Episode list

On Aug. 13, 1961, Berliners woke up on a Sunday morning to find their city divided by a wall. That day became known as "Barbed Wire Sunday," marking a peak in the era of the Cold War. It felt like a complete surprise to many, but key moments in the preceding year made clear that something was brewing.

The fall of the Berlin Wall on the evening of Nov. 9, 1989 came as a complete surprise to East and West Germans, and the entire world. How did this historic moment come to be? Interviews with the then Mayor of West Berlin Walter Momper and the last socialist party head of East Germany, Hans Modrow, describe the events surrounding the fall of the wall from their own perspective. And photographer Dietmar Riemann shares how as late as September 1989, he decided to give everything up and leave East Germany in the hope of a better life in the West.