NEWS REPORTER VO [ARCHIVE]:
Within hours of the government's announcement, people started turning up at Checkpoint Charlie, the best-known crossing point to the West.
At first they were told, "Go away, come back tomorrow and bring all the right documents with you." But the crowds weren't satisfied with this and they've learnt that if they push hard enough they can have their way.
They pushed, on into the guard posts, arguing, demanding, insistent. And suddenly, the way west was opened.
BERLINER [ARCHIVE]:
Whoo!
NEWS REPORTER VO [ARCHIVE]:
Checkpoint Charlie was open and they were through, called on by the delighted West Berliners waiting on the other side.
BERLINERS [ARCHIVE]:
Yeah! Whoo!
NEWS REPORTER VO [ARCHIVE]:
This did not look like a planned move from the communist authorities but rather another panicked response by a government giving way to the parliament of the streets.
BERLINER [ARCHIVE]:
Whoo!
NEWS REPORTER VO [ARCHIVE]:
But then it was to Bornholmer Bridge in the north that most Ber-liners rushed. It was here in the past that East Germans with permission to travel were filtered in and out of the country. But tonight there were no filters, no checks. At midnight the border was thrown open and the crowd surged through the open gates.
The border guards withdrew and watched, their amazement matched by the mounting excitement of a people suddenly free to do what they wanted.
BERLINER [ARCHIVE]:
Whoo-hoo-hoo!
BERLINER [ARCHIVE]:
Yay!
NEWS REPORTER [ARCHIVE]:
This is the middle of the checkpoint. The police are making no at-tempt to stop people. The gates have been thrown open and thousand of people are pouring over to take a look at the West – in some cases, their first look. And the elation is enormous.
This clip is from a BBC news report on 10 November 1989 as the Berlin Wall is freely crossed for the first time
It shows a group of East Berliners, initially told by the authorities to go home, through numbers and persistence able to cross over Checkpoint Charlie to West Berlin.
The report moves to the Bornholmer Bridge, one of the previous border crossings between east and west, where the gates were opened and the crowds made their way to the west of the city.
The East German police are bystanders as clearly delighted Berliners experience the freedom to roam throughout their city for the first time since 1961.
Teacher notes
This video could be shown as part of a series of lessons around this possible overarching enquiry question:
- To what extent was the fall of the Berlin Wall the main reason for the end of the Cold War?
Before the video:
This dramatic clip could be used as an initial stimulus with little background information. However, depending on the students, it may be better to provide some historical context before playing the clip, recapping on the building of the wall itself and exploring why the collapse of the Berlin Wall was possible in 1989. This will include revisiting Gorbachev’s policies (Glasnost and Perestroika) and the pressures on the Eastern Bloc in the late 1980s.
While watching the video:
Students could consider the following:
- What were the two sites of the wall shown in the new report?
- How would you describe the feelings of the East Berliners? Why might this be so?
- What were the reactions of the border guards to what was happening?
- The reporter refers to the action being a response to the ‘parliament of the streets’. What did he mean by this?
At the end of the video:
The students will need to study the reasons for the fall of the Berlin Wall as well as the consequences of this on Germany itself, Europe and superpower relations.
The video could be interrogated as a historical source by answering a question like:
- How useful is this source to a historian studying the collapse of the Berlin Wall?
Also, it could be compared with a contrasting source to explore different interpretations.
Suitable for teaching the GCSE History units on The Cold War in England and for National 5 examinations in Scotland.
More from this series:
1961 Building the Berlin Wall report. video
A short clip from the BBC Archive as journalist Peter Woods reports on the construction of the Berlin Wall.
1962 President Kennedy's Cuban Missile speech. video
A clip from the BBC Archive from President John Kennedy’s television broadcast to the American people on the Cuban Missile Crisis.
1949 Signing of the Atlantic Pact. video
A BBC Archive newsreel clip of the signing of the Atlantic Pact, the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
