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PARIS — There was nothing through most of that gray, chilly Thursday to suggest that it would come to symbolize one of the great transitions of the 20th century, the triumphant end of a failed system. Even when the delirious crowds surged through the Berlin Wall shortly before midnight on Nov. 9, 1989, it was not because of any momentous decision or heroic feat; it was because of a bad translation, a confused border guard and a natural longing for a better life.
That is not to say that the event history has declared as the moment when the Cold War ended came out of the blue. From the time Mikhail S. Gorbachev came to power in the Kremlin in 1985 proclaiming change, the Soviet bloc had been in turmoil.

The pace had quickened dramatically in the summer of 1989: Polish Communists were trounced in the first free elections in postwar East Europe. Hungary ceased enforcing its stretch of the Iron Curtain, opening a fissure through which East Germans began to head west in droves.

Pressures mounted daily on the Communist old guard in East Berlin, but it found no help in Moscow — to the contrary, when Mr. Gorbachev came to East Berlin in October he warned the German comrades that if they failed to change, they would find themselves stranded on the wrong side of history.

East Germans were marching in ever greater numbers through the streets of Leipzig, Dresden and even East Berlin, and their battle cry had changed from “Wir sind das Volk” — “we are the people,” a demand for reform — to “Wir sind Ein Volk” — “we are one people,” a demand for reunification.

But there was nothing on that Thursday morning that said, “This is the day.” The brightly lit no man’s land between the concrete slabs that stretched around West Berlin was barren, save for rabbits that had flourished in the total security of the zone. It was studded with 302 heavily armed watchtowers on one side and a few makeshift tourist platforms on the other, from which Western visitors threw lettuce to the bunnies.

I was in East Berlin on that November day, and the tension was palpable as the embattled East German leaders struggled for survival. They were still dangerous: Later we would learn that in September they had almost opened fire on marchers in Leipzig. But they were also in disarray, desperately trying to stem the exodus to the