Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On The Collapse 20150119

This turns out to be a huge mistake. It turns east germany into a pressure cooker. Theres a series of like to take leadership the lens why. If you live under dictatorship you basically have three choices as to how you conduct your life. Those our loyalty, exit, or voice. Loyalty, exit or voice. What that means is you can be loyal and put up with it and not complain and stay quiet which have happened during long periods of east german history, or you can exit, tried to flee. When the border opened between hungary and austria, exit became an option. When the east german regime sealed off these germany exit was withdrawn and loyalty was no longer tall there will. The only remaining option was voice of protest. Or start a massive protest, particularly in the southern part of east germany a region historically known as saxony. People had been trying to get to czechoslovakia or hungary just got stuck there. A huge number of people whod put everything taking everything they can ensue cases their children and theyre fed up and not going to go home. You start to see in this region huge numbers of protest. They are particularly large and his city which is a city in saxony. I realize this is a map from a book. I realize it might be hard to see the text. You dont need to see the exact words. Interested in details feel free to buy the book 11point out a few things. You see a ring road around the city center. That ring road is where an old medieval walled used to stand around the city center. This is the city of leipzig. It got turned into a modern multilink ring road. Heres the main train station. What starts to happen in the city, there starts to be large protest centered at the nikolai church. What happens is the protesters they meet at the church, come out, Capitol Square and try to get as far around the ring road around the city of leipzig as possible. The police and east German Secret Police stopped them. This keeps happening again and again and the police are using increasing levels of violence, more people show more violence, more people, more violence. The night of october 191989 is going to be the showdown. One of the biggest surprises in my research, i thought i knew this time period fairly well, but one of the biggest surprises when i got into the secret police records, the local police records, was that the east german regime was planning at the human level event in leipzig on the night of october 9. Guns went out, orders to shoot without. Sheen guns went out. Its hard to exactly how many but at least 8000 Security Forces deployed possibly over 10,000. Hospital staff was told the government, wring extra blood reserves. Schools gymnasts schools dismissed early. The regime prevented for chose from coming to the city because they didnt want the world to see what they were planning. The dissidents involved decided they needed to do two things. The first thing was they needed to show up in massive numbers to show they were not afraid. Safety in numbers is a huge factor. In order to get as far around the ring is possible. Another small group decided they should do something else. They should try to film what was happening so that no matter what happened, if it was a bloodshed the world would see. They should try to film a video cassette and smuggle it out to western media. The management you doing this was this man. I apologize for the poor quality of this photo. Its an east German Secret Police photo taken without his knowledge or permission. Its part of a series. He was followed extensively by the police as he pretended was like having a weird diary of your own life you didnt write because theres a complete record of Daily Movement most days and photos. Heres the series of photos. Here he is again with his back to the camera and that is another surveillance photo. The reason the police followed him was he was a man who decided the way he was going to fight the regime was with information. He had started making videocassettes of environmental abuses and of human rights abuses and he started smuggling about two the west a friend in the west and then they would be broadcast. It turned out he was really good at this. He was so good it does in fact, he actually was earning so much money and the west as a video journalist that he owed taxes on his footage which became a problem because his friend had to pray for him. The secret police were frustrated by this mans activities. The only reason they didnt put him in jail is a featured he couldnt possibly cause as much trouble myself as he was causing the a few together dozens of helpers come house including western intelligence agencies and decided they would follow him and carried him but not arrested because he wanted to catch him meeting with the thousands of helpers so it could arrest them so that the promise he was doing this most others and with help of about two other friends. So the police would follow him. They would stand in the court, five guys are so would stand and solemnly walked out the door but it went but he never went and helped with the dozens of people helping them. He lived in constant fear they would to steal his chemist but it didnt happen. That was crucial in the fall of 1989. In the fall of 1989 october 9 he lived in berlin. He and a friend go down to leipzig and behind on the roof of a church on the