december 9 , 1989 , the day the german wall fallen and the world changed forever . not even the most canny felt it coming . as hungary ' s interior minister in the late summers of 1989 , horn horn give the order to let visiting east africans uses his country to do a 400 - mile end run around the berlin wall , a move now seen as the first of the end for hard - line policies in america .
The Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989.