From: "Phillip M. Hallam-Baker" <hallam@ai.mit.edu>
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 14:12:32 -0800 (PST)
To: "'dthorn@gte.net>
Subject: RE: Fighting the cybercensor
Message-ID: <199701282212.OAA04726@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>That's it?  The system collapsed because the guards left their posts?
>And no mutiny charges?  Incredible.

I was there.

The collapse of East Germany was quite spectacular. There
was at most three months of warning. First there was a series
of sit ins at foreign embassies, then a migration of large 
numbers of people in their twenties within the eastern block.

I missed the actual collapse of the wall itself having to go
to England. I was told of the sequence of events by friends in
Berlin. 

By this time the protestors were confident enough to stage
open demonstrations. The authorities had tolerated small
scale demonstrations for some time provided they did
not appear to be part of a larger movement. The sudden 
increase in numbers from tens to tens of thousands left
the authorities unsure of what to do. They could not be
sure of the reliability of the police should they attempt 
to violently suppress the demonstrations. To imprison the
ringleaders was equally dangerous. The communists were
aware that the South Africans had continued to be troubled
by Mandela and Biko long after they were imprisoned or 
murdered.

At some point a group of protesters approached the wall,
probably hoping to goad the police into making an arrest.
The guards made no response and the numbers increased to
the point where firing of warning shots was impossible
without causing a massacre. West German protesters joined 
from the other side of the wall. The border guards did try 
to use a water cannon but to little effect since the
range was insufficient.

At some point someone appeared with a sledge hammer and a
pickaxe. Some people say that this was at the start of the 
protest, others that someone fetched them. I have heard 
people who believe that they were brought from either side
of the wall. They started attacking the wall and soon had 
removed one of the panels.

Next day the border guards quite literally abandoned their 
posts. The Brandenburg gate was opened for the first time 
in fifty years and the party apparatus all but collapsed.


The only military activity during this period was GDR forces
preparing against possible invasion by Soviet forces. Not that
this was a logistical possibility since it was unlikely they 
would get across Poland unopposed.


Read Norman Davies book "Europe a history" if you want to find
out the background for the velvet revolution. It is one of the
most amazing events in political history. It is a pity that
people have forgotten so quickly about the real causes. It
was not military power that prevailed but the protest movement.

Unfortunately US commentators tend to see everything in terms of
US cultural norms, many of which were explicitly rejected by the
protestors. The East Germans wanted West German affluence, they
wanted to be part of Western Europe. They were certainly not 
responding to US military spending as right wing theorists claim, 
nor was the economy collapsing because of the arms race, it
was collapsing because of the costs of a totalitarian state and
the incompatibility of that state with modern industrial 
organization.


	Phill