Germany in the Last Decade of the Cold War

German leadership celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) on 7 October 1989. The leaders of socialist brother nations were invited, including Mikhail Gorbachev. General Secretary Erich Honecker proudly declared in his speech that the GDR ‘would approach the year 2000 feeling confident that the future will belong to socialism’.1 Eleven days later, Honecker was ousted in the Politburo; the Berlin Wall came down one month later, and the revolutions in central European countries took their well-known course.

Less than a year later, the GDR had disappeared from the map and Germany was unified. Another year later, the Soviet Union had ceased to exist.