northern part of the ring road around the city center of leipzig. As their friends are gathering to march they basically crouched down in pigeon dunk on an openair church roof and prepare to film what was going to happen. On the ground the protesters assemble and something amazing happens. Despite everyone knowing this is going to be the tiananmen, in the diaries of people with her that night you see in the notes, tonight is china tonight is tiananmen. Despite all of that, at least 100,000 people, possibly more show up to protest. The regime did not expect that. They also maintained strict nonviolence. So they get no cost to the city forces to attack which is good because the order said if you are attacked, full out attack in response. The roughly 100,000 people assembled and they start to move across the ring road and the local commander the Party Commander on the ground doesnt know what to do. The Party Commander already do somebody didnt expect to be in charge of that night but he was the second Party Secretary to the man who is supposed to be in charge was the first Party Secretary, but he had and im not making this up, you cannot make this up he had called in sick that night. And so the second Party Secretary suddenly found himself in charge of this deployment of these at least a thousand possibly more armed men. The plan was if they could not stop the protests in the Church Committee cannot stop them from gathering and stop them from moving up the ring road the plan was to attack them at something called the eastern not which was a sharp bend in the road. The idea was that was tactically smart because the road took such a sharp bend the demonstrators would have to slow down. It would be easier to shoot at them there. The plan was to attack your at the eastern not because the crowd people start moving towards the eastern not the second Party Secretary suddenly decides community doesnt need to, he has command, decides to call east berlin and say are we really going to do this . He is starting to worry that he is being set up and he is going to cause a bloodbath and then he will be tried for war crimes afterwards or maybe even worse. The wiggles east berlin, recalls the head honchos and he gets one of the big party bosses on the phone and says, are we really going to do this . And this is what the protesters are about 15 minutes away from getting added to the eastern knot come and the big party bosses, ill call you back. And then he doesnt. Answer the second Party Secretary as the crowds were approaching, as the phone is going to ring begins to feel that hes being set up and at the last possible minute issues an order to retreat. Copies of that order to retreat survive. So as Security Forces pull back, although he says pullback but if your attacker then you can still attack. Its important the protesters maintain nonviolence because they could still got an shot if they had attacked by the to the dissident leaders worked very, very hard to lecture everyone, tell everyone, ministers have given sermons say you so nonviolence, and it works. With the permission of the zadie, i can share a piece of his video clip from that night. He and his front on the roof of the church but of the church but have no idea what to going to see coming around the curve. Is going to bloodshot, Security Forces are what. Ill show you the footage of what they see coming around the curve. [inaudible conversations] [shouting] so what the crowds are shouting is does anyone speak german . What the crowds are shouting is join us. They are shouting at to the Security Forces and it is actually working. As they are sweeping across the ring road graduate disagree forces are putting aside their weapons and join in the protests. You will see in a moment the camera starts to sway wildly because they notice on the roof directly opposite him other than openlyopenly making a video for the december secret police agents. At one point they suddenly have two doctor. [shouting] suddenly they have to duck. [shouting] navigenics switching to we are the people. You can see the camera sways wildly because theyre trying to cover it up cover up the red light on the camera to avoid detection. [shouting] can you show where exactly that was . Yes. So that footage was actually made from the reformed church on the northern part of the ring road of leipzig. They filmed the whole demonstration but its a long it took two hours to walk by and then after that they wait for another of because they dont want to be arrested as soon as they come down from the top of the church but finally they come down and theyre able that night to smuggle the videocassette out to west berlin where it is then shown on western television stations pronounced as the work of an italian camera came to protect them. And so that is hugely important. This is a still photo of the same event because two things have not happen. Not one, the regime has retreated, and number two, that retreat was broadcast. Both of those things are important. Both the protesters and the chroniclers are important because that footage is in broadcast back into east germany, other east germans throughout the country see it and are emboldened and start protesting in their own cities as well. Now you have a peaceful revolution in full swing in east germany. Gradually the massive protests claimed a victim. The very top box is ousted. Top boss. He wanted to escalate