Experimental Blog #16

Comments on the book "1989" - The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe by Mary Elise Sarotte

This book is history from the very top. It summarizes all of the relationships, conversations, and negotiations of all the heads of state, their foreign ministers and secretaries of both Germanies, the Soviet Union, the United States, France, and Great Britain during the uncertain and extremely fast changing events from, mostly, the second half of 1989 and on into 1990. And it explains how some peoples' concepts and plans did not succeed while others' did.
The end results are well known; the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany, the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact alliances, and the transformation of Russia and its former satellite countries. And almost all of these things occurring with little or no violence.
The terrible wars and revolutions of the first half of the 20th century were finally resolved, for better or worse, and Europe began to move off in a new direction.
It may seem to have all been started by Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union, but it was Helmut Kohl of West Germany who managed to carry out and achieve his goals most successfully by far.