It was great to be in the community and waiver of this book there were so many great resources that help me too write this book. So i have been asked a number of times about the origins of this book. The reasons i wrote it. That actually has to do with my previous book called 1989 and these books are actually in the reverse order, 1989 talks about the Foreign Policy in the fall of the berlin under berlin wall and its an s once a prequel to my new book. This book as i said is about the Foreign Policy that followed the berlin wall and they were going to do book talks like this one and i would get up and say hi, im here to talk about the Foreign Policy of the berlin wall. Often i would not even get to that. Somebody would interrupt me and say timeout when deeming accidental opening of the berlin wall. Sometimes i also got your nose touring, dont you know president reagan open the berlin wall. Dont you know and he went to berlin in 1987 and said he tore down the wall. In a get that question so many times i realized that it was not a oneoff question. It was a deeply held belief in actually cartoon that appears in the new yorker. As a fairytale to his daughter in the fairytale consist of the following. Here down this wall one king said to the other and down it came in they live happily ever after. So when something has earned its own new yorker cartoon with the phenomenon and i thought, for the 21st anniversary it should be a good book for this to happen. So i thought what what i read on this topic and the more he looked in the more i realized there is not one good book on the opening of the wall and english. And the more i thought about it i realized this lack of a good book an accurate account was more than just a historical interest. The belief that the United States singlehandedly open the wall has effects on u. S. Foreign policy to the state. It has the effect of making the United States think that it singlehandedly open the wall with the risk and compete to get experience from berlin to baghdad which was a frequent thing in washington in 2001 and after words. It also gave an attitude and as you can see it physically embodied in the monuments and the United States to the opening of the wall. For example at a george w h. W. President ial library you can see the statue of horses gasping over the berlin wall showing the triumph of american wild west over the berlin wall. Theres a similar statue that the ronald ragan president ial library, a much simpler statue with a single panel of the wall, what is truly impressive as Ronald Reagan and if you think about the eye watering price over the state in Southern California you realize how much it means an entire hilltop is dedicated to this part of the Ronald Reagan president ial library. So these are just two of the memorials that exist in the United States and many and many of them in missouri, washington, d. C. And a physical embodiment of the sense that the United States open the wall and the author of this event and can repeat it. When i actually look at the evidence and interviewed the people who are there, that was not the story that i saw. There is a saying in english success has many fathers. The opening was a huge success. Nowadays theres many, many fathers. For the 25th anniversary i decided to that the actual fathers and mothers of the event control the voices. Thank you for taking the time to come out tonight and help me tell their stories. So let me talk about famous people for a minute in the context, the context, the super power context was crucially important. Nothing i want to tell you about the details of the opening of the wall challenges that. It explains the leader of the soviet union who was wildly popular and had magazines man of the year and man of the decade and he was man of the year 1998 and 1990 and one to the nobel peace prize, another number of work. He made clear that soviet tanks would stop rolling into Eastern Europe has they had done in poland, hungary and eastern in the past. He makes clear that he wanted reform to be the order of the day. But that was not enough, increase the possibility that it can open but not the actual reality of the opening. He of course dealt with his american counterpart, president Ronald Reagan and george w. Bush who previously becoming providencpresident. He had a series Ronald Reagan did not result in any agreement to open the wall even if those are words about control and other issues. When president george h. W. Bush in january 1899, it turns out he added internally attitude and that was one of the biggest surprises of my research to discover the weight of the bursa ministration and im talking about george h. W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States, not the son, when george h. W. Bush took off the office. Internally, president bush when he took office in 1989 essentially stepped onto brakes. He and his team thought that there may not be for real, he might be trying to law the United States into security and they did not want to be trapped by that route. They decided there was a chance that he was for real unwanted reforms but he could be gone with a single bullet and they retain the capability to destroy the United States. Either way he was a fake or for real either way they thought they needed to be very wary of him. So the team decided to really clean house and a radical way. Global scientists who are interested in history of the period and interested in the mechanism of political ambition to how one president ial administration switches to another, they studied this transition from reagan to bush as one of the most hostile ever. As paul white and extra has put it, the Bush Administration fired everybody. In the internal discussion told why. Secretary baker said incapable of making things new which was basically just much in the bush team needed