the violence yet again. He called for aerial attacks. Those of you know the history of the Second World War remember of course dresden was fire bombed from the air. It was unthinkable even to his colleagues that they would do that. So there theres an internal palace coup and the top boss is ousted. Spink is replace by men and aegon. He takes over and decides to use a different approach because this approach of stem escalating violence has proved be selfdefeating. He decides what is going to do is talk to picking and public but not actually change much in private. Is going to make it sound like its going to copy gorbachev institute reforms without actually doing them. Most importantly of the night of november 9, 1989, and divided berlin he decides to announce some relatively minor changes to immigration rules as a soft to the crowds. The regime still retains its ability to control the movement of people absolutely on to win because the berlin wall, still guards at the berlin wall. All of that nothing is changed atat the bottom investment change that is going to announce a reform that sounds good in public. But the problem is that at the press conference to make this announcement the member announces the member who makes announcement botches it. It sounds as if the changes are real. In the superheated atmosphere with people are mobilized and energize, have lost their fear this announcement has an amazing reaction. Dismember making a mistake that in itself is nothing new. They made mistakes all the time but in the context of the superheated atmosphere of 1989 it was an amazing response. They decide to charge the checkpoints and that was me. Thats one of the amazing things, the interaction between individual mistakes and broad style of forces. What happens is as a result of this press conference thats a member of the polit bureau domestically makes it sound as if the ball is open before the assembled world meeting including former journalist such as tom brokaw also interviewed for this book. After he makes that announcement people go to the checkpoints in the berlin wall. Let me describe to you about berlins we understand what happens. A map of the city of the bone is also in my book. West berlin consisted of the french, british and american sectors, the soviet sector was east berlin. West berlin had a wall around it entirely. Of course, because all of berlin is an island inside east germany. This midwest berlin the only city in the world that exact outline visible to astronauts because of course the wall is fully lit along its entire length at all hours of darkness. West berlin darkness. West berlins allied was visible from outer space. In order to go into east berlin or into west germany had to go to one of the checkpoints. Those are what the little dots or, the checkpoints. The key Border Crossing that night turns out to be this checkpoint, bornholmer street. The northernmost and her berlin checkpoint. Why that checkpoint . The other ones were in more desirable locations and the party have generally given the realistic new bug to military officers, to lawyerless, people who would storm the wall. Bornholmer street isnt a bad neighborhood because there are lot of dissidents. Its worth ziggy its where ziggy lives. When i interviewed his friends can of the dissidents about that moment when i heard that press conference, i first thought it was a great things about the press conference but i envision the end is going Something Like, wasnt that a great moment when you heard the wall was opened and the dissent would say yes, it was fantastic. I know have my freedom. But instead something very different. I said wasnt that great when youre the press conference . They responded no. Bad guy was an idiot. He didnt know what he was talking about the it was useful because it was leverage. We can make the Border Guards lives mr. Beck they went to bornholmer street crossing in huge numbers and made the Border Guards lives miserable in the. This isnt east german aerial photo of the bornholmer street Border Crossing. I apologize for the poor quality. Its not great in the original but let me describe. This is east berlin, this is west berlin. The Border Crossing is this whole, huge walled off area, a number of acres. If youre coming in as a pedestrian you get processed here. It is coming into the go you drive over your. Your car gets a check and then you come back to the final gate the final guard tower, the final bridge. Remember the final guard tower, final bridge and to cross over into west berlin. I have another schematic representation of the same image. This is an internal duty map of the bornholmer street Border Crossing but at the top Business Overview of bornholmer street but the orientation is the same. East berlin is down here west berlin is here. You come through the buildings the car lanes are over here and this is the final guard post in the final bridge. And the man in charge that night, the senior stasi officer on duty that night is this man to his name is harold yager. L. Gigot is a man who opens the berlin wall. Harold yager is an unlikely candidate for the title. He is a complete loyalist. Hes been working at bornholmer street for 25 years. At an additional three years of service before the. He helped to build the wall but i pulled his entire Service Record that still survives, and he had the knowledge is a service only one minor to merit and