Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War (2024) s01e06 Episode Script

1
[tense music plays]
Russia is building up troops
along the border with Ukraine,
and conducting massive military drills.
[tense music continues]
- [in Ukrainian] Glory to Ukraine!
- Glory to the heroes!
At ease.
We'll have another training now.
[Zelenskyy] We all came together.
People, military, government, everybody.
People were ready for it
on a genetic level.
This was not the first time in our history
we were at risk of losing our statehood.
And I understood that this was the war.
The moment has come.
This was the war for independence.
The war for Ukraine.
This weakness,
which we'd had for many years,
it was gone.
We started fighting back.
Contact from the left.
Contact from the right.
[Olga Rudenko, in English] A lot of people
who took up arms to defend Ukraine,
they never pictured themselves
with a gun in their arms.
So many people who are,
you know, just artists, uh, activists, uh
IT managers who just took up arms
and and, uh,
volunteered to go to the army.
[tense music playing]
[indistinct chatter]
[Rita, in Ukrainian]
We were waiting for this, and we're ready.
I knew it would happen because it's been
going on for more than a century.
[Sorokin, in English]
Seeing how passionate everyone is
to defend their country,
Ukraine is definitely not going down
without a fight.
- [interviewer] And how old are you?
- [boy] Seventeen years old.
[interviewer]
I I see that you're holding a weapon.
- Yes, it's
- [interviewer] What kind of weapon?
[boy] It's, uh,
an AK-47 without magazine.
- [interviewer] Okay.
- [boy] My magazine.
[interviewer] Okay, and
are you ready to kill another person?
Uh
[interviewer] I mean,
have you thought about that?
Uh, I think about that, but, um
to me, what is it?
[man] Duty.
It's my duty.
[opening theme music playing]
[music fades]
[ominous music playing]
[bell tolling]
I was born under Soviet occupation,
and this was the world I knew.
You couldn't go
outside Soviet Union at that time.
You had to have a visa,
and it was not given
to any regular people.
The Soviet authorities wanted you
to feel that everybody is tapped,
everybody is listened to,
everything you say
can be used against you.
[speaking in Russian]
[Kallas] It was a society of fear, really.
[official continues speaking in Russian]
[Kallas] In 1989,
Gorbachev was the head of Soviet Union,
and so we had the chance
to travel to Eastern Germany.
That was a really big, big thing.
My father took me
and my brother and my mother
to see the Brandenburg Gate.
And I remember he said,
"Children, breathe in deeply
because it's the air of freedom
that comes from the other side."
[somber music playing]
[Masha Lipman] Growing up
in the '70s and the '80s,
there was a very strong sense
that the Soviet Union was there forever.
We tried to learn as much as possible
about what it was like
beyond the borders of the Soviet Union,
but there was also a sense
that we would never, ever see it.
KGB agents collected data
all the time, 24/7.
They forced people
to collaborate with them secretly.
It was easy to make your life miserable.
[Mark Pomar]
There were Russian writers who defected.
Russian journalists occasionally defected.
And probably the most famous defector
was the ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov,
who, uh, chose freedom
and became a major, major star
not just in ballet,
but in American theater writ large.
A friend of mine
was sent to prison for many years,
almost for nothing.
Dancing to Western music.
Jazz, rock and roll, I don't know.
A kind of dancing not allowed in the GDR.
It was clear to us that in this country,
under these conditions,
it will be impossible for us to live.
We were prisoners.
[applause]
[Mary Elise Sarotte] You have to remember
that while the relationship
between Reagan and Gorbachev
is hugely important,
and it yielded huge benefits
in arms control to an easing of tensions,
it did not open the wall.
[applause]
Mr. Gorbachev,
tear down this wall.
[crowd cheering]
[Sarotte] What happened after Reagan said,
"Tear down this wall," was nothing.
Mikhail Gorbachev did not open the wall.
President Reagan then leaves office,
and in 1989, we get George H.W. Bush.
[Bush] A new breeze is blowing,
and a world refreshed by freedom
seems reborn.
For in man's heart, if not in fact,
the day of the dictator is over.
[Susan Glasser] When Gorbachev
came to power in the Soviet Union,
his view was not that he wanted
to destroy the Soviet Union,
but that he wanted
to reform it from within.
[Pavel Palazhchenko] He wanted
to give people a chance to speak.
This was glasnost.
Which is not just freedom of the press,
but which is also the openness
of government to the people,
the accountability
of government to the people.
That began to happen
right after Chernobyl.
[reporter] At Moscow University
and across the Soviet Union,
there is a sense things are changing,
that the limits
of permissible criticism are expanding.
Glasnost is a first step
towards real democracy in our society.
[speaking in Russian]
[Glasser, in English]
He also wanted to make an effort
to address the failure
of Soviet central planning.
The economy was teetering in the 1980s.
[Palazhchenko] The overall impact
of the arms race
and of the militarization
of the Soviet economy
undermined the system
and also undermined
the lives of many people.
The standard of living was not improving.
[Glasser] And that's
where perestroika came in.
[David Remnick] Gorbachev
starts introducing economic reforms
like cooperative businesses,
semi-capitalist businesses.
Perestroika means rebuilding,
and that has to do largely with economics,
and to some extent politics.
[Sarotte] Gorbachev, from above,
opens the door to reform,
and when he gives an inch, suddenly
everyone says, "Well, we want a mile."
And so you have protests springing up
all across Central and Eastern Europe.
Very important in this context is Poland.
