Who were the key people involved in the fall of the Berlin wall?

Answer 1

The building of the Berlin Wall was ordered by East German leader Walter Ulbricht, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED).

The man given the responsibilty of overseeing the building of the wall was Erich Honnecker, the Central Committee secretary for security matters. In official SED-jargon the wall was referred to as antifaschistische Schutzwall - antifascist barricade.

Ironically, Honnecker was the leader of East Germany when the wall was finally breached on November 9 1989 and opened to unrestricted traffic, marking the beginning of the end of the wall.

Following the reunification of Germany Honnecker fled to the Soviet Union, but was extradited back to Germany where he faced charges in relation to the deaths of East Germans, who had illegally attempted to leave East Germany (as de facto head of the GDR from 1971, Honnecker was responsible for maintaining the border guards' shoot-to-kill orders in repsect of people attempting to flee the country. From 1961 to 1989, a toatal of 192 people were killed attempting to escape). At his trial, Honnecker admitted "political responsibility" for the deaths but denied any "legal or moral responsibility". The trial was eventually halted as Honnecker was dying of cancer and in January 1993 he left the country to live in exile in Chile. Honnecker died on 29 May 1994, having never shown any remorse for the victims of the wall.

Answer 2

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