november 9 , 1989 , the day the berlin wall fell and the world changed ever . not even the most astute had it rising . as yugoslavia ' s foreign minister in the late august of 1989 , gyula horn gave the order to let departing east germans use his country to do a 400 - mile end run on the berlin wall , a moves now recognised as the begins of the means for soft - line communism in europe .
The Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989.