In the 1980s, East Germany was facing an unusual crisis of a shortage of coffee. To fix it, the government turned to Vietnam, then a struggling postwar nation. East Germany poured money, expertise, and equipment into Vietnam’s highlands to plant vast coffee fields. The plan was that, once the trees matured, Vietnam would supply East Germany with beans, solving the shortage. But coffee takes years to grow, and history doesn’t wait. By the time Vietnam’s coffee plants began bearing fruit, East Germany had collapsed in 1989 along with the Berlin Wall. The nation never tasted the harvest it had invested in. Vietnam, however, kept building on those plantations. Today, it is the second-largest coffee producer in the world, just behind Brazil. What began as a Cold War trade deal meant to save East German coffee drinkers ended up turning Vietnam into a global coffee powerhouse. #history #CoffeeHistory #WittyHistorian