What if the Berlin Wall didn't fall?

[xa na xa]

Make up some scenarios where the events of November 9th 1989 didn't happen, or happened differently.

Describe what the world looks like thirty years later, on November 9th 2019.

 

[Eliar]

An emergency meeting of the politburo is called but this time Gorbatchev is shot on the spot for being too soft and hardliners take the helm. Soviet Troops in East Germany are ordered to mobilize, the East German leadership is given its marching orders, the Berlin protesters are massacred as they approach the Wall.

The unrest in the rest of the WarPac is dealt with swiftly and harshly leading to the ossification of communist regimes, heightened tensions with the West and the Cold War getting Really cold again.

 

[Susano]

Yeah. How events play out in Germany is almost irrelevant if we go by broad strokes.

If Moscow turns liberal, East Germany falls. If it doesn't, East Germany doesn't fall.

Though of course, the specific events of 9.11.1989 are ridiculously easy to change. Just have Schabowski not be a complete, unprepared idiot - the guy who did a press conference so badly it ended his state

For context: The GDR government had initiated a new law that would allow travel to West Germany or West Berlin (technically not part of West Germany) without further restrictions. The idea was to then renounce the GDR citizenship of everyone who did that and not allow them back in - and thus get rid of the most pertinent troublemakers. However, Schabowski had been informed about this only just prior to the press conference, so he got a crucial detail wrong: He said that the new law about removing restrictions to travel would be effect immediate. Cue tens of thousands of people trying to cross to West Berlin the very same night, which eventually just overwhelmed the border guards. The people were then simply let through without any controls, without marking their passports, and so the government plans about kicking them all out were never put into effect. Instead, that was the very clear sign the GDR was over now.

Due to an accident. At a press conference.

Yeah, that's pretty easy to change. But chances are, the GDR will then simply fall in some other way I'm too unimaginative to think about right now.

 

[AYC]

To keep the Berlin Wall standing in 2019, you'd need a reformed USSR and Eastern Bloc - reformed to the point where East Berliners genuinely don't want to leave. But since the Wall (and by extension political oppression) needs to be kept up, I'd go with economic reform minus political reform, similar to China. Presumably you can use the usual POD of Brezhnev being assassinated.

Or you can have an East Germany so nightmarishly oppressive that the Wall is kept up through sheer fear.

 

[xa na xa]

To keep the Berlin Wall standing in 2019, you'd need a reformed USSR and Eastern Bloc - reformed to the point where East Berliners genuinely don't want to leave. But since the Wall (and by extension political oppression) needs to be kept up, I'd go with economic reform minus political reform, similar to China. Presumably you can use the usual POD of Brezhnev being assassinated.

Or you can have an East Germany so nightmarishly oppressive that the Wall is kept up through sheer fear.

Click to shrink...

You don't have to keep the wall standing, you can have it crumble in 2004 or 1997 or whatever if you want. (or have it come down as capitalism collapses and the DDR annexes West Germany )

But it's interesting to think about what you'd need to keep it another thirty years.