Fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov 9, 1989 – Google dedicates doodle on 30th anniversary

Google reminds fall of the Berlin Wall with a beautiful doodle. It fell 30 years back on this day, November 9, 1989.

The fall of the Berlin Wall was a big shock to the entire wall. This marked the commencement of the end of the Cold War. The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Construction of the Wall was commenced by the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) on August 13, 1961. The Wall cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany, including East Berlin.

The fall of the communist government in neighboring Poland's 1989 Polish legislative election in June played a role in the fall of the Berlin Wall. Also in June 1989 the Hungarian government began dismantling the electrified fence along its border with Austria (with Western TV crews present), and then, in September, more than 13,000 East German tourists escaped through Hungary to Austria. This set up a chain of events. The Hungarians prevented many more East Germans from crossing the border and returned them to Budapest. These East Germans flooded the West German embassy and refused to return to East Germany.

After hearing the broadcast, East Germans began gathering at the Wall, at the six checkpoints between East and West Berlin, demanding that border guards immediately open the gates. The surprised and overwhelmed guards made many hectic telephone calls to their superiors about the problem. At first, they were ordered to find the "more aggressive" people gathered at the gates and stamp their passports with a special stamp that barred them from returning to East Germany—in effect, revoking their citizenship. However, this still left thousands of people demanding to be let through "as Schabowski said we can". It soon became clear that no one among the East German authorities would take personal responsibility for issuing orders to use lethal force, so the vastly outnumbered soldiers had no way to hold back the huge crowd of East German citizens. Finally, at 10:45 p.m. on November 9, Harald Jäger, the commander of the Bornholmer Straße border crossing yielded, allowing for the guards to open the checkpoints and allowing people through with little or no identity checking.

Google creates the doodle on the eve of 30^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9. Stay tuned to Devdiscourse to get more contents on future Google doodles.