Germany 1919-1990

1990

The contoversy about middle long range ballistic missiles that started in the late 1970's constituted another hotspot in the Cold War. An elaborate arms race was threatening and Cold War rhetoric not seen since the fifties and sixties was on the frontpages once again. When Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader since the fall of Chrutshev, died in 1982, he was succeeded by a number of gerontocratic leaders that represented very different interests within the Soviet elite and died very soon after their successions. When after them a younger man, Michael Gorbatshev, was chosen, a new era began.

Gorbatshev realised that the old Soviet system could not face the new fase in the Cold War and hope to survive, so he began a process of reform that het called perestroika. It included "openess" or "transperance" which he called "glasnost" in Russian. The whole thing led to a democratization of some sorts in the Soviet-Union, not unlike the one that had been going on in Poland during the Brezhnev era and was supressed by the powers that were in the communist world at the time. The whole thing also led to an agreement with the United States and Nato about the middle long range ballistic missiles crisis, that was thus resolved.

And so... suddenly the world found itself in a situation in which the Cold War was effectivly over. Regional battles that had been sparked by, or aggrivated by the Cold War would go on for decades. The Cold War itself, having been mainly a power struggle over Central-Europe would however die very soon.

The situation was now such that the regimes in the Soviet sattelite states were more ideologically Marxist-Leninist than the governement of the Soviet-Union itself. Marxism-Leninism in those countries had always been under fire from surpressed opposition groups however. When te Soviet governement declared that the former sattelite states could go "their own way", humorously known as the "Sinatra doctrine", the lives of Eastern Europe's communist dictatorships were numbered. Poland was the first country to go the way of a multi-party democracy with free and fair elections in 1988. Hungary would follow in 1989. The German Democratic Republic was now faced with a massive uprising of people after several East-German hollidaymakers in Hungary and Czechoslovakia had been allowed to travel to the Federal Republic. The GDR uprising resulted in the resignation of long-time dictator Erich Honecker (see persons depicted on the homepage). His successors opened the infamous Berlin Wall allowing GDR citizens to move freely to the West for the first time since that wall was erected in 1961. A multyparty democracy soon was erected within the GDR and the Federal Chancellor of West-Germany, Helmuth Kohl grabed the initiative to plead for German reunification. He skillfully underplayed his intentions at first and suggested a Confederation between GDR and FRG. after the new GDR governement (not yet chosen by free elections at the time) agreed to his plan, Kohl was a great influence in the GDR elections and his political friends won the day. Kohl now negotiated with the Soviets and he got a carte-blanche from Gorbatshev. The Federal Republic was able to realise the reunification of Germany on the 3. October 1990 when the Lands of the GDR joined the Federal Republic.

In the mean time all other communist states in Europe, with the exeption of Albania and Yugoslavia (not being dependent on the waning Soviet-Union) had had their democratic revolutions.