CHECKPOINT CHARLIE WAS A MADHOUSE – THE FLOOD HAD BEGUN
Sergeant Chris Toft was hoping for a quiet night as he assembled the men who would carry out the usual patrols along the Berlin Wall on the evening of Nov 9 1989. His job was to brief them on any trouble spots to investigate along the “Wire”, the barrier between West Berlin and East Germany.
“The first time we had any inkling that something was going to happen was about 19:42 hours,” recalls the Welshman, who served with the Royal Military Police that controlled the British sector of Berlin after the Second World War. “I got a telephone message from my commanding officer telling me that the BBC World Service had reported East Germany had lifted all travel restrictions to West Germany.”
Toft had to compose himself, fast. “My first job was to get my interpreter to phone everyone else and say: ‘What the hell is going on?’ He phoned the West Berlin police, the East German police and the East German border guards.
“We phoned the Americans, too. We managed to speak to someone on the French side who could speak English, and none of them knew what was happening. We eventually phoned the West Berlin customs, and they were the only ones who knew that the border was possibly coming down at midnight.” There was less than five hours to go – and this was the first many knew of it.
By the following morning, all the checkpoints had been opened without any restrictions from the East German border guards. Tens of thousands of East Germans were walking through to freedom, encouraged by weeping West Berlin crowds, Allied military policemen and the international press. The Cold War was soon to be over.
The shock, anger and fear that surrounded the erection of the wall on Aug 13 1961 were now replaced by happiness and tears of joy. Mitt Law, a US Army airman, turned on his television at home in Dahlem, southwest of the city, to catch the evening news. “We were shocked to learn that the Wall was to be opened,” he said. His family headed for Checkpoint Charlie. It wasn’t until the final moments of the 30-minute drive to the Brandenburg Gate that there was any sign of things to come; Law’s brother-in-law “was in shock”, insisting the news had been “a hoax”. But by 8pm, a large group was milling around by the base of the Wall, with around 500 people perched on top. The buddy system was in full flow: “Someone on the ground lifting a person up and a complete stranger grabbing you from the top and pulling you up,” Law recalls.
The pervasive feeling there was “joy and love; strangers hugging, and a general feeling of goodwill.” While West German police stood nearby, “they didn’t stop people climbing up.
They were simply there and enjoying the spectacle,” says Law. “Pink Floyd’s
Another Brick in the Wall was blaring out to the sound of cheering, laughter and many hammers attacking the Wall itself. I felt pretty good [at] having the chance to witness history.”
By 10.30pm, a sizeable crowd had built up around the Allied positions at Checkpoint Charlie. Thousands were flooding the side streets nearby, too, making it impossible for vehicles to pass. Less than an hour later, Sgt Toft’s logbook states: “23:23 Hours. Large crowd of East Germans on
Checkpoint Charlie border crossing. East German side crowd building up onto West Berlin side.” The crowds now numbered more than 3,000, but still the atmosphere was more one of excited anticipation than violence. Even when four uniformed Soviet soldiers at the Allied checkpoint, queuing in their car to return to the East, were spotted by West Berliners, the crowd rocked the car in mock celebration, rather than attacking them.
By 11.35pm, German TV was reporting that East Germans were crossing the border, too. The flood had begun. All checkpoints would open at two minutes past midnight. The biggest party in Berlin’s history could now begin: the nearby Café Adler was besieged by people hugging, kissing, singing, crying.
“Checkpoint Charlie was a madhouse,” Law remembers, “I don’t recall even speaking with the US army that night. You couldn’t get close to the guard hut it was so crowded … standing and watching the mass of people waiting for the East Berliners to come through was unreal.”
Meanwhile, Sgt Toft was listening to his radio back at the Olympic Stadium. “The East German border guards couldn’t have controlled it if they tried, without shooting people… there would have been a bloodbath.”
And so, without a shot fired in anger, the Wall came down, and decades of tension with it.
‘Watching the mass of people waiting for the East Berliners was unreal’