The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall

By Mary Elise Sarotte

Categories: History

The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall (2014) is a history by Mary Elise Sarotte. Sarotte reconstructs how mistakes, miscommunication and chance led to the opening of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. Drawing on archives and interviews, she shows how a press conference error and crowd pressure outran the East German government's plans. The night emerges as contingent rather than inevitable.

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• Fareed Zakaria: “The week's book of the week is "Collapse. The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall" by Mary Elise Sarotte. A professor at Harvard. This is easily the best book on the fall of the Berlin Wall. It reads like a thriller, it's deeply researched and smoothly written. It will remind you how unlikely it was that the Soviet empire would collapse until one day it did.”