Here is the BBC giving some background on how and why the Berlin Wall came down.

See what Mr Gorbachev says about the moment he heard what was happening:

Mr Gorbachev chuckled as he remembered the rush to tell him what had happened. "They reported to me quite early in the morning. They were in a hurry to let me know. We had been expecting it to happen. It could have happened at any time."

And he was matter-of-fact about the consequences. "I took note of the report. It moved us on to a new phase. Not that I was enthusiastic about it, but I accepted it as something that had to happen. We understood that the time was coming for the German problem to be addressed."

Extraordinary revisionism.

The collapse of the Berlin Wall was only incidentally about the German problem.

The key significance of it was the fact that it ended the Communist Problem, in Europe at least.

The Wall was all about stopping people fleeing the results of socialist collectivism. 

Which is why for all the Gorby adulation in the West, he was a total failure. At the end of all that blather in Moscow about perestroika and glasnost, it was still not possible for someone to import bananas and sell them freely. Gorbachev just did not understand then what real freedom meant.

And he still seems to be confused on the subject.

I am off to Berlin myself today, to give a presentation this evening on these momentous events. Blogging light (again) until I return on Wednesday.