I remember the moment well. I was in Berlin in 1980-82 and saw the beginnings of the cracks in the Soviet system, starting in Poland.
What's harder to explain is that many of the former East Germans today have a certain amount of nostalgia for those bygone days. They went from being a showpiece of the eastern bloc to their western neighbors poor cousins overnight.
I think Honecker disappeared to Chile, and a lot of the East German military and civil service was absorbed into the west. What was so strange was the talk of trying some of the former leaders in East Germany for criminal acts. I think they didn't do it in the end. That was probably best.
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