showed that summer how best to deal with them.
Honecker even despatched his protégé, Egon
Krenz, to Beijing to congratulate the Chinese
leadership on its bloody handling of the students
in Tiananmen Square. Bankrupt Albania was
another stout ally. Honecker, by now totally out
of touch, was looking forward to celebrating the
fortieth anniversary of the founding of the DDR.
So far the West Germans had done little to
encourage ideas of fundamental change in the
relationship between the two Germanies. Chan-
cellor Kohl, whose popularity had fallen very low,
seemed clumsy and out of depth. Within his coali-
tion government there were tensions with the
Free Democratic Party and with the astute foreign
minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who since 1987
had advocated a more flexible policy towards the
Soviet Union. The moments of pivotal change in
the triangular relationship of East and West
Germany and the USSR can be dated with some
precision. The Achilles heel of the Soviet Union’s
dominance was its own collapsing economy.
Gorbachev badly needed Western help, especially
West German help. When he arrived in Bonn to
a rapturous welcome from the crowds in June
1989, he really came as a supplicant for economic
assistance. The price was freedom for the Germans
in the DDR. Gorbachev and Kohl signed an
accord pledging them to work to end the divi-
sion of Europe, to respect human rights and to
expand economic and cultural cooperation.
Gorbachev’s spokesman, Gennadi Gerasimov
quipped that, for the people of the DDR, ‘there
was the Brezhnev Doctrine. Now we have the
Frank Sinatra Doctrine – let them do it their way.’
They very soon did.
The East German regime had to watch with
bewilderment the flood of DDR ‘tourists’ who
travelled to neighbouring Hungary, Czecho-
slovakia and Poland and then camped there in the
West German embassies waiting to leave for the
West. A trickle turned into a flood. During August
and September 1989 tens of thousands left and the
Hungarians opened the border to Austria. The
Hungarians, heavily in debt to the West, were
more anxious to please prosperous West Germany
than the bankrupt East. On 7 October, the
anniversary celebrations were held in East Berlin.
Gorbachev planted a Judas kiss on 77-year-old
Honecker’s cheek. It was the last occasion when
regimented loyalists waved their flags and cheered
their leader. In the backstreets, riot police were
trying to keep the protesters in check. Soon,
Honecker was urging that the police and army
should open fire on the demonstrators who were
gathering in East Germany’s principal cities –
East Berlin, Dresden and above all in Leipzig. This
decided leading communists in the Politburo to
organise a coup, with the Kremlin’s secret
approval. On 18 October 1989, Egon Krenz top-
pled and replaced an astonished Honecker. But,
with his wolfish look and smile, Krenz could not
quell the spirit of revolt. On 9 November 1989 he
ordered that the Berlin Wall should be opened.
The Protestant Church in East Germany had
played an honourable and courageous role in
forming an opposition grouping. It called itself
New Forum, a coalition of clergymen, artists,
socialists and ordinary men and women who
wanted to bring to an end the repression. Soon,
hundreds of thousands, many among them
former communists, took to the streets to
demonstrate. The call for the gang of communist
leaders to go was almost universal. Hundreds of
thousands wanted to live and move in freedom,
to change their drab lives. The El Dorado of the
West beckoned. Meanwhile, Chancellor Kohl was
becoming alarmed. The East Germans flooding to
West Germany, which was trying to cope with its
own unemployment and housing problems, were,
on second thoughts, not all that welcome. Would
it not be better after all if they stayed in their own
reformed eastern half of Germany?
In the DDR economic collapse and mounting
popular protest were wresting control from the
communist leadership. Scandals and corruption
were revealed. A reformist communist, Hans
Modrow, replaced Krenz early in December
- His hold on power was brief and tenuous.
The West Germans were, in a sense, also in
danger of losing control. Their fear was that they
would be swamped with Germans from the East.
Kohl, who had hesitated until the close of 1989,
had little alternative in 1990 but to ride the tiger.
Once he came to this conclusion he campaigned
with increasing gusto. First, in late November
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