. The Wall became symbolically breached days before when a new and more liberal regime in Hungary opened its border and allowed its citizens to flee into West Germany. Czechoslovakia followed suit shortly thereafter. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl calls the decision to open the Wall “historic.” [BBC, 11/9/1989; Chronik Der Mauer, 2/9/2008]
Symbolic End to Cold War - Many reporters and historians will mark the “Fall of the Wall” as the date, symbolic or real, when the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union officially ended. [US News and World Report, 11/13/2008]