In November 1989 the wall was breached by street protestors and then, piece by piece, disassembled by happy citizens through the night (and beyond). It quickly turned out that the Soviet troops watching had received no orders to intervene, while the number of the protesters rapidly increased, helped by a breath-taking piece of media mismanagement by the aging East German party leadership. (First Party Secretary Erich Honecker, terminally ill, had been forced by the speed of events on the streets and - unbeknown to the German public at the time - the politically fatal loss of Kremlin support, to resign the party leadership a few weeks earlier.) Günter Gaus was part of a generation that had seen an earlier attempt by East Germans to rid themselves of Soviet-sponsored tyranny end very differently, back in 1953. He greeted the end of the wall with massive delight that was completely unfeigned. Over the ensuing twelve months, however, he became progressively more horrified by the frenetic pace with which the western government of Helmut Kohl steam-rollered through a quasi-colonial reunificant process, committing what he viewed as a succession of serious and very basic political errors.