a rack of awards and promotions. This is a very, very low surface of the regime. He said i believe the wall was tragic but necessary because it would not build the wall there wouldve been world war iii between the soviet bloc and the west. The wall was bad but it was better than the alternative. He was very committed to his job. It is not a man who was seaglider and bring down the regime. In the course of the night he finally, the course of the night he becomes a man who as i said opens the wall. How does that happen quick so they go back to that image of the poor homer street Border Crossing. He sees the press conference on television to pay for 244 hour shift started in the late evening in with us tonight into the next day. He watches television at the Border Crossing on the job. When he sees a press conference he cant believe. You simply cannot believe it. He calls his superior officer and says using expletives that i wont repeat. He said what just happened . I have no orders to what did he Just Announced . His superior officer says its business as usual can keep the gates close to he he calls back in the eye of a dozen people telling the wall is open. What should i do . Business as usual keep the gates close. He called back its like 100 people. What should it do . Superior officers keep the gates close, business as usual. I told him he said he made 30 phone calls over the course of the next four hours, and you never got any useful instructions. Only once did he get anything other than keep the gates close. After you been calling for couple of hours, his direct superior finally said im tired of your phone calls. Be quiet. Im going to patch it into call with my boss why can have your what is true. He gets patched in and he hears them saying this guy is according hundreds of thousands of people, is he delusional . Is he an idiot . Is he a coward . Easy capable of assessing the situation accurately . The phone line goes dead. This gets his back up. He thinks, ive been working for 25 years and theyre going to call me a coward and ask if i can file an actual situation for . What they dont know is hes going through a cancer scare. It turns out he doesnt have cancer, but he thought he did. He had a number of test and he has a doctor appointed schedule the next day to get the test results. So for that night he feels like he may be a dead man anyway, and then what really tips and over is what happens when his boss finally calls back to his boss calls back and says all right we finally have a suggestion for you. Go to the eastern side of the wall and pickup the biggest troublemakers, the people who are screaming to get out and let them out. Hopefully the rest of the people will quiet down without the really big loudmouths. What she should do is pull them aside, take their passport stamped their face, let them out, dont tell them they have just been expelled forever. And so of course unsurprising one of the latter script is z. And his friends. They get pulled a second they get their faces stand, the passports are now in museums and they get let out. Editor they just been expelled forever. This causes two problems but the first is people in each and that figure out the system. If you get loud you get out. And so it ups all the volume and attention on the eastern side. Then a new and releases problem emerges on the western side. No, the people that out first were some young parents and no one expected that the people that out would turn around and come back. So the young parents didnt want to immigrate to the want of a quick look at a come back to the western side and say we are back, we just want to look but we want to go home. Our kids are home in bed. They are told you been expelled forever. You cant go home. I know that something a bad joke but remember when the berlin wall went up it did split families immediately, and they didnt see each other for years or even a decade in some cases. So these young parents as you can imagine are beside themselves. Once they realize the guards are serious, they start screaming start crying they do what you would do if you were suddenly told you would never see her children again. The guards on each and suck and lick of the call for Harald Jaeger. They say you have to come to you with these people. Harald jaeger goes out at his face with his grieving parents Harald Jaeger snaps to Harald Jaeger for the first time that i can find is the base a direct order and lets the parents back in. When interviewed him he said that was to me personally the key moment. That was the beginning of a slippery slope of disobedience. Because then more people want the more people want to come back and the guards sake, he says fine let says fine, to back it. Been then more people. In western start showing up and if i was is fine just let them in. Theres this whole cascade what he starts one by one to tear down the structure of his professional life and this mental world and finally bite about 11 30 his Company Estimates to be 20000 people on the east. Is reduced a bit more orders in one night and his whole career. He looks right at his fellow gardens is either were going to shoot all these people or open a. So Harald Jaeger, fortunately for history, makes the decision to open up and heres the result of his decision. So that is the bornholmer street Border Crossing pictures the final dark tower, heres the bridge, beyond as west berlin. You