Schabowski Shrugged: The unanswered phone calls and misunderstood memos that helped bring down the Berlin Wall

(Slate) Too often, we see history as inevitable. What was had to be, the culmination of seemingly tectonic forces. We tend to forget that history is also defined by the logic of human messiness. Happenstance, chance, even accident always loom large in grand events. Continued

Photo: Berlin Wall, 1961 (Toni Frissell/Library of Congress).