Celebrating Victory

On November 9, 1989, amid chaos, East Germany's Communist leaders announced that passports would be issued to all East Germans, allowing them to travel freely, and that evening hundreds of thousands of East Berliners peacefully surged through Berlin Wall crossing points. In front of the Brandenburg Gate, thousands of mostly young "wall peckers" used hammers and chisels against the wall until panels fell and sections were broken out, while Checkpoint Charlie was overwhelmed by crowds too large for guards to process and people reaching the western side joined a huge street party as scenes of jubilation were broadcast worldwide. Churches had become centers of free political discussion in East Germany, and Leipzig's Nikolai Church's Monday Prayers for Peace, begun in 1983, were said by some to have helped spark the peaceful revolution; by 1989 reformers were gathering in churches across major cities. Between October 27 and November 9, 1989, 300,000 East Germans fled westward, mostly through Hungary, others stormed West German embassies in Prague and Warsaw hoping to migrate, and after Mikhail Gorbachev signaled on October 6, 1989, that Soviet troops would not suppress reform, 70,000 people demonstrated peacefully in Leipzig on October 9 and later Monday crowds there grew to 300,000, while one million people marched in East Berlin on November 4, 1989, seeking peaceful change. Official demolition of the wall began on June 13, 1990, sections were removed, recycled, auctioned, or sent around the world, Checkpoint Charlie's hut was taken away on June 22, East and West Germany were reunited on October 3, 1990, Berlin became one city again, and American forces fully withdrew by September 1994 after nearly half a century of occupation.

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