Originally published at National Catholic Register
COMMENTARY: The Revolution of 1989 was a unique experience in the bloody history of a century in which mass violence was the typical means of effecting great social change.
Thirty-five years ago, the son of a great historian helped make history when he asked the question that triggered the demolition of the most grotesquely expressive artifact of the Cold War.
My friend Daniel Johnson, son of the author of Modern Times and then a reporter for London’s Daily Telegraph, flew to Berlin on Nov. 9, 1989. East Germans were engaging in mass protests against their oppression while others were fleeing the oxymoronic German Democratic Republic through a newly opened border with Hungary. Chaos reigned, and the East German regime held a televised press conference to try to get the situation under some sort of control. The Communist Party spokesman, Günter Schabowski, began by announcing that the party’s central committee had decided that East Germans could both travel and emigrate to the West, which had been forbidden since the Berlin Wall was built in 1961.
The questions came flying from the reporters: When would this take effect? Did this new regulation apply to Berlin, divided by the Wall