see the people flooding across and you see cameras capturing it. His colleagues looking on. Once again both event itself and the chronicling of the event are important to the wall is opened because people are filming it then that gets broadcast. So now its not just some polit bureau persons the state to now the wall really is opened when the other checkpoint guard see this, they think maybe i should open a. So in an uncontrolled fashion one by one the other Border Crossings open. Its not consistent to our hardliners who try to resell the wall. For example, at the Brandenburg Gate which is a very visible symbol in the heart of berlin there is not actually indicates. Theres a checkpoint. Theres a way to get his if you want to go up and over the wall. The stasi actually receives this area. By the early hours of november 10 the every taken the Brandenburg Gate and theres also military units trained in combat in urban terrain that are mobilized to retake the city. Because the wall opens caught everybody by surprise, because was in the middle of the night a number of the decisionmakers who need to okay a massive military response, particularly the ones in moscow like gorbachev, are actually a slick. By the time early the next month that moscow wakes up, there is a military response, its too late. By that point there are millions of people, not just thousands or tens of thousands and there are millions in transit and its too late to receive the berlin wall. So the wall stays open and i think, in closing, its important to keep in mind the actions and the courage of the locals. Remember i talked to the beginning about the assumption of american authorship. Let me now show you bornholmer street today, the site ive been describing. This is actually bornholmer street, and to conceal unspectacular it is. This is my personal photo. White lane lines on the left overlain lines from the bornholmer street Border Crossing. The reason i took this photo is because i got a tip from a friend that theyre going to tear up the whole site and put in a Discount Grocery store. If you go there now theres a Discount Grocery store. Iran around and took as many for thousand of the last traces of the bornholmer street order crossing. This is in 2010. A Historical Society protest and put some information panels, but they are nothing like a massive american monuments but as you can see this one has fallen prey to weather and some put a sticker in the middle of it in beautiful. Thats supposed to be a picture of address going across the bridge but you can see whats happening to. Theres a few others but theyre not very substantial. In some ways i find this lowkey approach to bornholmer street in some ways less problematic than the triumphalist american response. The germans prefer lower keyed monuments but on the path of the wall numberless individuals who died trying to escape, to try to sort of remember the individual human stories. I find a better than this assumption it was the United States singlehandedly that did and they can go from berlin to baghdad. Ill conclude with this. One of the interviews i did for the book was with this woman. She was also an important visit to dissident. She went on to recruit and politics in united germany. She became a successful politician and became head of the stasi archives, a collection of stasi doctors have survived through the fall of the wall. Thats a very important post in german. The first head of the archives is now the president of the whole country. She was the second head of the stasi archives. I interviewed her and she was very happy to talk to me me even though she very busy, she said im so glad you going to tell this story in the west to english speakers. She said because so often as i meet people from the west they seem to assume that the wall opened and the opening of the wall gave us our freedom. And in reality it was the other way around. We thought for our freedom and then because of that the wall fell to so thank you very much for your attention. Im happy to take a few questions about the process the images. Thank you very much for coming up tonight. Because its on television if you could wait until the mic and over to you and ask your question and if you could identify yourself and speak toward the mic, that would be great. [inaudible] i have family on both sides. But im wondering what happened to come i think it was a man who as you said botched the announcement. Wasnt anything that happened to him . What became of them . Yes. He said this man sitting here. He has dimensions was not able to edit them. He was a member of the politburo, the ruling party of the party in his response for Media Affairs but despite the title, how shall i put this . Being a member of the politburo he didnt have much incentive to develop media skills. When you have a regime that can censor all the newspapers come agonies of germany they would write the headlines in the news stories. Sometimes the exact same story would appear multiple papers but you dont need to understand how to deal with a journalist but he had very little experience westernstyle press conferences. This was a new development. His lack of experience really showed on the night of november 9 when he gave his press conference. That announcement that he botched, he didnt even bother to read it until he was live on air. Even though we had it in advance. He just assumed he knew