Thirty years ago, on November 9, 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall came amid revolution, five days after 500,000 people gathered in protest. A spokesman for communist East Germany announced that its citizens could finally cross the border whenever they wanted, and the demolition of the wall commenced with hammers and picks.



After World War II, a defeated Germany had been divided into four “allied occupation zones,” occupied by the Soviet Union, Britain, the United States and France. As it created an Iron Curtain between communist East Germany and West Germany, Berliners could navigate freely across the divided city.



That ended in 1961. The Berlin Wall began overnight: Barbed wire, cinder blocks and then concrete