35 years ago, joy and celebrations as the Berlin Wall that separated East and West Germany came down.
Dr. Fred Hoffman, national security expert at Mercyhurst University, was stationed in Berlin at the time and recalled that emotional day.
"All these people descended on the border guard stations around Berlin and the border guards did not know what to do, it was just paralysis.
One border guard let them in, everybody else followed and the rest is history," Hoffman said.
The wall was built by the East German Communist Party and stood for 28 years in an effort to keep so-called western fascists away from the state, but Hoffman said, in the end, democracy was always going to be prevail.
"That is the people's choice, as a person, you always want to have a government that represents you and whatever Marxism is on paper is one thing but in practice there is a reason people flee all the time," he said.
Recalling President Ronald Reagan's famous "Tear Down This Wall," speech, Hoffman said, "I knew at that moment, this is historic and I will never experience anything like this again in my life and it was true.
I was with the American military there at the time and we had Monday off because of Veterans Day, so the policy was if you have Monday off because of a holiday they also give you Friday off and the wall opened on a Thursday, so we had Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday to hang out with all these East Germans coming in..it was awesome," he said.
Dr. Fred Hoffman has 30 years of experience in the military and multiple intelligence community organizations as a human intelligence officer and as a military attaché, serving in 28 different countries.