Video: 'Nov. 9, 1989: The Berlin Wall Falls'

(Thursday, November 9, 1989, 6:50 p.m. Central European Time; during the Cold War) — Communist East Germany tonight lifted restrictions on emigration or travel to the West, and within hours tens of thousands of East and West Berliners swarmed across the infamous Berlin Wall for a boisterous celebration.

Border guards at Bornholmer Strasse crossing, Checkpoint Charlie and several other crossings abandoned all efforts to check credentials, even though the new regulations said East Germans would still need passports and permission to get across.

The mass crossing began about two hours after Gunter Schabowski, a member of the Politburo, had announced at a press conference that permission to travel or emigrate would be granted quickly and without preconditions, and that East Germans would be allowed to cross at any crossing into West Germany or West Berlin.

Video: 'The Berlin Wall Falls - November 9-11, 1989' (9 clips)

“We know this need of citizens to travel or leave the country,” Schabowski said. “Today the decision was taken that makes it possible for all citizens to leave the country through East German crossing points.”

The Berlin wall — first raised on Aug. 13, 1961, to halt a vast hemorrhage of East Germans to the West — evolved into a double row of eight-foot-high concrete walls with watchtowers, electronic sensors and a no man’s land in between.

Frequent attempts to breach the barrier often ended in death, and the very sophistication of the wall became a standing indictment of the system that could hold its people only with such extraordinary means.