[crowd chanting]
[chanting]
From the very beginning of the Cold War,
Poland is a thorn in the Russians' side.
Poland is a country
that has a whole tradition of resistance,
of insurrections against foreign rule.
[evocative music playing]
- [man speaking indistinctly]
- [applause]
[Garton Ash] In 1978,
the Cardinal of Kraków,
Karol Wojtyla,
is elected Pope John Paul II.
The Polish pope.
Unheard of.
Never happened before.
Popes are Italian or French.
[reporter] One overriding fact
about the Polish people is this.
In a nation of 35 million,
30 million, yes, 30 million,
believe in and adhere to
the Roman Catholic Church.
This in a communist society
that, on paper, is anti-Church.
[Tim Weiner] When the pope
comes to Poland,
millions of people
are thronging the streets,
and the pope gives them a message of hope.
[reporter] When the Polish pope
comes to pay homage here,
no one doubts that he is challenging
the official wisdom
about his country's character.
The pope didn't say,
"Down with Big Brother."
He didn't have to.
[Garton Ash] It's as if
the communist state
has ceased to exist for ten days.
Vast crowds turn out.
Mass prayers, hymns. God save Poland.
[crowd singing]
[Garton Ash] That prepares the ground
for the wave of strikes in August 1980.
[indistinct chanting]
[compelling music playing]
[chanting]
[Weiner] An extraordinarily
brave group of people in Poland
formed a group known as Solidarity.
SOLIDARITY
[Weiner]
Solidarity began as a labor union,
as a trade union movement,
seeking better wages
and working conditions
in the dockyards of Gdańsk.
And Solidarity's leader
is a man named Lech Walesa.
[indistinct chanting]
[Weiner] Lech Walesa is a very earthy
shipyard worker, trade union leader.
Big, bristling mustache.
Very bluff personality.
[in Polish] I think you have heard
the situation we are currently in,
that is
experts, that is the two sixes,
the government along with ours,
they debate, that is, they already agree
on specific things
in the third and fourth points.
[Garton Ash] And he has an incredible
natural political instinct.
[reporter] A reported 100,000 workers
in some 140 different
industries and factories
are now on strike in communist Poland.
They want more money and more freedom,
two items the government
of communist party chief Edward Gierek
will be hard-pressed to grant.
[speaking in Polish]
[Garton Ash] The communist regime caves in
and concedes something
that has never been conceded
in the entire history
of the communist world since 1917,
which is an independent
self-governing trades union.
Solidarity.
[chanting in Polish]
[Garton Ash] And this becomes
a ten-million-strong opposition movement.
A national liberation movement.
[Robert Gates]
There was a very real concern
that the Soviets were going
to invade Poland because of Solidarity
and their view that the Poles
had not acted strongly enough.
[speaking in Polish]
[Garton Ash]
On the 13th of December, 1981,
the Poles woke up to a grim-faced
General Wojciech Jaruzelski on television
saying the situation in the country
was anarchy, which wasn't true.
It had become so dramatic
that he had to declare a state of war.
[tense music playing]
[Garton Ash] Poles look out of the window,
and there were tanks on the streets.
But they're Polish tanks.
There had been enormous Soviet pressure
on Jaruzelski to crack down.
[reporter]
Communist authorities raid a conference
of Solidarity's national leaders.
The entire presidium
is arrested in its hotel.
[tense music continues]
[Garton Ash] There were
a number of people who were killed,
particularly in the coal mines.
But a lot more people, most of my friends,
were put into internment camps.
[Gates] By imposing martial law,
Jaruzelski avoided a Soviet invasion.
But he ended up with martial law anyway.
SOLIDARITY
MAZOVIA
[Garton Ash] Solidarity survives
as an underground organization.
There was very significant
financial support from the West,
encouraged by Pope John Paul II,
by the way, who said that was a good idea.
[Gates] You basically had three
very different institutions
committed to supporting Solidarity.
One was CIA in the United States.
The second was the AFL-CIO,
the American labor movement.
And the third was the pope.
And we always felt that the pope probably
had the best intelligence of anybody
on what was going on inside Poland because
he had agents in every church. [chuckles]
There was never direct cooperation
among those three,
but there were contacts at the very top.
We kind of all knew
what we were doing with Solidarity,
so we didn't get crossways
with each other.
[Weiner] The CIA began a modest operation
to give the underground leaders
of Solidarity
the weapons that they needed to win.
And they were the tools of a free press.
[Gates] We provided a lot
of communications equipment,
a lot of printing presses,
things like that for Solidarity.
The CIA developed the capability,
that basically fit into a large suitcase,
that allowed us to take control
of the Polish national television system
for about ten minutes,
and which we broadcast the itinerary
and where the pope was gonna be and when.
And millions of people turned out.
Yeah, we just took over the signal.
This had a galvanizing effect on people.
[chanting in Polish] We will win!
We will win! We will win!
[Garton Ash, in English] This does
not mean in any way, shape, or form
that the CIA
pulled the strings of Solidarity.
Nothing of the kind.
Solidarity made its own strategy,
but there was economic support.
[dramatic music playing]
[Garton Ash] Gradually,
Solidarity and the communist government
come back to negotiations.
Which leads to the first semi-free
election in Eastern Europe in 40 years
on the 4th of June, 1989.
[reporter] Polish voters
have seized the opportunity
to pass judgment through the ballot box
on the apparatus which they say
has failed Poland in the past 40 years.
[dramatic music continues]
[Weiner] The Polish government
tried very hard to destroy Solidarity,
but it lived, and it prevailed.