to get rid of them and restore american security. So this process of american comes to a halt under the bushel ministration so he is not actually making progress on a plan to open the berlin wall either. As a matter of fact he actually ends the practice of an annual summit with burger top. It seems i neutral is returning to the cold war. An even more frightening in the spring and summer of 1989 there are protests throughout china, the most visible and Tiananmen Square were chinese art students build a goddess of democracy who steers him down right in the face and Tiananmen Square and they know the statute is no longer there the same image in the row of tanks like tank man and alone demonstrator and this happened in the summer of 1989. I would like you for the remainder of my talk to keep the image of Tiananmen Square in your head. We know that the ending of the berlin wall is a peaceful affair and people im going to talk about people who go on the street to make it happen do not know that. The image they have is of Tiananmen Square. The afraid that the commonest regime is enforced to defend itself and something that will be repeated in cold war europe as well. So they dont know if this is going to happen to them or not. So if you can just keep that sense of uncertainty in your mind as a tech about the rest of the events it will help you to understand the mental world encourage of people im describing. So in the summer of 1989 there were protests in europe as well. The Solidarity Movement in poland over the leadership was lustful into, and the long dark years of the 1980s tried to institute reform in poland, it was a crucial movement for protesters across Eastern Europe in summer of 1989 as a polish regime to agree on the election the semi free election. It wins 99 of the 100 seats is allowed to contest. That is a very slow process with one hand hold and they still have to share power and that might be how change comes to Eastern Europe. But then something very expected happens. The regime which is also interested in reform, the hungarian regime decides to put hold and at first only for its own citizens, it decides to open the border for hungarians to cross into austria. The hungarian regime does not anticipate that they will try to sneak out as well. In hungarian government is between east germany and do not let them go. Too only make the decision for its own citizens. First it has to restrain and send back east germans, there is even an east german who is killed in office of 1989 trying to get out of hungry. It comes with a huge crisis in the west german sensing an opportunity and says to the leader of hungry, he says i have a number of friends who run banks, if you let them out, i banks will leave very quickly. So the hungarian leader lets them out in september 1989 and the banks immediately after words are good to hungry. So now there was a whole new iron curtain. So now what is happening is east german are going south through czechoslovakia into hungry to escape to west germany. There is a whole flow of people going down and up to czechoslovakia into hungry back into west germany. This horrifies the east german regime and sees itself to death. They try to choke off travel to hungry and not only resulted in a new crisis with refugees piling up. The east german regime makes a decision to seal the borders of germany and ireland. This turns out to be a huge mistake. It turned east germany into a pressure cooker. There is a serious life under dictatorship to help explain why. If you live under a dictatorship you basically have three choices. Those choices are loyalty, exit or voice. That means you can derail and complain and stay quiet which happens or you can exit and try to flee so when the border open between hungry and austria you can exit but then when it sealed off east germany suddenly they were withdrawn intolerable so the only other option was voice for protest. So there starts to be massive protest particularly in the southern part of east germany in part because people have been trying to get to czechoslovakia. So the huge number of people who have given everything and put everything that they own and taken everything that they can and taking the children and their fed up in huge numbers of protest. The particularly large in the city which is the city, i realize you dont really need to see the exact words, if youre interested feel free to buy a book. But let me point out a few things. The ring road is where the wall stood from city center. This is the midevil city center. When that wall was turned down and got turned into a ring road. And what starts to happen, theres trista be large protest centered at the church and what happens is the protesters come out of the church and they gather here at the square and they tried to get around the city as possible. Of Course Police stopped them. And this happens again and again, and the police are using violence and more people show up in more violence and more people and more violence. Its coming to a head and becomes apparent to everyone involved that the night of october 9, 1989 is going to be the showdown. One of the biggest surprises of my research, i thought i knew this time. Further will have an early written the book, one of the biggest surprises when i got into the records and the Police Records, local Police Records, write Police Records that east german regime was planning a Tiananmen Square october 9. Guards without bullets went out orders to shoot one out and machine guns went out, there were never known how many but at least 8000 employed possibly 10000, hospital staff told to bring extra blood reserves, hospital staff, businesses and people home early, schools cancel, the regime prevented foreign journalists coming to the city because they didnt want the world to see what they were planning. So they