"The people of East Germany, who had been so brutally repressed by Soviet tanks in 1953, were unwilling to see their Slav and Hungarian neighbours liberate themselves while they remained chained to the gruesomely unpopular regime of Erich Honecker. Once the Hungarian frontier was opened, many of them poured across it, en route to West Germany. The Iron Curtain thus had a huge hole in it, and the effect was to destabilize the East German government, long regarded as one of the most Stalinist and secure. While some East Germans fled, others began to demonstrate. The same day the Hungarian CP dissolved itself, mass marches began throughout East Germany, but especially in Berlin and Leipzig. Gorbachev, paying a long-arranged visit (7 October), was asked by an anxious Honecker to send in troops and tanks. He refused. He told the old Stalinist he must either enact reforms, quickly, or get out while he could. Publicly, Gorbachev said all the East European regimes were in danger unless they responded to what he called ‘the impulse’ of the times. Thus abandoned by his ally, Honecker resigned on 18 October, his colleagues having refused to authorize troops to open fire on the demonstrators. He was succeeded by ‘a brief and embarrassed phantom’ (to use Disraeli’s phrase) called Egon Krentz, who lasted exactly seven weeks."