ABSTRACT
This chapter describes article appeared in Time magazine on 9 July 1990. Granted that the opening of the Berlin Wall was a moment of high drama, but the consequences turned into low comedy almost overnight. The nervous fiddling in Bonn was nothing compared with the havoc wrought in East Berlin. In hindsight it is clear that the fall of the Berlin Wall was due not to strategic planning, but to a sudden loss of nerve. And such pedestrian sentiments were fully reciprocated by a growing part of opinion in East Germany. Citizens there, used to safe and easy jobs, subsidized rents, and cheap food, began to panic about the pitfalls of capitalism. No amount of force-feeding on the part of the media had managed to intoxicate the West German populace. The truth of the matter is that the Germans have acquired a normality bordering on the tedious.
