German Unification

Encouraged by Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of reform, rapprochement, and nonintervention, Hungary and Poland initiated democratic reforms in the summer of 1989. In September, thousands of East Germans fled to the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) over the newly opened Austrian-Hungarian border, and tens of thousands began demonstrating for democratic reforms in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) itself. Under pressure from Gorbachev and challenged within his own Socialist Unity Party (SED), hard-line leader Erich Honecker stepped down in October 1989.

Desperately seeking to stabilize its rule by appeasing the population’s growing demands for reform, the new SED leadership dropped travel restrictions and called for free elections. But within weeks of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, support among East Germans for unification grew, the GDR failed to stabilize, and German unity became the epicenter of world politics.