The Border Question Early September 1989

You are advising Hungary’s Prime Minister Miklós Németh and Foreign Minister Gyula Horn.

Thousands of East German citizens who came to Hungary as tourists are refusing to go home, many waiting in camps in Budapest and near the Austrian border in the hope of reaching West Germany. Hungary has already started dismantling its border fence with Austria. East Germany expects the travellers to be sent back.

Known information

A bilateral agreement with East Germany obliges Hungary not to let East German citizens travel on to the West without permission.
Hungary’s reform-minded government wants closer ties and economic cooperation with Western Europe, including West Germany.
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has signalled that Moscow will not dictate internal policies to its allies as it once did.
Several hundred East Germans crossed into Austria during a ‘Pan-European Picnic’ near Sopron on 19 August.
Letting the East Germans leave would anger the East German leadership and strain relations within the Warsaw Pact.

Reveal what happened (spoilers: decide first)

Fact

What actually happened

Hungary opened its border to East German citizens. (Let them cross to Austria)

On the evening of 10 September 1989, Horn announced on television that East Germans would be allowed to cross into Austria, and the border opened at midnight. Tens of thousands of East Germans left for the West within days. Two months later, on 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall was opened.

Important

Possible consequences · Analysis and speculation, not fact

Keeping the border closed might have prolonged the crisis and damaged Hungary’s ties with the West; some analysts think the pressure on East Germany would have found another outlet, for example through Czechoslovakia. The pace of change is impossible to reconstruct with certainty.

History does not reveal what would definitely have happened under the other choice. Many factors could have changed the outcome.

Context · Why it was decided this way

Hungary’s leaders consulted West German and Soviet leaders before acting. Historians debate how much the decision was driven by Hungarian reform politics, West German economic support and diplomacy, and the growing pressure from people already on the move.

Many historians view the opening as one of several events, alongside mass protests in East Germany and changes in Poland, that led to the collapse of communist rule in Eastern Europe.