[music climaxes]
[Garton Ash] We were euphoric in Poland
on the evening of the 4th of June, 1989.
We thought,
"This is it. This is the moment."
We finally got that.
It's the beginning
of the end of communism.
[chanting in Polish]
[Garton Ash] I come back to
a newspaper office in Warsaw that evening,
and I see on a small
black-and-white TV screen
the first footage
of the people being killed
just off Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
[somber music playing]
Tiananmen Square is where you have
the Chinese Communist Party
using violence to defend itself.
[speaking in Mandarin]
[Joe Detrani]
This is the Deng Xiaoping era.
When Deng took over in '78,
China probably
was the poorest country in East Asia.
And Deng said, "Market economy works."
"Open things up.
Bring foreign investors in here."
"Let's send our people overseas."
Opening up to the West,
opening up to the world.
[reporter] 8:30 in the morning,
and the crowds
at the Xidan Department Store in Peking
made a rush for it once inside.
The standard of living in China
is going up.
[Detrani] But the reform was not reform
towards democratization.
It wasn't reform that,
"We're now gonna open everything up,
and everybody will have
a voice in the government,
and we'll listen
to the majority of the people."
No, that wasn't Deng Xiaoping.
Deng Xiaoping was a Leninist.
[Wang Dan, in Mandarin] Under Gorbachev,
the Soviet Union was undergoing reform.
We also wanted China
to go through political reform.
College students
in the '80s in China were fearless.
We needed to put more pressure
on the government.
We started a hunger strike on May 13th.
[chanting in Mandarin]
[Wang Dan] Martial law
was officially declared on May 19th, 1989.
After declaring martial law,
the government sent troops with tanks
to make us leave Tiananmen Square.
The government did not expect
for the people of Beijing
to all come out and block these tanks.
[clamoring]
[tense music playing]
[Wang Dan] After martial law was declared,
it did not achieve its purpose
until June 3rd,
when Deng Xiaoping decided
to handle the situation through force.
[reporter, in English]
It was the swift and terrible ending
to the Beijing spring of 1989.
Hundreds of thousands
of students and workers
and other hopeful Chinese citizens who,
through their long demonstration
for democracy,
had been seeking a peaceful dialogue
with the leaders of this vast nation,
received instead the harshest of responses
to their demands for reform and freedom.
[Wang Dan, in Mandarin] Martial law forces
came out shooting citizens and students,
forcibly opening up the streets
to finally occupy Tiananmen Square.
I had many classmates who were there.
They called telling us that the government
opened fire, that people had died,
that people were collapsing
on the ground, et cetera.
I saw the tanks that were burned down,
bikes that had fallen
all over the ground, et cetera.
Many people died in 1989.
[reporter, in English] A doctor estimated
the number of dead at 500.
The doctor said,
"My government has gone mad."
One official government report
characterized the massacre
as a glorious victory
over counter-revolutionary turmoil.
[Garton Ash] From that day on,
everybody in Eastern Europe
is talking about the Chinese solution.
The fear that there will be
a violent crackdown,
which was a real danger.
And this becomes absolutely knife-edge
in East Germany in October 1989.
[brooding music playing]
[Sarotte] East Germany,
or by its more formal name,
the German Democratic Republic,
was in fact an undemocratic dictatorship.
It's run by a politburo,
a small group of men,
and the general secretary
of the politburo,
the person in charge, is Erich Honecker.
Erich Honecker, after Tiananmen Square,
instructed all media to have stories
praising how the Chinese
had bravely restored order.
IN THE BATTLE OF OUR TIME, THE GDR
AND THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
STAND SIDE BY SIDE
This was obviously a message
to his own people. "Don't try anything."
Honecker is a hard-liner
who's horrified by Gorbachev's reforms.
He believed in the iron fist.
[Honecker, in German] After the liberation
of our people from the yoke of fascism
by the glorious Soviet army,
and after the years
of a difficult beginning,
we have constructed
a new beginning
of a new socialist social order.
[brooding music continues]
[Garton Ash, in English]
The world is divided
into the West and the East,
and these two worlds clash in Berlin.
And the symbol of that clash
is the Berlin Wall.
I actually went to live in East Berlin.
What I discovered was an Orwellian state
where you really got, in a way,
as close to 1984 as we've ever come.
That is to say
that there was so much surveillance
by the East German secret police,
the Stasi,
that they didn't need to use
a lot of torture and violence
because they had
the whole society under control.
[ominous music playing]
[Hans Schulze, in German]
I was always afraid in the East,
because you were at the mercy
of the authorities here,
be it the police
or perhaps later the Stasi.
The reason for the arrest
was the accusation of espionage.
I thought, "Well, you'll just
have to stay here for a few days
until everything gets sorted out."
Unfortunately, those few days
turned into a total of nine months.
So we have down here in the basement
two padded cells.
Detention cells.
Prisoners were brought here
when they did not behave correctly.
People were imprisoned here in the dark,
until they felt calm,
until they cooled down.
One prisoner seems
to have been in this darkened cell
for 14 days in a row.
[Sajonz] The Stasi collected documents
about people.
No one knew whether one
was one of these persons or not.
I wrote to my girlfriend in the West
that there are no bicycle tubes,
and they had documented it.
Such a nonsense, such a small shit.
[Siegbert Schefke] I filmed undercover.
There was one situation
where I filmed in the backyard.
It was really empty,
as dead as in Detroit.
Yes? Even half burned. [chuckles]
And then there were curtains moving.
