About After The Wall — A World United
The spiraling events prompted an unparalleled diplomatic effort from one-time enemies. Interviews with George H.W. Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl offer unusual and intimate details about the inner workings of government at the highest levels and how relationships among world leaders guided the completely unanticipated series of events that resulted in a new Europe in less than a year changing the course of modern history.
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Other major players from all sides provide insightful and often surprising perspectives, including then-Secretary of State James Baker, National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, Soviet Affairs Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and West German National Security Advisor Horst Teltschik.
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March 1990 brought a spectacle East Germans hadn't seen in nearly 60 years — an open election. Helmut Kohl's conservative party pulled off an upset, indicating the strong desire of East Germans to unify the country as soon as possible. Germany was formally united in October, less than one year from when the wall fell.
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Hear first-hand testimony from East German leaders who oversaw the abrupt and unexpected end of their forty-year experiment in socialism, as well as the stories of ordinary Germans suddenly free to live their lives in a modern capitalist economy.
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After the loss of East Germany, Gorbachev was forced out of office and the Soviet Union crumbled. One of the final phone calls Gorbachev made from the Kremlin was to his good friend, George Bush. The last head of the Soviet Union was calling to say good-bye to the President of the United States. The Cold War was indeed over.