… was a mistake. Not the address you’re thinking of, American. On this date twenty years ago, East German Politburo spokesman Günter Schabowski was giving a press conference. Immediately before it had started, he had been handed a note instructing him to announce some new travel regulations that had been intended to appease East German protesters. These regulations included a provision for the travel of private citizens to the West, and it’s unclear whether it was meant as more than an empty promise, as the East German government had neither conferred with the Soviets nor ordered the armed border guards to stand down.
So into the sleepy little press conference Schabowski read his note, announcing that private travel visas to the West would be granted. “When?” asked the reporters.
And then came the mistake.
“As far as I know, immediately, without delay,” replied Schabowski.
A tiny stumble on a mountainside leads to a great fall. During the evening news broadcast in West Germany, the anchor Hanns Friedrichs joyfully proclaimed that the ninth of November was a historic day, for the East German government had announced that its borders were open. East Germans who listened surreptitiously to the Western broadcast immediately gathered at the gate. Within an hour, thousands had gathered at the Wall.
In a nearby possible world, this story ends with a bloody riot. Armed guards shoot the boldest of the misinformed citizens; the uninjured retaliate. Guards are killed, the police put down the riot, and the Wall stands, not forever, but for a little while longer as the Soviets eased into openness.
In this world, Harald Jäger, in command at the Bornholmer Gate, decided not to shoot. He called his superiors, who of course had heard of no such policy change, and faced with the gathering, chanting crowds, decided to let a few cross the border; by midnight, he simply opened the gate to all, not taking names or checking identification.
As the news spread and more Ossis came to the Wall, other gates opened throughout the night, and what was done was done. Eleven months later the states of the DDR would join the West, reuniting Germany.
The Edge of the American West 
19 comments
November 9, 2009 at 12:37 am
Ben Alpers
This was not the first critical East German decision not to shoot.
In October 1989, as demonstrations in Leipzig were growing, the DDR government had authorized troops to fire live ammunition at the crowds. The sister-in-law of a colleague of mine at the University of Leipzig was a nurse in the city at the time. Hospitals had suddenly received huge amounts of blood for transfusions. Everyone knew what this meant.
But it never happened. A lower level officials chose not to issue the order to fire.
Both of these decisions not to shoot contrast most obviously with with Tiananmen. Is something like the Chinese outcome one of the “nearby possible worlds” for the former Soviet Bloc?
November 9, 2009 at 12:49 am
McDevite
Ben, I don’t think so. After Afghanistan, after Gorbachev and all, it would’ve been a few years of bloody repression, perhaps, but it would’ve staggered to an ugly death.
November 9, 2009 at 3:41 am
R.A.
I am very thankful (I’m East-German and was a teenager 20 years ago), I’m very thankful for those soldiers and policemen of all ranks who had learned to think before shooting. Each and everyone
After the horrors in the last century’s first half, it is a huge accomplishment of our society: Not everything is right, just because your superior says so.
Maybe the different histories of China and Germany have a part in the difference of the outcomes. I agree with Dana and Ben, it would have been bloody almost everywhere else :-(
November 9, 2009 at 4:07 am
chris y
Harald Jäger, the man who ended the cold war by accident. And where are the statues?
November 9, 2009 at 5:26 am
Jason B.
Wait . . . I thought it was Reagan with a sledgehammer.
November 9, 2009 at 5:32 am
Matt
By this point East Germans were moving into Austria in larger numbers via Hungary and eventually Czechoslovakia, and significant change had already taken place in Poland and Hungary, and, of course, the Soviet Union, which had told East Germany it wasn’t going to do anything and even that it needed to change. All of this made the fall of the wall essentially inevitable, it seems, and makes me think a Chinese-style crack-down, in the sense of one that “worked”, was impossible, though of course there could have been killing along the way.
November 9, 2009 at 5:34 am
Matt
Plus, of course, you’re all forgetting David Hasselhoff’s key role:
I’m pretty sure he was the key element.
November 9, 2009 at 6:14 am
CharleyCarp
I have on good authority another mistake. I’m kind of hazy on the details, but there was a meeting that day of big cheeses, not to be disturbed, on some very important topic. People came to get instructions about what to do as the thing was unfolding, and the assistant to whoever’s meeting it was went ahead and enforced the ‘do not disturb’ order. Not intentionally, as I heard it.
November 9, 2009 at 7:17 am
dana
That one, too, CharleyCarp. Apparently the DDR leaders were in a meeting about the ongoing crisis and protests and thus weren’t able to respond in time because the aides didn’t want to interrupt. There was only about an hour between the news broadcast and the decision to open the gate, so even a short delay meant that if they had wanted to send out the troops, it would have been too late.
All of this made the fall of the wall essentially inevitable, it seems, and makes me think a Chinese-style crack-down, in the sense of one that “worked”, was impossible, though of course there could have been killing along the way.
I think that’s the consensus, but that it happened the way it did probably spared everyone a lot of pain.
November 9, 2009 at 7:45 am
Chris
I thought it was Reagan with a sledgehammer
In the conservatory?
November 9, 2009 at 8:32 am
JPool
No, I’ve got the Conservatory card right here.
(Don’t show it to anyone else.)
November 9, 2009 at 8:59 am
Anderson
Jaegar’s decision reminds me of Hemingway:
“You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch.”
“Yes.”
“It’s sort of what we have instead of God.”
Deciding not to shoot … sort of what we have instead of God?
November 9, 2009 at 9:22 am
politicalfootball
Apparently the DDR leaders were in a meeting about the ongoing crisis
The way I heard it, they were reading “My Pet Goat,” and ignored their aides.
I suppose it’s wishful thinking, but I like to believe that authoritarianism is intrinsically unstable in part because of the built-in incompetence of authoritarians.
November 9, 2009 at 9:41 am
David Weman
Dana, I think your version is a bit off, though probably broardly right in that no decision had been made.
http://books.google.com/books?ct=result&q=Schabowski+bombshell+wandlitz&btnG=Search+Books
November 9, 2009 at 10:31 am
ben
Deciding not to shoot … sort of what we have instead of God?
Quite so: having the power to take another’s life, and without the necessity of taking it—in what else does greatness of soul consist? What could be more divine?
November 9, 2009 at 10:54 am
CharleyCarp
The Central Committee could easily have made the wrong choice and, if asked, probably would have done.
November 9, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Anderson
Regarding German history and mistaken (or at least, totally unauthorized) speeches, there’s also the proclamation of the Republic in 1918, which …
… wait for it …
… was on November 9, 1918, the same day as the Kaiser’s abdication:
At lunch in the Reichstag the SPD deputy chairman Philipp Scheidemann learned that Liebknecht planned the proclamation of the Socialist Republic. Scheidemann did not want to leave the initiative to the Spartakists and without further ado stepped out onto a balcony of the Reichstag. From there he proclaimed on his own authority -– and against Ebert’s expressed will -– a republic before a mass of demonstrating people.
November 9, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Matt McKeon
Wasn’t Crystal Night also Nov. 9th?
November 11, 2009 at 8:34 am
split infinitive
Fascinating history, which I am ashamed to admit that I didn’t learn before. Can someone recommend a somewhat “recent” book that covers some of the events listed above? I haven’t read much on the subject in about 10 years. Thanks.
Matt, “Crystal Night” was 11/9.