And I filmed it.
Then a woman opened the curtain
and said, "Film again!"
"Film in which kind of dirt we live in!"
"Show this to the world!"
I thought, "That's not possible.
Are we living in the apocalypse?"
[crowd cheering]
[Horst Teltschik, in English]
What was important
was Gorbachev had told his allies
that they are responsible for themselves.
That he will not be able
to help them economically, financially.
But this was not good enough
for the Eastern Europeans.
[machinery whirring]
[Teltschik] They needed money.
They needed cooperation.
And this was helping to start this, uh,
process of liberalization.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Garton Ash] The pressure gradually
comes up and up and up.
[Wolfgang Ischinger]
In the spring and early summer of 1989,
it became clear that there was more
and more dissatisfaction in the GDR.
GDR people were allowed to travel
around the member countries
of the Warsaw Pact.
So they could go from the GDR,
let's say, to Hungary.
[reporter] As more and more refugees
abandon their cars
[Ischinger] So in the summer,
hundreds of GDR folks had gone to Hungary
trying to figure out whether they could go
from Hungary into Austria.
And Austria, of course,
was part of the free world.
[man, in German] Barbed wire fence,
a bit rusty, with a large hole in it.
We crawled through it, and there was
a sign previously attached by locals
which said, "Austria/Vienna."
We fell into each other's arms
and I believe it was the most
wonderful day of my life.
[reporter, in English] These young
East Germans arrived here overnight,
determined to follow the trail west.
The overnight total
They're constantly arriving.
I think 200 probably, something like this.
We don't know exactly how many are coming.
[Ischinger] Hungarians took a bold step
at that moment and opened the fence,
and allowed hundreds of these "refugees"
from East Germany to go west.
Faced with a choice
between its Warsaw Pact obligations,
and better relations with the West,
Hungary has chosen the West.
[reporter] Hungary realizes that
for the success of its economic reforms,
it really needs West German financial,
economic, and political support.
[in German] It was astounding to me
how fearless the young people were,
and the joy they found
in taking this path.
[horn honking]
[Garton Ash, in English]
You have a hemorrhage coming out,
particularly through Hungary at Austria,
but then through Czechoslovakia.
And the East German authorities
are coming on immense pressure
to do something about this.
Simultaneously, the East Germans
are gaining their courage,
many of them saying,
"I don't want to leave."
"I don't want to live in West Germany."
"I'm a Saxon or a Thuringian.
I want to stay here."
And you start getting
small demonstrations,
particularly in Leipzig and Dresden,
with people saying, "Wir bleiben hier."
"We're staying here. We're not leaving."
[reporter] The Church of St. Nicholas
in central Leipzig,
focus of the growing dissident movement,
drew together its congregation
from early in the day.
They had traveled here
from all parts of East Germany.
By the time of evening prayers,
the aisles were packed here and
at four other churches across the city,
a sign of the central role
the Protestant clergy are playing
in the search for greater democracy.
[Turek, in German]
This has always been debated.
How political is the Church
or the clergy allowed to be?
[liturgical music playing]
[Turek] Jesus said, "You have to be
generous with your talents."
"You should use them, not bury them."
Which means our telephone
can be used by the communications group.
With our printing machine,
leaflets are printed.
STOP THE MONOLOGUE
The church gave us a roof over our heads.
On Mondays, there was a prayer
for peace in the church.
And after that, going on the street.
[Turekl] To me, Leipzig has always been
a very cosmopolitan city
because two times a year, they had a fair.
An international fair.
[Schefke] There was
the international press.
And they managed to go
to the street with a few hundred people,
straight out of the church.
[protesting in German]
FOR AN OPEN LAND
WITH FREE PEOPLE
This banner was shown for five seconds,
then the Stasi took it away.
[woman] Hey!
Pigs!
[clapping]
[clamoring]
[chanting] Stasi out! Stasi out!
Stasi out! Stasi out! Stasi out!
[in English] These demonstrations,
they're gradually building up.
40 YEARS
GDR
[Friedrichs, in German] Good day,
spectators from Berlin's Karl Marx Avenue.
The tenth hour has ended
on this 7th of October,
which citizens
of the German Democratic Republic
will celebrate in a variety of ways.
[clamoring]
[reporter in English] Against the backdrop
of thousands of its desperate citizens
fleeing to the West,
the aging leadership
of the East German Communist Party
threw a party today
to celebrate their 40th year in power.
Among the honored guests
was the man who most symbolizes change
in East Bloc nations,
Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev.
[in German] On the 7th of October,
there were celebrations in East Berlin,
40 years of the GDR.
[German reporter] On the occasion
of the anniversary of the GDR,
Erich Honecker and Mikhail Gorbachev
have the opportunity
to continue their exchange of views
on questions of socialist construction
in both countries.
[reporter in English] "He did not
specifically mention the refugee crisis,"
said a spokesman,
"but he preached reform."
"A friendly warning
from a leader who knows all too well
what happens to those who resist change."
I believe danger awaits those
who do not react to the real world.
[reporter] Honecker listened and responded
that he is working to strengthen
his revolutionary ideals.
Translation, "I'll just keep
doing it my way, thanks."
[Sarotte] Erich Honecker
and Gorbachev end up in conflict,
and it's embarrassing
to the East German regime
because its own citizens are going
on the street chanting, "Gorby, Gorby!"
[chanting] Gorby! Gorby!
Gorby! Gorby! Gorby!
GORBY, GORBY, HELP US!
[Sarotte] They want more of that spirit.