what was in it. When he bolted up and he mumbles his way through it its almost impossible to follow the iq to busy to take over and over again. But certain words pop out at you and the words are things like permission to cross the border possible for every east german including west berlin. Theres other phrases such as you start to apply for permission and we so make decisions but its harder to do. The journalist in the room heard these key phrases, and the wire reporters, the young ones in the room, the fastest way to get news before the internet, the wire with reporters run out of the room before he finishes and the first wire reports in the wall is open goes out of 7 02 pbt starts realize somethings going poorly wrong and he starts to backpedal as best he can put reporters are already out the reporters are reporting. As i said a poll up your making the stake is nothing you. They make mistakes all the time. At the bottom line was always the same right . That was awol in the armed Border Guards in front of it. What changes that is the power of the peaceful revolution coming up crashing against the wall and forcing people like Harald Jaeger to deal with them. Guenther cant believe a topic he goes on it for one drive during the course of a to see whats happening but it doesnt issued any orders. He eventually ends up being tried in united germany, and he is convicted because of the regimes participation in the deaths on the borders and he is one of the few members of the politburo potential a sense of responsibility he serves his time and then basically lives quietly and becomes very ill and out as this has dimensions and history quarterly in a home. So he is a tragic figure after this evening. Another question . [inaudible] the question is where is Harald Jaeger today. Harald jaeger, i was able to do. I interviewed him twice. Harald jaeger by opening opened the berlin will put himself out of a job. The man had 25 years of experience in guarding the berlin wall, and the just opened. s would we put himself out of a job and he never again held steady at home. He had a bunch of odd jobs. He worked as a taxi driver in west berlin. People would get in and said taking two wall used to be. And i can just imagine that scene in the taxi but i can imagine them saying, you know, i used to work there. And the people sitting in the back thinking yeah, sure he did. He also owned a newspaper store for a while until that went out of business and then he worked as a Security Guard and now hes retired. He lives near the german polish border in a small cottage thats meant to be a summer cottage that is what drives. Under the competition provisions of german unification, he is able to receive some fraction of his pension from his time from the service so it lives on his pension. He is one of the jitterbug order cards was willing to talk to scholars. Im grateful he made the time to talk to me. I think the world is grateful that he didnt decide to shoot. Again this is another one of those accidents. Is directed colleagues couldve at night shift that night was reportedly much more of a hardliner and Border Guards at other Border Crossings did call up reinforcements with machine guns. I think it was a very happy accident that he was the person on duty at bornholmer street Border Crossing that night. Thanks a lot. This is a great story. I went through checkpoint charlie in the summer of 1969. So im glad its not there anymore. I have a question, couple questions about communication which are intriguing to me. One would be about how communication happened between the crossing that youre describing and other crossings if people were hearing was going on there how are they hearing you know, when it was happening . You mentioned maybe later there might of been even reports on western television or something. There is another question about the film that you showed, and its also about the press conference. To what extent there were networks. I mean he was agencies intelligence agencies would have an interest in Something Like this may be facilitating it not that they made it happen of course by any means but how did that film can use it got out to the west. How did he get out to the west . And also, and in the past the cia that assets in the associate press, for example. All this document over many years. Is it at all conceivable that somebody was eager to rush out of the press conference with a particular characterization of the wall is open . What is the evidence if there is any about those linkages that mightve helped support the . So i tell a lot of those details action in the book. If youre interested in the details, even if i hadnt noted you should read the book. Its an amazing story. Take them in Chronological Order the video on the night of october 9, it has to do with something called a conference on security and cooperation in europe, which was an agreement involving the United States and soviet union and the countries of europe to try to improve human rights in europe. The soviet union had cited because it also denies the moscow guaranteed the borders in Eastern Europe which is something moscow hoped to get in a world war ii peace treaty but, of course, that never happened so the soviet union signed the csce final act which is odd as the next best thing. It did realize just and dangers the human rights provisions in that treaty were. Among other provisions that