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After allowing for loopholes
junshan02 发表于 2012/7/18 11:50:00 |
After allowing for loopholes throughout the summer, effectively disabled its physical border defenses with Austria on 19 August 1989 and, 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. The East German government responded by disallowing any further travel to Hungary, but allowed those already there to return. This triggered a similar incident in neighboring Czechoslovakia. On this occasion, the East German authorities allowed them to leave, provided that they use a train which transited East Germany on the way. This was followed by mass demonstrations within East Germany itself. (See .) The longtime leader of East Germany, , resigned on 18 October 1989 and was replaced by a few days later. Honecker had predicted in January of that year that the wall would stand for 50 or 100 more years if the conditions that had caused its construction did not change.
Protest demonstrations broke out all over East Germany in September 1989. Initially, protesters were mostly people wanting to leave to the West, chanting "Wir wollen raus!" ("We want out!"). Then protestors began to chant "Wir bleiben hier", ("We're staying here!"). This was the start of what East Germans generally call the "Moncler shop" of late 1989. The protest demonstrations grew considerably by early November. The movement neared its height on 4 November when half a million people gathered at the , a rally for change in East Berlin's large public square and transportation hub. (Henslin, 07) |
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