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Schabowski's Blunder: How the Wall Rose, Killed, and Fell
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
From the barbed wire strung in secret on August 13, 1961, to Günter Schabowski's accidental press conference that ended twenty-eight years of concrete and death — this is how the Berlin Wall was built, how it killed, and how it collapsed in a single absurd evening. Episode 13 traces the full arc: the death strip, Peter Fechter, Checkpoint Charlie's tank standoff, and the Ossis and Wessis dancing on the rubble.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Here's what's genuinely hard to square about the Berlin Wall. It stood for twenty-eight years.
It started in the early hours of Sunday morning. By the time most Berliners woke up on August thirteenth, nineteen sixty-one, the barbed wire was already in place.
By October nineteen sixty-one, the crossing point at Friedrichstraße and Zimmerstraße had been designated Checkpoint Charlie. It was the only crossing point for Allied military personnel and foreign nationals between the American and Soviet sectors.
What the checkpoint represented in diplomatic terms, the death strip represented in human ones. Between the inner and outer walls ran a stretch of land that was engineered to kill.
In June nineteen sixty-three, President Kennedy came to West Berlin. The visit was strategic.
For most of the wall's existence, the prospect of its removal was not a serious political conversation. It was a wish.
On the evening of November ninth, nineteen eighty-nine, East German Politburo member Günter Schabowski sat down for a live press conference. He had just come from a meeting where new travel regulations had been discussed.
The hammers came out quickly. East Germans and West Germans, and tourists from everywhere, chipping at the wall with whatever they had.
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