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The night the Wall fell, about 68,000 East Berliners crossed on foot to the West . Also 9,700 cars. Many more for other border crossings. The stampede had just begun. Poker formed by Kohl, Modrow, Gorbachev and Bush - Chancellor of the RFA, leader of the GDR and Soviet and American presidents - immediately began preparing the day after.

The definitive collapse of communism occurred precipitously at Christmas: on December 23, 1989, Kohl and Modrow opened the Brandenburg Gate to the crosswalk . Thus they began the effective path of reunification. On December 25, 1991, CNN broadcast live the resignation of Gorbachev. The Soviet flag was lowered in the Kremlin. That night, Bush decreed the end of the Cold War and for the next three weeks he used the word victory three times. Formally, the USSR had dissolved two days before.

Three quarters of Professor Ricardo Martín de la Guardia's book, The Fall of the Berlin Wall. The end of the Cold War and the rise of a new world (The Sphere of Books, 2019), take place in the months following the night of cars.

It happened in a run over, improvised, the result of a slip or a bad calculation . Although on November 7 the Government had resigned in full. The Popular Assembly elected Modrow, 61, away from the gerontocratic circles of the party, the Gorbachev man in Berlin, head of government. On the 18th, with the Wall already in ruins, Modrow appointed his Cabinet, destined to precipitate the perestroika of East Germany. Its first measure was to suppress the Office of National Security , perhaps the best informed of the continent and also the one with the most insignificant documentation on its subjects. The German Democratic Republic constituted the paradigm of a guarded society.

On December 1, Parliament abolished Article 1 of the Constitution, which “attributed to the SED (Unified Socialist Party of Germany) exclusively the role of directing the political and social life of the GDR. A few days later, the Modrow Executive, which included members of various parties gathered around a National Front, approved the arrest warrant for Erich Mielke, former head of the Stasi , and Willi Stoph, former Minister of Interior and Defense. The first was prosecuted for murder; The second, for corruption.

That week the SED held an extraordinary Congress: it assumed that it was no longer the state party and renounced Stalinism, bureaucracy and centralism . However, Modrow paralyzed its dissolution - it was still part of the State. Martín de la Guardia tells in detail the process of restructuring the formation, which was presented as PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism) to the elections of March 1990. From that vote came a broad coalition government. Gregor Gysi, an unknown dissident lawyer , was in charge of leading the party "towards modern socialism."

In the street, protesters shouted "We are a people", the motto of reunification. They asked not only for freedom and civil rights, but to enjoy the prosperity of the RFA. The slow and gradual path was soon surpassed, as was the Kohl Ten-Point Program , based on the principle of "two states, one nation." For a year, a negotiating table promoted by Modrow brought together various leaders of the opposition to the communist regime. Meanwhile , the new PDS was bleeding and aging. Of 2.8 million members, it went to 242,000 in 1991 ; in 1995 there were only 123,000 left.

The day the Wall fell, Kohl was in Poland, on the eve of semi-equilibrium elections. Immediately, he flew to Berlin and, together with the mayor of the city, Walter Momper, conveyed a message of tranquility to the inhabitants of the East: «I want to tell each of you in the GDR: you are not alone, we are by your side. We are and will be a nation, we are made to be together ».

Kohl telephoned Bush, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Krenz - GDR Head of State - and Gorbachev. Meanwhile, he returned to Poland, visited Auswichtz and began planning the reunification. The following week, three million citizens of the East visited their neighbors in the West. Kohl was immediately supported by Bush. He had to convince Gorbachev and save two pitfalls: Thatcher's reluctance and NATO's reluctance . It was not easy. After the approval of the Soviet leader, the Dublin European Council, in 1990, approved and proceeded to reunification. The thorough chronicle of Professor De la Guardia is not only of reunification but another episode of the construction of Europe.

Finally the last embers of World War II vanished. Europe closed its shortest century .

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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