Four decades or even more, its a little short of remarkable that were marking 25 years since the fall of the berlin wall. Its remarkable because on the one hand we can recall that event so vividly, but on the other hand, it sometimes seems like it took place a lifetime ago. Its also remarkable because for those of us who pursued our degrees and published our first books during the preceding decades, in some cases before the construction of the wall [ laughter ] its collapse seemed so unimaginable. In fact, if i can indulge you for a second, the year before the collapse, i organized a conference on john foster dulles. No one was more associated with the cold war. Some of you were there. There was lots of talk about the integration of europe. The soviets new thinking. Glasnost. Perestroika but no one was talking about the reunification this was the time john gaddes began their conferences on soviet and american relations. First time soviet and American Scholars got together. And Scott Armstrong had just come up with the idea of this thing called a National Security archive. But an end to the cold war . Not a chance. No discussion of it at all. Consequently whats not remarkable is that were really not much closer now than we were then to reaching a consensus on the fundamental questions regarding the events in germany at the time and then, of course, their aftermath. These questions concerned the drivers whether they be individual, state or international. These questions concerned the consequences whether they be international, state or individual. And these questions concerned the significance, the legacy, also in terms of individual, states and international. And while we have not reached any consensus, there are none in our profession, in our guild more qualified to articulate the terms of the debate and move the conversation forward than our three speakers tonight. None of them really need any introduction. But ill introduce them anyway. And ill do it all at once in order, in the order in which they will speak. Which i think i can sort out now. So that we can both ensure that theres maximum time for our general conversation as well as their opening remarks. Mary elise sarotte newest book the collapse, the accidental opening of the berlin wall will appear this autumn on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the wall. Her last book which im sure were all familiar with, 1989 the struggle to create post cold war europe was a Financial Times book of the year and won shafrs prize, le dfr afr afr daad prize for german and European Studies and as, aaa s shulman prize for distinguished scholarship on communist Foreign Policy. Princeton university will publish an updated Anniversary Edition in the autumn of 2014. So she actually gets a doubleheader. Mary serves as dean professor of history of International Relations at the university of Southern California and currently on leave as a visiting professor of government and history at harvard. Shes a former humboldt scholar, white house fellow and is a member for the institute of advanced study at princeton and is a lifetime member of the council of foreign relations. Mel leffler is a professor of American History at the university of virginia and a faculty fellow of the governing america in a Global Era Program at uvas miller center. Hes the author of several books on the cold war. And on u. S. Relations with europe, including for the soul of mankind, which won the george lewis prize from the American Historical Association and preponderance of power. Which won the bancroft, hoover and farrell prizes. In 2002 and 2003 he was a professor at oxford. Hes also held the kissinger chair at the library of congress. Mel has been the recipient of fellowships from the council on foreign relations, the United States institute of peace, the Woodrow Wilson center, and the Norwegian Nobel Institute and, of course, he served as president of shafr. In 2010 mel and arnie west collaborated the history of the cold war and most recently he coedited on certain Times AmericanForeign Policy after the cold war. Hes now editing, coediting a book on comparative strategy making and writing about the Foreign Policy of the george w. Bush administration. Our last speaker will be Jeffrey Engel. Jeff is founding director of the center for president ial history at Southern Methodist university. Prior to accepting that appointment, he held a postdoctoral fellowship and taught at the university of wisconsin, yale, the university of pennsylvania, haverford and texas a m. At texas a m, he was the 52 professor at the bush school and the director of programming for the Scowcroft Institute for teaching and mentorship. While at texas a m he received a silver star award for teaching and mentorship, distinguished Teaching Award from a Ms Association of former students and a University System chancellors teaching excellence award. Among the numerous articles and books he has written or edited. His cold war at 30,000 feet won the birds ell prize. He was shafrs 2012 lecturer and recipient of the Norwegian Nobel Institute senior fellowship. Jeff is currently writing, when the world seemed new, george h. L. W. Busch and the surprisingly peaceful end to the cold war. Mary . Thank you very much richard. Thank to you the society for inviting me to speak. And also its great that cspan is here so many more people can join us in their discussion today from their homes. Of course the people here have an advantage. The society wisely gave you two free drinks before you had to start listening to me so im hoping that will blunt the edge of your skeptical and penetrating questions. So i have just a few minutes to tell you a little bit about the fall of the wall, and then my colleagues will talk a little bit more about legacy and interpretation. As richard was kind enough to mention i have a book coming out on this topic in the fall and it will be the anniversary itself is november 9th. So youll be seeing a lot of media coverage, i hope, of my book but certainly of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the wall and its great that shafr has chosen to make this Plenary Session where we talk about the significance of this event. Sorry, minor technical difficulties. One thing thats important to me a lot of great events dont have great causes. Because after i wrote my last book, 1989, i got a lot of unexpected questions. 