"…and the walls came tumbling down." The song could easily have been written about the Berlin Wall.
The wall's demise in 1989 marked the end of the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union.
But the end of the wall was not an orderly process; more like a series of decisions and non-decisions made with incomplete information.
Historian Mary Elise Sarotte rounds up the fine details in her book The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall.
