This best-selling history of East Germany begins with its inception in the aftermath of World War II, its crucial role in the Cold War, and its eventual demise during the collapse of Communism in the late 1980s. When the Iron Curtain fell, East Germany ceased to be. For over forty years the German Democratic Republic presented a radically different Germany than what had come before and what exists today. Hoyer sets aside the usual Cold War caricatures...

"In The Collapse historian Mary Elise Sarette shows that the opening of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, was not, as is commonly believed, the East German government's deliberate concession to outside influence. It was an accident. A carelessly worded memo written by mid-level bureaucrats, a bumbling press conference given by an inept member of the East German Politburo, the negligence of government leaders, the bravery of ordinary people in East...

When the Berlin Wall is opened, thousands of East Germans fall into the waiting arms of West Germans, crying, laughing, and celebrating their long-awaited reunion. From the moment the wall was built, it stood as a symbol of the deep division between the democratic West and the communist East. When it opened one chilly November night, the world knew that the era of communism in Eastern Europe was coming to an end.