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similarities and differences between democracy and communism
berlin wall socio rconomic distruptiom
editorial on president reagan's speech at brandenburg gate
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Democracy was built up as the wall was torn down. The Berlin Wall was built overnight and stood at twelve feet tall and ninety-six miles long. The massive structure is what separated East and West Germany. The wall separated friends and family as well as being a barrier between freedom and oppression. West Germany was a democracy and was essentially a free world, while on the other side of the wall East Germany was a strict, miserable, and communist ran part of the country. On June 12th Ronald Reagan the 40th president of the United States gave a daring speech at the Brandenburg Gate. His speech was so controversial that he needed to speak behind two pains of bullet proof glass, just in case East German snipers were lingering. Reagan ultimately brought an end to communism in East Germany with his influential speech that caused the massive wall to be torn down and allowed democracy to thrive. The destruction of the wall not only unified the two sides of Germany but also symbolized the fall of communism, and the end of the Cold War.
‘’As the relationship between the Soviet Union and the other three Allied powers quickly disintegrated, the cooperative atmosphere of the occupation of Germany turned competitive and aggressive. Although an eventual reunification of Germany had been intended, the new relationship between the Allied powers turned Germany into West versus East, democracy versus Communism’’ (Rosenberg). At the end of World War II the Soviet Union who was once part of the allied powers had suddenly become enemies with the United States, Great Britain, and France. The soviets took over half of Germany and built the wall to separate the two sides. Soon there was an apparent difference between the two sides. West Germany was...
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...llpeckers" - Berlin Wall Graffiti, Berlin Liberates Itself!" Historypin. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2014.This citation gave me an idea of how the wall actually came down, it also showed how excited people were for the wall to finally come down.
Kennedy, John F. "Ich Bin Ein Berliner." West Berlin. Speech. The speech gave me an idea about how America felt about the wall during Kennedy’s presidency and how he tried to encourage the people of Germany.
Rosenberg, Jennifer. "Berlin Wall - The Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall." About.com 20th Century History. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2014.This website gave me a lot of background information on the Berlin Wall.
Year 8 History Extention Class. Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall. Strathfield: St. Patrick's College, 2012. Pressbooks.com. Web. 11 May 2014.This book gave me details on the creation and destruction of the Berlin Wall.
Berlin Wall gives a brief over-view of the Berlin Wall, its history and its fall. Provides many useful links to several other sites which offer a more in depth exploration of the circumstances surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall. This is a vital link for gaining a more comprehensive understanding of the role of the seperation of East and West Germany and the Berlin Wall itself during the Cold War era.
In the year 1961, the building of Berlin Wall called upon disasters in Germany. United States controlled the west of Berlin while German Democratic Republic held the East. Being stuck under the rule of day to day terror, people from East Berlin were making their way to the West Berlin. West Berlin was a safe spot and freedom checkpoint in the middle of terror. To stop the moving of East Berliners, the East German government decided to build a barrier that limited and halted the East Berliners from leaving. But the battle to control Berlin between, the United States and the Soviet Union, had been taking place since after the division of Germany. The German Democratic Republic wanted better control over its people to spread its communist ideas
After World War II, Germany was separated into four different sectors assigned to the triumphant Allied forces: the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. (Wolski) The capital was located one hundred fifteen miles into Soviet territory. (Kenny) The Western Allies believed this was unfair because Berlin was the only large city at the time. They agreed to separate Berlin into quadrants as well. (Wolski) The United States, Britain, and France joined their sectors together as a democratic state called the Federal Republic of Germany. (Taylor) Meanwhile, Russia kept their portion separate and it became known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR). However, this caused a problem because the democratic West Berlin was entirely surrounded by Soviet land. (Wolski)
On Sunday, August 13th, in 1962 the Eastern German government began construction of the Berlin Wall (“Berlin Wall”). The Berlin Wall was built to divide the post World War II communist ran East Germany with the democratic West Germany. On that day families in Berlin were awaken to military machinery, barbed wire coils, and armed guards. The families that had crossed the newly made border the night before to visit friends and/or family were greeted to a wall and closed transit systems (“Berlin Wall”). For them this meant they were no longer going to be able to go home and be with their family however long this division of the country would last. As the day went on some government officials in East Germany feared that the citizens would start an uprising. However, contrary to their fears the streets of East Berlin stayed eerily quiet. Almost thirty years after that day the wall still separated friends and family only miles away. The wall was a physical division between the two superpowers of the time: the East controlled by the communist regime in the Soviet ...