decided they would need to do two things, they needed to show up and massive numbers to show they were not afraid. In order to get started on the ring as soon as possible. But they decided they should do something else, they should try to film what was happening in the matter what happens whether a bloodshed that the world would see it. Into western media. In the mansion to do it was this man, i apologize to the poor quality, its a east german photo without his knowledge or permission is actually part of the series, he was followed extensively and its almost like having a weird diary of your own life in most photos, its three surveillance photos with his back to the camera and another photo and the reason is he was a man that decided the way hes going to fight the regime was information. He started making abuses and human rights abuses and started smuggling them to the west to work at a western television station and they would then be broadcast. And he was so good at this in fact he actually was earning so much money that he owed taxes and the friend had to pay for him. And he was intensely frustrated by the activities. And the only reason they did not put him in jail, they figured that he could not possibly cause as much trouble as he was causing. Possibly includes western intelligence agencies and they decided they would follow and interrogate him and not arrest him because they wanted to catch a meeting dozens of helpers and correct them as well. The problem he really was doing the whole thing on his own with the help of two other friends. They would stand in the courtyard of his building and follow him when he walked out the door. And he did not know this at the time, constant fear that the agents following him around and they did not happen it was in the fall of 1981. In the fall of 1989, october 9 he lived in berlin and they hide on the roof of this building which is a church. On the Northern City center, so the friends are gathering to march, they basically crouched down on an Open Air Church roof and prepared a film to whatever is going to happen. And from the ground the protesters subtle and something amazing happens. Despite everyone knowing that this is going to be the tandem and a diary of what you see in the notes, tonight china, tomorrow is tiananmen, at least 100,000 people, possibly more show up to protest. The regime does not expect that. And they also maintained strictly nonviolent so they give no cause to the Security Forces and if you are attacked you can be attacked in response. 1000 people assemble and start to move across and local commanders on the ground doesnt know to do. The Party Commander already is someone who do not expect to be in charge of that night. He was actually the second Party Secretary, the man who is supposed to be in charge was the first Party Secretary that he had, you cannot make this stuff up, he had called in sick that night. [laughter] and so the second Party Secretary found himself in charge of 8000 possibly more armed men. In the plan was that they had not stopped the protest and the gathering, if it had not stop them, the plan was to attack them at the eastern mix in ideas that that was practically smart because the rows were such a sharp and be easier to catch them and shoot at them there. The plan was to attack and as the crowd of people start moving toward the second Party Secretary suddenly decides even though he does not need to to call east berlin and say are we really going to do this. He starting to realize hes being set up and going to cause a bloodbath and for war crimes after words and maybe even worse. So he calls east berlin, the headhunters any get one of the big party buses on the phone and says are you really going to do this and this is a protester with ten or 15 minutes away and they say ill call you back. [laughter] and then he doesnt. So the second Party Secretary as the crowds are approaching they begin to feel he is being set up at the last possible minute orders to retreat in the copies survive so the forces pull back although they said if youre attacking you can already attack. Its crucially important that they maintain nonviolence because they still hope couldve gotten shot in the leaders have worked very, very hard to lecture everyone and only nonviolence and it works. I can actually show you a piece of his video clip from that night. He and his friends on the roof of the church and they have no idea what theyre going to see coming around the curve will lippy a bloodbath, Security Forces or what and ill show you the footage of what they see. [inaudible] does anybody speak german . The crowds are shouting join us. There shouting that at Security Forces. And its repeated crossed and they are putting aside their weapons and joining in the protest. Youll see it when the cameras start to sway because unknown roof directly opposite of them they make a video with a secret Police Agents where they have to duck. [inaudible] and now they say we are the people and you can see the camera swaying widely because of trying to cover it up to avoid protection. [inaudible] crymac that footage was made from the northern ark on the night of october 9 and they filmed the whole demonstration so long it takes two hours to walk by and after that they wait for another hour because they dont want to be arrested but finally they come down and i sent it out to west berlin where it showing on the television station the work of an italian camera team to protect them and that is hugely important. This is a still photo of the event because two things have no happen. The regime retreated and that was broadcast. Both of those things are important. The protesters are important because that footage was broadcast in east germany, other east germans who see it and embolden protesting in their own cities as well. Now you have a peace