They want reforms.
And their own leader, Erich Honecker,
doesn't want to deliver those.
[reporter] It's now four hours
since Gorbachev left Berlin,
and the police are still struggling
to control crowds on the streets.
[clamoring]
He said Gorbachev tried to show us
the way, but Honecker rejected it.
[reporter] The entire anniversary weekend
has been marked by clashes
between police and demonstrators
calling for a freer society.
[Sajonz, in German]
October 7, the Day of the Republic,
there were flags
and demonstrations and so on.
And I burst into tears.
I had a crying fit and thought,
"Somebody has to change something."
And then I realized I have to go
to this demonstration on October 9th.
[Garton Ash in English] The crucial moment
is on October 9th in Leipzig,
where the tension was enormously high.
[in German] I made around 25 reports
for Western television.
[speaking in German]
[Sarotte, in English] Ziggy Schefke
and Aram Radomski,
they're basically working together
with a friend in the West.
Their friend would smuggle them
camera equipment and videotapes.
Their friend worked at a news channel,
then they would smuggle the tapes out
and their friend would broadcast them.
[Schefke, in German] And on
the 9th of October, we drove to Leipzig.
And we passed military convoys.
We passed soldiers.
A huge military convoy
with 20 trucks with soldiers.
And Aram said,
"They're also going to Leipzig."
[Sarotte, in English]
The East German regime thought about
carrying out a German Tiananmen Square.
In Leipzig in October 1989,
it made preparations
to slaughter protesters.
HOSTILITY TO THE STATE
SHALL NO LONGER BE TOLERATED
[Turek, in German] Members from
state security made clear
they had been pressed to use weapons.
There was a huge military presence.
[Sajonz] And that day I said
to my neighbor, who was a policewoman,
"I'm going there today."
Then she said, "Are you stupid?
I know they are shooting today."
[tense music playing]
[Sajonz] I was totally scared.
[Schefke] We need
to find a camera position.
Friends told us,
"Ask the pastor of the Reformed Church
to let you into the church."
The caretaker brought us to the roof.
To the very top of it.
And we were lying there
in the pigeon droppings.
[Garton Ash, in English]
For individual East Germans,
this is such a moment.
I remember a friend of mine telling me
that when she left her apartment
to join the demo,
she had no idea
whether anyone would join her.
And then at the next street corner,
there was one other person.
And then two blocks down,
there were two more people.
And then five blocks down,
there were 15 more people.
And she suddenly realized
it's gonna be okay,
because there are this many of us.
And it broke the barrier of fear.
[in German] We are the people!
We are the people!
It was very moving to see
so many people demonstrating together.
[people chanting]
We are the people! We are the people!
We are the people! We are the people!
[Schefke] You cannot imagine
how powerful 70,000 people can scream.
"We are the people, Gorbachev, Gorbachev."
Gorby! Gorby!
[Schefke] There was silence
between these chants.
The silence, and you just hear
the steps of tens of thousands of people.
[Turek] What the demonstrators wanted
can best be read, from my point of view,
from the chants that had formed.
"Democracy, now or never."
This was chanted,
"Democracy, now or never!"
Free elections.
"Free elections! Free elections!"
[chanting in German]
[Schefke] And there are stairs,
there was the headquarters of the Stasi.
The officers were standing
behind the curtains.
And were looking at the demonstrators.
And the demonstrators walked by.
And they put candles on the stairs.
A thousand candles.
Really, 1,000 candles standing there.
And this discipline.
No one had a stone. No one.
[emotional music playing]
[Schefke] Because no one threw a stone,
there was no reason for the government,
the military, or police to react.
[Turek] We want those
that are standing opposite us,
we want to address them
and not see them as opponents,
but talk to them and get them on our side.
So not saying, "Bloody cop."
But saying, "You are actually one of us."
"You feel the same way."
And shouting "No violence"
was an essential appeal to the other side.
To our own people,
but also to the opposite side.
[chanting]
Armed forces were standing at the ready.
The regime had already prepared
hospital beds in the area.
And then somehow they said,
"We can't open fire on demonstrators
who are clearly not throwing any stones
because they are
carrying candles in one hand
and covering them with the other hand
to keep candles from blowing out."
"We just can't shoot them."
[protesters chanting]
[Schefke] I was on that steeple,
and not with the demonstrators.
But this power that I felt up there,
200 stairs higher,
that was really impressive.
And then Aram said, or I said,
"If this is broadcast
in Western television tomorrow,
this will not only change Germany,
but also Europe and the whole world."
And we lay there in the pigeon shit.
But we could feel it,
that this was a very special day.
VIDEOCASSETTE IS WRITE PROTECTED
It was almost always the same ritual.
You had to contact the diplomat
who could easily go to the West
and give him the videocassette.
On that 9th of October,
he was in the revolving door
of a big hotel.
I passed it to him in the door.
Then he sat in his Mercedes
and drove to the West. [chuckles]
And that videocassette was gone.
It was out of my hands.
And I waited another day for the pictures.
[reporter 1, in English] The demonstration
began in the narrow, cobbled streets
in the center of the city,
where people seemed unworried
by the menacing presence
of large numbers
of plainclothes security men.
There seems to have been
a fundamental change of attitude,
as people refuse to be intimidated
by the communist leadership.
[reporter 2] These were scenes
unprecedented in the city's history.
Banners calling for free elections,
free travel, and a free press,
and the people demanding new leadership.
[Schefke, in German] You have to think
about the power of images.
Because 95% of people in the GDR
could watch Western television.