1989 is actually about the Foreign Policy that followed the collapse of the berlin wall. So in that book i just summarized in a few pages the way the wall came down and the bulk of the book is about the International Politics afterwards. I would go out and give talks about that book and get up and say, im here to talk about the Foreign Policy that followed the unintentional opening of the berlin wall and sometimes i wouldnt even get to that sentence. People would stop me. What do you mean unintentional opening of the berlin wall. Sometimes i would get a lot more poignant questions. Dont you know reagan opened the wall in 1987. The first time i got that question i was kind of shocked. By the fourth or fifth time i was no longer shocked and i realized that theres not a lot in languages other than german about the short term events that bring down the fall of the wall. Theres a lot of excellent scholarship about the causes for the fall of the wall but the proximate causes, the short term events are not wellknown in the nongerman speaking world and so i decided for the anniversary to try to put together that story as best i could and then of course as always happens when you start researching something it becomes more complicated than you expected. It ended up being a Fascinating Research topic. So let me just gallop through some of the ideas in my book and then if we have questions we can talk more about them. I want to talk a little bit about the precursor to the night of november 9, 1989, when the wall opens. And then a tiny bit about how we think about these events, memory and legacy, themes that my colleagues will emphasize as well. So its important to say that the first unexpected event actually happened not in berlin but in moscow which is to say there were a rapid series of deaths. In 2 1 2 years there were four leaders of the soviet union, of course, after brezhnev died in 1982 and then another one in 1984 and another one in 1985. There were so many funerals, Margaret Thatcher remarked at the second funeral, the soviets they know how to do a funeral im definitely coming back next year. It turned out she wasnt wrong. So after that embarrassing sequence of events the politburo was willing to take a risk on a man in his 50s and that man would not die and that man turned out to be mikhail gorbachev. Mikhail gorbachev comes to power in march of 1985. Of course, he not only institutes glasnost and perestroika but begins a series of meetings with president Ronald Reagan. So Mikhail Gorbachevs ascension to power is unexpected and his interest in reform is unexpected and matched by a level of interest by Ronald Reagan. George h. W. Bush in contrast is much more skeptical of gorbachev. His National Security adviser always liked to point out that either gorbachev was a fraud on which the u. S. Should be on its guard, or gorbachev was for real and he may have good intentions but he could be dispatched with a single bullet and the soviet union had the ability to destroy the United States. The bush team once it took office, once george h. W. Bush became president , when im speaking of bush im speaking about george h. W. Bush was much more cautious. One of the Biggest Surprises in my research was just how much tension there was between the reagan team and bush team. Political scientists who are not interested in this topic but work on president ial transitions used the reaganbush transition as an example of a particularly vicious one. Some scholars described it as bush fired everyone. In the internal sources i was surprised to see bush documents saying mush for brains reaganites. People who had begin into the wiles of gorbachev. Phrases saying its good that the adults are back in charge. You see a little attempt to return to a more traditional cold war stance. But dramatic events made it clear 1989 wont be a traditional cold war year. There is the massive popular protest in Tiananmen Square in 1989. We just had that anniversary. That enough was observed in china with silence. Even those who commemorated it in their homes were persecuted for that. 1989 in retrospect looks different in china than europe. I would ask you to bear this in mind as we talk about the wall today. We, of course, all know that the cold war in europe ended peacefully but the people at the time did not know this. As events unfolded the images on the minds of protesters and demonstrators were images from Tiananmen Square, the lone figure standing in front of a row of tanks. Try to keep that image in mind as we talk about 1989. The fall of the berlin wall was not a foregone conclusion. Catastrophe loomed around every corner and certainly bloodshed was on the mind of the people who were there on the ground. Tiananmen square is still a forbidden zone in the peoples republic of china. Fortunately we have the opportunity to examine what happened in europe. So the question, of course, is what would happen in Eastern Europe as