When crowds tore down the Berlin Wall 20 years ago today few participants in that joyously chaotic celebration of freedom foresaw the consequences. But by seizing the moment they made history.
Like the concrete masonry, the 1945 division of Germany and of Europe was removed from the map. The way opened to the end of the cold war, the advance of democracy and free markets into eastern Europe, and the enlargement of the European Union.
Two decades later, it is clear that the world won huge political and economic benefits from the collapse of communism. Despite today's difficulties with global terrorism, the Middle East and economic crisis, the end of superpower rivalry has made the world safer, freer and richer.
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