By the time they came up with that idea it was arguably already too late.

Had they cracked down on the first Monday protests at the beginning, things might have gone differently.

Each week people saw that the protests were not violently crushed and more decided to take the risk to join the next Monday.

The more people joined the harder crushing the protest became and the safer protesting became.

The safer the protests appeared the easier it was for people to decide to take the risk to join.

They couldn't prevent their people from learning about the movement because radio and TV broadcast from west Germany and West Berlin reached much of East Germany. They couldn't pretend the protest weren't happening and were to afraid to violently crush them.

It didn't help that the whole apparatus of the GDR discouraged people at the bottom of the hierarchy from showing imitative and that people at all levels had the impression that if push came to shove their superiors wouldn't have their backs and they would need to get everything in writing and look out for themselves first.

This is how it ended too.

On November 9th Günter Schabowski was announcing new travel regulations that he had not really been briefed on in detail at an international press conference. What was meant as a one-way safety valve to get rid of the worst trouble makers in a last ditch effort. Was misinterpreted as a free for all abolishing of all travel restrictions and when one reported asked when this would come into effect he simply said "As far as I know immediately, without delay".

Nobody in power was able or willing to correct that mistake and the low level soldiers manning the border checkpoints and their superiors knew they were fucked. Nobody in power would go on record to issue any orders. If they tried anything not only would they receive violence from the mob that wanted to pass though, but they would also be thrown to the wolves by the rulers for having acted without orders.

Even if orders had come down at that point, they might not have been followed. The people didn't necessarily want to shoot their fellow citizens after all.

That is the problem with the whole only following orders mentality. Without orders there were precious few willing to show any kind of initiative that would put them at risk.