In May 1961, East Germany held an emergency meeting to discuss the growing problem of the flight of its inhabitants to West Germany. After the break from Germany, some 2.7 million people fled to West Germany, most of them young people, posing a serious threat to the survival of East Germany. As a result of the meeting, it was decided to build a Berlin Wall to stem the tide of flight. On 18 August, the full construction of the Berlin Wall began. The "Berlin Wall" was built not only between East and West Berlin, but also extended on the border between East and West Germany, with a total length of 166 kilometers.
(Berlin Wall)
The East Germans then ordered that border guards could forcibly prohibit those who escaped over the wall, including shooting, and two days later the first person to cross the wall was killed. During the existence of the Berlin Wall, about 3,200 East Germans were captured, more than 100 were killed and more than 200 injured as they crossed the wall. In 1989, Poland was the first to undergo institutional changes, and the wave swept through Hungary, Czechoslovakia and other Eastern European countries. Hungary opened its borders with Austria, allowing people to move freely, and some 170,000 East Germans reached Hungary via Poland or Czechoslovakia and then flocked to West Germany through Austria.
More and more East Germans took to the streets to protest and demand that the government abolish the Berlin Wall. Under great pressure, the East German government decided to appropriately relax travel restrictions, but did not intend to abolish the Berlin Wall. The newly enacted Travel Act provides that residents are free to apply for an exit visa, but one month in advance and can only stay abroad for 30 days. The top East German leadership demanded a tight seal of information, which was scheduled to be issued on November 10, but at a press conference on the 9th, an official inadvertently leaked the news in advance.
(Günter Shabowski)
At a press conference in East Germany on November 9, a foreign journalist mentioned the newly drafted travel law and asked the speaker to share his views as he drew up the press conference. The spokesman, named Günter Shabowski, was obviously unprepared and a little caught off guard, taking a cursory look at the relevant documents and replying that "citizens are free to apply for travel abroad." A West German journalist asked when it would take effect, to which Bovsky replied "immediately." Then another reporter asked if it would apply to West Berlin, and Shabowski replied, "Of course it all applies," and left the scene.
Shabowski's answer overlooked important details, such as applying for a visa in advance and being able to stay abroad for 30 days. The headlines in the major media that night were that the people of East Germany were free to leave the country, and the door on the Berlin Wall was opened! Thousands of East Germans were overjoyed and began to march towards the Berlin Wall. At first, border soldiers tried to check passports, but they soon realized it was futile. Some people stood up and shouted to tear down the Berlin Wall, and as a result, hundreds of thousands of people actually pushed down the Berlin Wall in the city of tens of miles in the blink of an eye.
(Crowds pouring in after the fall of the Berlin Wall)
Since then, the situation in East Germany has accelerated its deterioration, and in June 1990, the Berlin Wall was officially dismantled in East Germany. On October 3, the two Germanys were finally reunified. Chabowski was expelled from the party and returned to his old career as a newspaper editor, fiercely criticizing the shortcomings of East Germany, and was called an "ant" (a bird that could turn its head 180 degrees). Even so, he did not escape the post-German reunification trial, serving a year in prison for allegedly being an accomplice to the "shooting of fleeing refugees." In November 2015, Shabowski died peacefully in a nursing home in Berlin at the age of 86.