"My favorite Berlin Wall story was a friend of mine wrote an opinion piece for the college newspaper in the fall of 1989 talking about the moves towards democra

"My favorite Berlin Wall story was a friend of mine wrote an opinion piece for the college newspaper in the fall of 1989 talking about the moves towards democracy in the Warsaw Pact nations which concluded with the line, “but don’t expect the Berlin Wall to come down any time soon.” He submitted the piece at the beginning of November. The paper came out on November 13th. " Nobody really suspected that the wall would totally come down the way it did, as far as I know. (And I know a bit, because I was there when the demonstrations started, even though I could barely talk at that time) Tiananmen square massacre in china just happened before and even though russia itself was opening up - east germany was still under tight control of Stalinists, who would have rather shot everyone, than giving up. This was the general sentiment. So there were lots of demonstrations before and slight optimism that some opening up could be achieved and some democratic reforms could be done, but till the very end, the fear was very real (and warranted) that it all could turn into a bloodbath any moment. Luckily, it didn't. For many reasons obviously, but mainly it was that the people in power were way weaker, than everyone believed. You cannot just have people shot, you need soldiers or police doing it. And when enough of those soldiers or police have relatives who joined the demonstrations - then they will eventually refuse. And the usual fall back plan, to use russian troops in this case, was no option anymore as Gorbatschow made clear internally. One anecdote I know, is that a friend of my family, a fireman, was ordered to use his fire truck against demonstrators. And he refused, saying a fire truck is only for real fire. A brave move, as he also had family and dissent was dangerous (and he would have suffered, if it would have all turned out different). I suspect many such small or bigger insubordinations happened, making the power base of the party finally crumble and then the wall crumbled down as a very visible signal of their weakness and then history happened.