gorbachevs reforms gradually created new opportunities. Would there be a similar kind of violence as there had been in china . That was an open question in the summer of 1989 in cold war europe. This is a map of cold war europe. So in summer of 1989 the beginning of the end and the eastern politburo didnt recognize this quickly enough. The beginning of the end came when hungary decided to allow hungarians to cross into austria. And started taking down border fortifications. In the first instance the hungarians prevented east germans from leaving. There was an existing treaty between hungary and east germany and the hungarians at first respected it. As a result of financial inducements from west germany, in september, hungary decided to let east germans leave as well and they flooded out in mass numbers. This is perhaps a telling photo. This is a photo from the east German Secret Police archives. This is a photo of abandoned vehicles. They had to go down to the border and collect these. East germans would abandon these when they fled to the west. People waited as long as 16 years to purchase these vehicles. And so abandoning it was quite a dramatic statement and there were so many of them the secret police had to collect them at depots such as this one in czechoslovakia. And bring them back to east germany. This was a massive exodus. And it tested even the people who were at home. Some of the people who had stayed home had to justify staying at home. Indeed the phrase stay at home was a term of insult. What youre still here, youre stay at home, why arent you going west . So suddenly this massive exodus where east germans would go down into hungary, cross the border in austria and come back up to east germany threatened the existence of the east german ruling regime itself which they anticipated would not be case. The east german ruling regime took a series of steps that ultimately culminated even though it did not wish for this to happen in the opening of the berlin wall. So in response to this massive exodus, the east german ruling regime demonstrated the theory of albert hirschman. He had formulated that People Living under a dictatorship have three choices. You can either find some way to exit. Or you can find some way to protest and use your voice. Or you can basically stay quiet and be loyal. And for much of east germany loyalty was the popular choice but then thanks to the hungarians exit became possible. However the east german regime decided unwisely to close its own borders to prevent any further exit and since exit then was no longer an option and loyalty no longer seemed a good option voice became the dominant option and the number of protests and the size of protests was increased dramatically throughout east germany most notably in the cities of dresden and leipzig. Since the media was under censorship, any images had to be smuggled out. One of the more interesting pest for this book, i interviewed former smugglers that made video cassettes and smuggled it out to the west. So images of these events could make it to western broadcasters who could then broadcast them back to Eastern Europe so Eastern Europeans could see them. And the east german regime realizing that it created a new monster essentially planned a Tiananmen Square event on the night of october 9, 1989 in the city of leipzig. This was perhaps the Biggest Surprise of my research was the extent of the deployment, the orders to shoot, the distribution of machine guns with bullets. Just the level of preparations for a bloody and violent event on october 9, 1989 in leipzig. This is in this region known as saxony and leipzig. And that event might have happened and we might talk about the two tiananmens in 1989 but for the fact that the demonstrators in leipzig behaved in two unexpected ways. Their numbers were massive. There were over 1 hundred,000 protesters which no one expected and they were peaceful and nonviolent and the deployed troops instead of firing them actually began joining their ranks, and i described that processed based on interviews with Police Officers and others in the course of the book. It was a remarkable event. It has not been understood as it should be because of a key stepping stone on to the collapse of the wall. Because the smugglers smuggled out video images of the failure of the regime to carry out its planned tiananmen and when those made to it western broadcasters and broadcast back to Eastern Europe that fueled the selfconfidence of east germans even more. The protest actually took place around the leipzig center city ring road. The marchers gathered here and marching around this way. This was supposed to be the location where what would essentially have been civil war in germany would have started. But the protesters overwhelmed the police and the deployed army forces and able to circle the entire ring road successfully on the night of october 9th. From there the power of this peaceful revolution kept growing and growing and the regime found itself more and more under siege. Since it was unable to carry out the tiananmen on october 17th, the hard line leader of east germany was ousted and replaced by his crown prince, a man named avon krence. He knew things had gone badly wrong under honiker, so he thought ill do things differently. Ill still maintain control but ill talk a good game in public. So in public ill say things that make it sound like im going institute reforms but ill maintain the power of the state over peoples lives and certainly over their ability to travel. The state still has to give permission if anyone wants to leave on my watch. So he decided to issue minor changes to existing tr