And that's who I wanted to reach.
Reach the undecided
in the living rooms of the GDR.
[Sajonz] I think that
this big demonstration on October 9th
was the beginning of the end of the GDR.
[crowd chanting]
[Sarotte, in English] Erich Honecker
tried in Leipzig on October 9th, 1989,
to institute a Tiananmen local event,
which failed.
And when that failed, the combination
of his conflict with Gorbachev
and his loss of face
with his other politburo colleagues
meant that he fell from power.
So he's ousted and replaced by Egon Krenz.
[speaking German]
[Garton Ash, in English]
From that moment on,
there were larger
and larger demonstrations
also in Berlin
at the beginning of November.
So you have the pressure
of all the people leaving.
You have the pressure
of all the people protesting.
[Sarotte] It's clear that
the East German regime is crumbling,
and it's the size of those protests
that inspires Egon Krenz to say,
"Hey, maybe I should
throw these people a bone."
"Maybe I should give a press conference
where I make it sound as if I'm going to,
you know, offer them some travel freedom."
"Maybe I should announce
a few minor changes."
[tense music playing]
[Sarotte] On November 9th,
Egon Krenz decides to announce
these seemingly nice-sounding
travel regulations
that are actually not that significant.
The problem is that the person he assigns
to do the press conference,
Günter Schabowski,
has no media skills whatsoever.
If you're a leader of a dictatorship,
you don't need to develop media skills.
You just write the headlines yourself.
The regime didn't usually hold
press conferences for Western journalists,
but they're there.
So Günter Schabowski
starts off at 6:00 p.m.
[Schabowski speaking in German]
[Sarotte, in English] He drones on
about the minutiae of the party.
[in German] Contributions
to discussions were generally
a complex wide range of topics.
[Sarotte, in English] Finally, at about
five minutes to 7:00, Schabowski says,
"Wait, there's this announcement.
You must all have a copy."
Even though no one does.
And, "Let me let me read it to you."
Today, we have decided
to introduce measures
permitting every citizen of the GDR
to leave for the federal republic
by any crossing points.
Now what was on the piece of paper was,
"You still need to apply."
But people heard
"permission to cross the border."
Reporters are looking
at each other and saying,
"We think he just opened the wall,
but we're not sure."
And, so there's
this sort of stunned silence.
One journalist, Daniel Johnson,
stands up in the back of the room.
[in German] What will happen
with the Berlin Wall now?
[Sarotte, in English] And Schabowski
is like a deer in headlights.
[in German] With immediate effect,
according to my knowledge.
And he says, "Straightaway."
And it's not true. He got it wrong.
But the world's press reports this.
In a news conference which ended
just a few minutes ago in East Berlin,
government officials announced
that communist East Germany
has now declared their border open
with West Germany.
[commentator] The Germans East and West
heard Mr. Schabowski,
who speaks for the government,
he's the media spokesman,
say there are no more borders.
That East Germans may cross to the West
over whatever existing
border frontiers there are.
[news anchor] Will that wall itself,
along the Brandenburg Gate
near Checkpoint Charlie,
will those openings be open
for East Germans who want to come
directly from East Berlin to West Berlin?
[commentator] As we read
the words of Mr. Schabowski,
the words that were read to the people
here tonight, that is correct.
[Schefke, in German] No one understood it.
Is he crazy, is he insane?
Aram and I said,
"We go to Bornholmer Street now."
We will go to the checkpoint
at Bornholmer Street
and see what's going on.
If we don't come back within two hours,
we are in the West.
Or we got arrested.
And then we arrived there.
Twenty people were standing there.
And Aram went to the border guard
and he said,
"We want to talk to the boss."
He looked at us, "What do you want?"
"We want to talk to the boss."
[in English] Harald Jäger is the person
who is in charge at the border crossing,
so he's the senior Stasi officer
on the night shift.
He's watching the press conference
inside the border crossing.
He screamed at the television,
"That is all bullshit. I have no orders."
"I'm here at the border,
and no one has told me any of this."
"This is not true.
I don't know what's going on."
[Schefke, in German] Then someone came,
a man named Major Jäger,
and Aram told him,
"Immediately and promptly,
we are allowed to go to the West."
And then he went to the phone
in his barrack.
[in English] He called his superiors,
"I've got ten people. What am I doing?"
They said, "Business as usual."
[guard, in German] I ask you
in the interest of order and security
to leave the area
in front of the checkpoint.
This is mass disinformation!
I could have stayed at home and slept.
[Sarotte, in English]
Jäger called again. "I've got 100 people!"
"Business as usual."
"I've got 200 people!"
"Business as usual." And he said
You know, he just got angrier
and angrier at being left in the lurch.
[suspenseful music rising]
[in German] Open! Open! Open!
[Sarotte, in English] He calls again,
and finally his superior officers say,
"All right,
since you're annoying us so much,
here's something you can do."
"Take the loudest, most obnoxious
protesters who are, you know,
really pushing it
to get into the border crossing,
bring them in, take their passports,
put a stamp over their face,
and then let them out
the other side to the west."
"By putting a stamp over their faces,
you have expelled them forever."
"You have withdrawn
their citizenship of East Germany."
[Schefke, in German] We gave him our ID.
And he stamped it.
And we were allowed to pass.
And we crossed this bridge.
And we were the only ones.
You have to imagine that, totally crazy.
And I said to Aram,
"What are they going to do now?"
And he said, "They will shoot us down."
I said, "No, they will not shoot us down."
"They will arrest us
and take us to prison."
