“When the walls came down, and the windows came up.”
 
Thomas Friedman in his book “World Is Flat”
 
According to the author, the event not only symbolized the end of the cold War, it allowed people from other side of the wall to join the economic mainstream. “11/9/89 is a discussion about the Berlin Wall coming down, the “fall” of communism, and the impact that Windows powered PCs (personal computers) had on the ability of individuals to create their own content and connect to one another.
 
Berlin Wall
 
For 30 years, the Berlin Wall was the defining symbol of the Cold War (symbol of Communism), separating East and the West Germany. The Berlin Wall existed between 1961 and 1989, constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off (by land) West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin until it was opened in 1989. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, which circumscribed a wide area that contained anti-vehicle trenches and other defences. The Eastern Bloc claimed that the wall was erected to protect its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the “will of the people” in building a socialist state in East Germany. In practice, the Wall served to prevent the massive emigration and defection that marked East Germany and the communist Eastern Bloc during the post-World War II period.
 
BACKGROUND – THE BERLIN WALL: THE PARTITIONING OF BERLIN
 
As World War II came to an end in 1945, a pair of Allied peace conferences at Yalta and Potsdam determined the fate of Germany’s territories. They split the defeated nation into four “allied occupation zones”: The eastern part of the country went to the Soviet Union, while the western part went to the United States, Great Britain, and France.
 
On August 13, 1961, the Communist government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) began to build a barbed wire and concrete “Antifascistischer Schutzwall,” or “antifascist bulwark,” between East and West Berlin. The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western influences from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections across East and West. The Berlin Wall stood until November 9, 1989 when the head of the East German Communist Party announced that citizens could cross the border whenever they pleased. To this day, the Berlin Wall remains one of the most powerful and enduring symbols of the Cold War.