How the Berlin wall really fell

Today is the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I always thought the wall was taken down in response to purposeful social change. But read the linked story. It was all the result of a colossal chain of clumsy bureaucratic error.

One tiny anecdote from a much larger story:

When one of the regime’s most loyal subordinates, a Stasi officer named Harald Jäger who was working the Nov. 9 night shift at a crucial checkpoint in the Berlin Wall, repeatedly phoned his superiors with accurate reports of swelling crowds, they did not trust or believe him. They called him a delusional coward. Insulted, furious and frightened, he decided to let the crowds out, starting a chain reaction that swept across all of the checkpoints that night.

Fascinating.