And we crossed the bridge.
And there was no West-Berlin police.
[chuckling] There was nothing.
We were standing
in front of a Mercedes taxi.
I said, "This must be the West
because there is a Mercedes taxi."
[chuckles] And I said this to the driver.
"Yes," he said, "You are in West Berlin."
[emotional music playing]
[girl yells excitedly]
[Garton Ash, in English]
At about 10:40 p.m.,
a hugely respected
West German TV anchorman,
silver-haired Hanns Joachim Friedrichs,
says, "The gates in the wall
are standing wide open."
[in German]
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
One should be cautious with superlatives.
They tend to wear out fast.
But this evening
it is permissible to risk one.
This 9th of November is a historic day.
The GDR has announced that its borders
are open to everyone as of now.
The gates in the wall are wide open.
[Garton Ash, in English] It wasn't true.
They weren't yet wide open.
[Sarotte]
Back at the Bornholmer Street station,
of the people he lets out,
most of them, you know,
head for the bright lights
of the big city.
But a young couple come back immediately.
And they come back
to the border crossing and say,
"That's great.
We just wanted to see if we can do that."
"But we did it now. We need to get home
because our baby's home in bed."
And the guards are looking at each other
because these people
have been expelled forever.
The guards say, "You can't come back.
You've been expelled."
"You can never come back."
And so Harald Jäger
comes out to this young couple
who was absolutely losing it.
This is a man who's never
disobeyed orders in 25 years.
And he looks at this family.
His regime is collapsing.
And he says to them,
"Oh, go home to your baby."
[indistinct chatter]
[Sarotte] That was the beginning
of a slippery slope.
And he said, "Finally, about 11:30,
I looked at my men and I said,
'Either we start shooting
or we're gonna open up.'"
So he gives the order to open up,
and people flow through.
[crowd shouting excitedly]
[Garton Ash] And this is the moment
at which world history turns,
because then the other frontier crossings
start to open up
and hundreds of thousands
of people go across.
[emotional music rising]
[crowd cheering]
[Teltschik]
And it was an absolute surprise.
We got the first message from journalists.
"Something is going on in Berlin."
The signals that the wall is open.
[Sarotte] And once people actually
are flowing through the Berlin Wall,
then people start going
to the Brandenburg Gate,
even though
there's no border crossing there,
because it's just
the icon of wider Berlin.
This gate standing
right in front of the wall.
And it's right in the heart of the city.
Unlike Bornholmer,
the people there were not in agreement
with this idea of, "Let's open up."
They are trying to restore control.
[guard, in German] I have a request.
We would like to ask you to leave
the front part of the Brandenburg Gate.
And you too, behind the barrier, please.
Nothing else will happen today.
How did you come over here?
That's a good question!
[indistinct chatter]
[in English] Good evening.
Live from the Berlin Wall,
on the most historic night
in this wall's history.
What you see behind me
is a celebration of this new policy
announced today
by the East German government.
Now, for the first time
since the wall was erected in 1961,
people will be able
to move through freely.
[Sarotte] And they really don't know
what's going on because clearly,
there's reports the wall's open.
There's footage of people going through,
there's people getting on the wall.
But the guards
are trying to hose them off.
[cheering]
I climbed over the wall
and come and walk, uh,
through the Brandenburg Gate.
I jumped over the wall.
- You jumped over the wall?
- Yeah!
I'm happy, you know.
I have been dreaming of this for years,
and I don't know what to say. I'm happy.
[chanting]
[Garton Ash] That is the moment
where this greatest symbol
of the Cold War is overcome.
[Teltschik] It was a kind of miracle.
Oh, it was very deeply emotional.
[indistinct chatter]
That was a moment
when the East Germans themselves,
leadership considered using violence
to clear the square.
[Ischinger] We were all holding our breath
after the wall had opened.
It was not clear
whether that was by design
or by mistake or by misunderstanding.
Would the Soviets send the tanks?
Would shots be fired?
Even though there are hard-liners
in the Soviet forces
in East Germany thinking,
"Why aren't we doing something?"
That's a decision Gorbachev
would have to take. He sleeps through it.
[Palazhchenko] If he had been awakened
with that information,
what would have changed?
Gorbachev has said on many occasions
that, well, what happened, happened.
Neither that announcement
nor what happened afterwards
was done on his orders.
Had Gorbachev been awakened
with that information,
he would have said,
"Well, stay out of it." That's it.
[Schefke, in German]
Now we want to celebrate a bit.
I only have a dim memory of that evening.
We just had a big party. Five days long.
[gentle music playing]
[Sarotte in English] One of the people
who crossed that night was Angela Merkel.
Angela Merkel was actually
not a major protester or dissident,
but that night, she crossed the wall
and she saw possibility.
[in German] That was actually
the most beautiful moment in my life.
Suddenly there were no longer two worlds.
No East and no West.
[poignant music playing]
[reporter] Willy Brandt, the man
who was mayor when the wall was built,
told the crowd it was the end
of a divided Germany.
One has the feeling
that after many difficult years,
we may now be close to a point
where that kind of division
comes to an end.
Division in Berlin,
and not only in Berlin.
[Margaret Thatcher]
I think it was a great day for freedom.
I watched the scenes on television
last night and again this morning.
Well, I felt one ought not only
to hear about them, but see them,
because you see the joy on people's faces,
and you see what freedom means to them.
It makes you realize that you can't stifle
or suppress people's desire for liberty.
[Rice] On that particular day,
we were working on something
having to do with refugees
and we were very busy in our meetings.
