Fall of the inner German border Fall of the inner German border The fall of the inner German border came rapidly and unexpectedly in November 1989, along with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The event paved the way for the ultimate reunification of Germany just short of a year later. Just as an earlier generation of Germans had found that the way to defeat the supposedly impregnable Maginot Line was simply to go around one end of it, so too hundreds of thousands of East Germans found an escape route across the border of East Germany's erstwhile ally, Hungary. The inner German border's integrity relied
Berlin Wall beds" and other defenses. The Eastern Bloc portrayed the Wall as protecting its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the "will of the people" in building a socialist state in East Germany. GDR authorities officially referred to the Berlin Wall as the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart (). The West Berlin city government sometimes referred to it as the "Wall of Shame", a term coined by mayor Willy Brandt in reference to the Wall's restriction on freedom of movement. Along with the separate and much longer Inner German border (IGB), which demarcated the border between East and West Germany, it came