From Der Spiegel, an interview with Lieutenant-Colonel Harald Jager, the guard who opened the Berlin Wall: "I gave my people the order — raise the barrier" (and more on the unanswered phone calls and misunderstood memos that helped bring down the wall). From ResetDoc, a special section on the day that changed Europe. From FT, an in-depth report on the fall of the Berlin Wall (and review essay). Three new books argue over how the fall of the Berlin Wall came to pass (and more). From City Journal, a symposium on Communism’s defeat, 20 years later: Have we learned the right lessons? Twenty years on, did we learn the wrong lesson from the fall of the Berlin Wall? The fall of the Berlin Wall may seem like ancient history, but the economic debate has never moved beyond it. 20 years of collapse: Slavoj Zizek on how the Berlin Wall fell, but capitalism did not necessarily rise. The future of markets: 1989 marked the victory of markets over vested interests — 2009 has witnessed the reverse. What today’s capitalist crisis has in common with the crisis of state socialism in 1989. A review essay at The Economist. Tyranny can never be excused, but its sudden absence, as in 1989, leaves a literary vacuum. The Observer profiles Mikhail Gorbachev, the forgotten hero of history. The Gipper or the Guard: If there is a lesson in the fall of the Berlin Wall, it has to do with the dangers of mythmaking. Reagan didn't end the Cold War — leftist intellectuals did. A look at how the West hijacked the Berlin Wall revolution. A look at why 1979 was the year that truly changed the world.