allowed for special Border Crossing privileges for western journalists into Eastern Europe. Some of these worked out in subsequent conferences, not in the final act itself. So there were west german journalist stationed in east berlin and they were allowed to cross the border without a search. I tell the story of one of them worked very closely with ziggy and became his main courier. So that night when ziggy and his friends make the video in leipzig, to get back to berlin, it is a video cassette to this was a german journalist who then crosses into the east and delivers it to a television station, and it is then broadcast as quoted quote the work of Italian Journalist which, of course, it is not. I tell the story of how that is smuggled out. Moving 14 occasion on the night of the press conference itself its possible that the were intelligence operatives masquerading as journalists at the press conference. That is certainly possible. I dont have information on that one way or another, but even if they had a plot to support the wall was opened in so much help from actual journalists there that they hardly needed to lift a finger because so many journalists, i mean come you can imagine its the story of her life, right . So many people reported the wall was opened in so many languages its possible ones would for an Intelligence Agency at the net effect was stimulus. The committee should win when the Border Crossing points, and interesting point. I discussed that with Harald Jaeger and he said it was such a centralized system but he said they were discouraged from talking to each other. There was a hub and spoke system. So you call the central and we will call other people. So he said we are very strongly discouraged from cross check in with each other. He said is difficult at night because when he was calling 30 times two superior officers and failing to get answers, yes some point start thinking what are other people doing other Border Crossings. He did nothing easy means. There was no standard means set up for them to community with them on irregular basis. It was a centralized system. So he had for that night surprisingly little contact with the other Border Crossings. I have had some whos a former military officer who doesnt care what these german history at all Crisis Management show you what can go wrong if you dont empower people at the ground level when a crisis hits and you leave them there dangling. This is the failure of management and leadership generically even if you dont care about the details. So what does start to happen is that are, again western reporters who are covering this breakthrough at bornholmer street, and theyre broadcasting on radio and television that bornholmer street is open to at the other Border Crossing they do have televisions and they can see those images. Theres this interaction throughout the evening between the media and the actual events where it points and immediate as causing the story its reporting. Again even if not interested in the particular details, its a great story of how in the modern Era Television and politics interact so there is committed very complicated story. Good point. The dissidents and others gathered at the Border Crossings, how they, if they knew what was going on that seems to been very ad hoc and spontaneous. Ziggy and his friends, there was a bar with a drink. Ziggy was in that bar. One of the census on the press conference went into the bar and said the wall is open, lets go. Some of his friends said, youre nuts, have another drink. Another friend said no, lets go check it out the they said if were not back in a couple of hours, we are in the west. They didnt get back for five days. I think it was a question over let me go to the question in the back. So you started talking at the beginning of his speech about how people like, i guess in the United States think that the u. S. Was the one to really open the wall. For the younger generations like people my age how do you think it would be like the best way to really clarify that, like, we didnt . What im using here, step back and the academic if you forget me, i am a professor. Its hard to avoid, is amusing what political scientist often call a powder keg model which is to say that in order to understand the revolutionary event or dramatic event, you need to understand that only a powder keg or the fuel but you also need to understand the sparks are the catalyst that set it off. Academics such as myself of long been better at studying the powder keg in studying the sparks are the catalyst. Certainly the cold war contest provides the necessary context. So the reforms that gorbachev institutes the facts that hes making clear tanks roll into Eastern Europe, meanwhile, in the western side to support u. S. Gives organizations like solitary, that all matters but im not saying the United States was not important but its just that doesnt actually open the wall but it grates the context in which the walk and open budget need a spark or a catalyst. There was an article very influential to my thinking as was recognized this book by a man named led lebeau. He said they dont come around every 10 minutes. They dont all look like. He can just talk about powder keg and assume the catalyst shows up and it will have a standard result. The nature of the catalyst in a way to interact with a powder keg give shape to the explosion of the revolution the i