And I came out and I got a call
from General Scowcroft,
the national security advisor's secretary.
And uh, Flo said, "The general wants you
to come over and talk to the president
on what just happened in Berlin."
And I said,
"What just happened in Berlin?"
And she said,
"Turn on the TV! Turn on CNN!"
The Iron Curtain between East Germany
[Rice] So we turned on CNN.
The wall was coming down!
We all rushed to the Oval Office
to tell President Bush,
"You must go to Berlin,
for Kennedy and for Truman
and for Reagan."
And he said, "And what would I do?
Dance on the wall?"
He said, "This is a German moment,
not an American moment."
[interviewer] Did you ever imagine
anything like this happening?
Well, we've imagined it,
but, uh, I can't say that I foresaw
this development at this state.
No, I didn't foresee it.
But imagining it? Yes.
When I talked about a Europe
whole and free,
we're talking about this kind of freedom
to come and go.
[crowd cheering and chanting]
[Remnick] The Berlin Wall
didn't just happen overnight.
This was a culmination of a process,
and the process began in the square foot
inside Mikhail Gorbachev's head,
to some extent, which is to say,
empire is untenable.
Empire is impossible.
[Sarotte] Suddenly,
everything looked different.
Politics were different.
People began speaking to one another
in a different way.
And the project of the Cold War,
which had been the defense
of the West against the East,
suddenly became something different.
It came to be the project
of the reunification of Germany.
The project of winding down the military
involvement of the US in Europe,
and of changing our relationships
with almost everybody in the region.
[compelling music climaxing]
Bush was very concerned
as the wall came down.
Does this provide the pretext
for the Kremlin hard-liners in the KGB,
the Army, and the party
to move against Gorbachev?
So that dictated his response.
He did not want
to give those guys in the Kremlin
any pretext to move against Gorbachev
or to try and send troops.
[reporter] The Kremlin has reacted
to recent events with some consistency,
making clear that political decisions
about East Germany
were taken in Berlin and not in Moscow.
[Rice] Events were moving so fast
with such a dizzying pace,
you got up every day
wondering what is gonna happen next.
The fall of the wall in November
was actually in the middle
of several events that had taken place.
[crowd chanting]
[reporter] They took to the streets
in Baku to defy the Kremlin,
the latest in a dangerous roll call
of republics or nationalities
who increasingly believe it is time
to break free of communist rule.
[Vernon Walters]
Even Bulgaria has begun to crack.
The winds of freedom are blowing,
and they're blowing from the West.
People who don't understand that
are gonna be gone with the wind.
[reporter 1] In Bulgaria,
one of the longest-serving leaders
in the Communist Bloc,
President Todor Zhivkov,
resigned today after 35 years in power.
He was replaced by Petar Mladenov,
known as a relative moderate.
[reporter 2] A mass popular movement
born from nowhere 12 days ago
is on its way to toppling
the communist monopoly in Czechoslovakia.
Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright,
and other leaders
of the Civic Forum movement,
arrived threatening
to bring the country on strike again
if their demands were not met.
Havel, disgraced,
his works banned under the old regime,
was able to sit and demand change.
[chanting]
[reporter 3]
Here, it was the ringing of the keys.
[keys ringing]
Thousands of Czechoslovaks
shaking their house keys,
their way of telling the Communist Party,
"The bell tolls for you."
[reporter 4] There were reports of more
gunfire today in the streets of Romania.
Unconfirmed reports said
that as many as 2,000 people
have been killed by government forces
since demonstrations
against the hard-line communist regime
began on Saturday.
[reporter 5] Ceaușescu is unceremoniously
bundled from an armored car,
making his last journey
before his execution.
His 70-year-old wife,
Elena Ceaușescu, is also seen.
She faced similar charges to her husband,
and is said to have met the same fate.
The couple appeared remarkably relaxed,
considering the fact
they'd been jointly charged with genocide.
[news anchor] Mikhail Gorbachev
won the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize.
The Soviet president was cited today
for his leading role in the peace process,
and the openness
he's brought to Soviet Society.
[in Russian] It shows that
we're on the right path,
and the changes we are making are right.
[compelling music playing]
[speaking in Russian]
[Rice] It was always interesting to try
to understand Gorbachev's long game.
I got to spend some time with him
on a couple of occasions,
and it occurred to me
that he was a kind of true believer.
He actually believed,
if you were to eliminate the lies,
that's what glasnost was about.
Telling the truth about the past.
If you were to eliminate the repression,
and people could feel free again,
if you were to allow people
to have a good life,
then they would want
to be a part of a reformed Soviet Union.
[crowd cheering]
But after 1989, expectations were raised.
So, people in Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania, they thought,
"Why not go for full independence?"
[Remnick] By the summer of 1991,
there are independence movements
all over the Soviet Union,
and Gorbachev is hanging on by a thread.
What he didn't realize
was that the Soviet Union was an edifice
that was built on very unstable ground.
He never seemed to understand the degree
to which the whole thing was unraveling.
A group of us were tasked
to do some scenario planning,
and one was that there might
be a coup against Gorbachev.
Would we warn him?
Under what circumstances
would we warn him?
[reporter] Repeating once again
our top story,
Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev
has been removed from power.
[Fiona Hill] Gorbachev is convinced
that he's gonna be killed,
and it seemed unlikely
he was gonna get out of this.
[in Russian] An anti-constitutional coup
has taken place.
I am under arrest.
[compelling music builds]
[closing theme music playing]