# Posted 2:54 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

DEMOCRATIC DOMINOS: MA further elaborates my earlier point about the role of Austria and West Germany in opening up the Eastern Bloc. He writes that:

Although the details of the story have been rather forgotten here in Britain or the US, it was very precisely a series of planned, deliberate acts by the West Germans and Austrians that brought about the end of communism in Europe.

First some background: In the constitution of West German state the right of East German citizens to become West Germans was automatic and guaranteed.

Every single DDR citizen who succeeded in getting out - and, as you state, it became harder and harder - was automatically a West German - as soon as they crossed the border they got a passport, some money, help finding a job, accomodation etc. All W German governments, left and right, were equally punctilious in fulfilling this.

Furthermore, during the 1970s and 1980s East Germans living near the border and near Berlin (you will remember that West Berlin was an enclave in the middle of East Germany) could receive West German TV automatically. (Of course, the West Germans boosted their signal as much as they could in those areas).

By the mid 1980s, it had become so difficult for the DDR government to persuade people to live in areas that couldn't get the signal that they were actually forced to retransmit it, rather than attempt to jam it, to cover the whole country.

Thus practically everyone in East Germany had access to West German and they could not only get uncensored news, but could see for themselves just through the medium of ordinary everyday programming that life in the West was materially richer, freer, safer and just more exciting than their own.

In 1988 the W German government, deciding to test Gorbachev to the limit, came to an agreement (money changed hands) with both the Hungarians and the Austrians, that the Hungarians would announce that, on a given date, they were going to allow people to leave Hungary and go to Austria without exit visas. This meant that anyone in Hungary after that date, Hungarians or any other of the Warsaw Pact nations could leave the country. Now, this didn't affect the Hungarians and others too much, because they would still need visas, work permits etc to stay in Austria or anywhere else, but obviously everyone in the DDR knew that they COULD stay in West Germany. In effect, because the whole border between East and West was an extension of the Berlin Wall, by making the announcement the Hungarians announced that they were opening a gate through which anyone could pass.

So, in March 1989 (I'm not at the home, so can't check the exact dates) [the] Hungarian Govt did announce that they were going to open their border to Austria on a given date in August. Of course, this got huge play on W German TV, the implications were spelled out in black and white, and so that August literally millions of East Germans booked their annual holidays in Hungary and succeeded in crossing the border. By the time the DDR government realised what was happening it was too late, because although they had built the wall between East and West, there was only basic border security between the countries of the Warsaw Pact. Even when they tried to stop people going directly to Hungary, all anyone had to do (as many did) was go to Czechoslovakia, and then cross into Hungary.

The fact that the DDR had, almost at a stroke, lost the core of its "middle class" led to the panicked decision to open the Berlin Wall, which led to the collapse of the state, and to a ripple effect which spread to Czechoslovakia, Romania and eventually to the USSR itself.

So, as I say, although the mere existence of West Germany did not lead to the collapse of communism, the fact that the it was there, and the (too often unacknowledged) courage and determination of Helmut Kohl and other West German leaders did indeed lead to the collapse of communism.

Very well said. Finally, in response to my observation that

"As for Cuba, it's an island. Its residents would all be in Miami now except for the fact that it's a helluva lot harder to survive a rafting trip across the Gulf of Mexico than a subway ride to West Berlin."

BB wisely responds that

The fact that when we catch them attempting it, we drag them back to Castro's warm embrace, doesn't [that] have anything to do with it? At least if somebody made it across the Berlin wall we didn't toss them back over...

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