realize he was right and i thought i need to look at the catalyst at the locals. I need to look at the people who turned the potential for the opening of the wall into the reality of the opening. I think the sort of take away lesson is the United States, it needs in its Foreign Policy to Pay Attention to the locals. It goes badly wrong when it fails to do that. I think the United States is good at things like context creation, but its not that reducing specific results but its better when it empowers people on the ground to push through and make those final changes. Its also bad if the United States, its not advisable to assume its singlehandedly responsible because then it becomes a delusion that you can do this elsewhere regardless of what the locals thing. I think that is in many ways the takehome lesson. Even if you dont care about the details of this story. In essence what im telling is a sort a successful, peaceful revolution. It succeeded and left behind itself an amazing amount of evidence under people who took part in this who want to talk to its an amazing story. So we would like to know how that succeeds. We would like to note in the United States case how to peaceful revolution 60. Is a great way to do so as a historian, to read the story, to learn the story. It doesnt help us predict the next peaceful revolution but it does help us prepare for it. I think thats the longerterm takehome lesson. Youve been waiting very patiently over here. Mine is just a simple sort of technical question. What advantages did you get by working at harvard . What did more Research Advantages to define as a political scientist that you did not back in california . I should say this project has been going on, theres a multiple phases, and in essence, ive been working on this project for 25 years because i was studying abroad in west berlin in 1989 to so that was the reason i got interested not only in this story wouldve been a historian altogether was living in west berlin in 1989 and experiencing many of these events. Of course, i was very young or very young. I was 2. Of course, that was think as a professional scholar been but i started collecting material since then. I had to blow the dust off some of my own personal boxes. There was a long phase of collecting material when i was in germany. I went back to germany as a graduate student at a work that as a journalist, ended up living in germany for over four years. This topic topic would let go of me but i kept collecting materials. They just kind of collected dust are there on my desktop. After i wrote the book on the Foreign Policy uphold the fall of the berlin wall and realize there was a huge gossip about how the wall came down once i decided not to write this book then i went back to germany for more targeted interviews excited about 50 interviews and theyre listed in the book. In the final phase when youre sitting down and writing, its great to have both a great library, which harvards library is coming and its great of really great smart people around to discuss her ideas, to show drafts too, to share concepts. It was great. It was partly the access to the Wonderful Library resources and partly to access to wonderful colleagues who read drafts, who read two versions them help me clarify the argument. That was wonderful as well. I had wonderful colleagues at the universes Southern California as well but the Library System is better here. That was very helpful. I should say the i had throughout the Research Phase Excellent Research support from the university of Southern California. I could have done with out either of my universities. Both supporting her struggle research and the very grateful to those institutions for doing that. Last question. Who wants the last question . Do you want the last question . Well, if no one else has one. My question apparently wasnt clear. Im interested, i was interested in other people who were pressing to the Border Crossing, how they knew about each others activity and successes at other Border Crossings. I dont know that he really spoke to that. Why dont you read the book . At that point, the are sort of two ways that happen. The first is that the sheer size of the crowds of each individual Border Crossing becomes very very large and people can see that with their own eyes. There are estimates at the bornholmer street crossing by the point which Harald Jaeger opens up you 20000 people. I cant verify that but there are multiple estimates. The first way it happens is people see with their own eyes just and the people are at the Border Crossing. Although bornholmer street crossing is the site of the biggest crowd, similar phenomena are occurring at other bornholmer street. People can sue his own companies. People try to get the bornholmer street Border Crossing and realize theres 20,000 people, i can get anywhere near the Border Crossing the they bound him and tell everyone. Again and again and again over the course of the night you hear stories. Ive heard many of these stores but i was sitting at a bar at lorain in and said you should go to bornholmer street and suddenly the bar and to do. Or of sitting in a restaurant and someone said in my building some sort not be on the windows of my building. You start of the bush telegraph and then once you get people over into the west and have access giving radio broadcast, seeing television. Then theyre starting to see