Diplomatic History of Europe 1500 - 2000 | The Fall of the Wall (Lecture 35)

Lecture 35: With unexpected rapidity, the Communist states of eastern Europe and the Soviet Union collapsed near the end of the century. This lecture, covering the years 1980–1991, discusses the deeper causes leading to this startling transformation. It introduces the new generation of leaders on both sides of the Cold War divide—British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, American President Ronald Reagan, and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev—and discusses the negotiations that followed a renewed stage of the Cold War. The dramatic internal consequences of a shifting international scene included the liberation of eastern European countries and German reunification, in spite of the anxieties that these sudden changes could produce.

Essential Reading:
Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, pp. 762–803.

Supplementary Reading:
Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent.