Significance of the fall of the Berlin Wall

• Friends and family reunited for potentially the first time in nearly 30 years
• Tremendously emotional moment for all people involved as the restrictions were lifted which enabled in the East to be able to travel to the West unimpeded
• Border crossings were lifted all along the border
• East and West Germans started breaking up the wall and many people took souvenirs of the wall to take home. This was a symbolic representation of the end of Soviet domination in East Germany and then the rest of Eastern Europe
• The East German leader Erich Honecker was sacked as the anti-communist Solidarity movement toppled the old regime
• By ending the Brezhnev Doctrine, the Berlin Wall fell and showed other anti-communist groups in Eastern Europe that the USSR would not intervene if they tried to topple their own regimes, contributing to the collapse of communism across Europe