Wer zu spät kommt – Das Politbüro erlebt die deutsche Revolution

The TV documentary reconstructs the events from May through November 1989 from the perspective of the German Democratic Republic's Politburo. It chronicles the local election fraud, Hungary's border opening toward Austria, the ensuing flood of East German refugees moving via Hungary and Czechoslovakia to West Germany, the pomp and ceremony surrounding the GDR's 40th anniversary, the bungled measures the Politburo took to salvage the crisis, the dismissal of their leader Erich Honecker, and the international press conference in East Berlin on 9 November 1989, where Politburo member Günther Schabowski mistakenly announced the immediate opening of the 'Iron Curtain', a moment that precipitated the collapse of socialism in the GDR and the wider Eastern Bloc.