June 12th, 1987, upon a podium directed at a vast crowd of West Germans, and speakers targeted over the rigged-explosive and barbed-wire bound fence to East Germany, President Ronald Reagan’s voice pierced the air with cries for liberation from the tyranny of the Soviet regime. Standing in the midst of fluttering American and German flags, and armed with a lone microphone, his remarks at Brandenburg Gate were a commemorative attempt to obtain freedom, and abolish the evils that plagued the nation of Germany. Equipped with careful diction, varied tones of voice, and strong figurative language Reagan is able to become a steeple of strength and confidence for the West German quest for destruction of the Berlin Wall.
The Berlin Crisis reached its height in the fall of 1961. Between August and October of that year, the world watched as the United States and the Soviet Union faced off across a new Cold War barrier, the Berlin Wall. In some ways, the Wall was Khrushchev’s response to Kennedy’s conventional buildup at the end of July, and there were some in the West who saw it that way. However, as Hope Harrison has clearly shown, Khrushchev was not the dominant actor in the decision to raise the Wall, but rather acquiesced to pressure from East German leader Walter Ulbricht, who regarded the Wall as the first step to resolving East Germany’s political and economic difficulties. The most pressing of these difficulties was the refugee problem, which was at its height in the summer of 1961 as thousands of East Germans reacted to the increased tensions by fleeing westward. But Ulbricht also saw the Wall as a way to assert East German primacy in Berlin, and thus as a way to increase the pressure on the West to accept East German sovereignty over all of Berlin.
Notably, before the walls creation, Germany was a political mess. It was a mess for many reasons, but the main being that “West Germany (governed by the Allied powers- the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) and East Germany (governed by the Soviet Union)” (“Cold War”). Of course, the Allied Powers and the Soviet Union were polar opposites; the Soviet Union was Communist while the Allies were anything but, and despised the very idea of Communism. Therefore, The Wall was constructed in 1961 by the East German government. The walls main purpose was to stop the emigration of East German citizens, because in “1953, the number of refugees doubled- more than 400,000 people left”, all of whom were heading to West Germany (Dowling). They wanted to stop the “skilled workers and professionals”, which were in high demand at this time, from leaving (“Berlin Wall”). These young men were valuable to the economy, because of the various products and services they could provide. However, they were trapped against their will in East Berlin;...
Thankfully, in the end there was a solution. The Berlin wall was taken down/ opened on November 9, 1989. This was due to the Communist Government falling and losing power throughout
1945; World War II had ended. People all over the world celebrated, even the citizens in Berlin, Germany. Little did the Berliners know that their war was not over? Another war had started, a Cold War, from 1945 to 1989, tearing Berlin families and friends apart. A wall had been built up; they couldn’t travel where they wanted anymore and couldn’t speak their opinions. These were the rights taken away from East and West Berliners.
The end of World War II was the beginning of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. The Soviet Union had control over East Berlin, which was governed by a communist government and the United States had control over West Berlin, which was regulated by a democratic government. Both countries wanted full control over Berlin, so the Soviet Union set up a blockade on the West but was unsuccessful. The Berlin Wall was then built to stabilize the economy of East Berlin, which meant that fewer people could escape the east to live in the west. In the article “The fall of the Berlin Wall: what it meant to be there,” by Timothy Garton Ash, he highlights the feelings of no longer having a “iron curtain” segregating both sides of Berlin.
On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan visited the Brandenburg Gate in Germany’s capital of Berlin. In 1987, Berlin was celebrating its 750th anniversary and was host to the most dramatic symbol of the cold war, the Berlin Wall. After World War II, the Allies divided Germany among the victors, the western half under democratic control and the eastern half under communist control. Berlin too was divided just as Germany into east and west sectors and the Soviet Union erected a physical barrier in 1961 in order to quell the rampant migration of defectors to the democratic West. From the 1940’s to the 1980’s the United States and the Soviet Union had been staunch political adversaries embraced in a contest for democracy and communism (History.com Staff, 2009).
Many great words have been spoken towards the Berlin Wall and the issues that surrounded it. The speeches and incredible words spoken by both John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan brought a new light to those uses and the conflict with the separation of Berlin, Germany. In their inspiring words they used countless uses of rhetoric al strategies such as anaphora, imagery, and the use of their addressers language to enhance and emphasize their words and appeal to the people and in doing so it soon brought the city of Berlin back together. Their uses of rhetoric were indeed similar to each other and the way they addressed the people of Berlin, and the Russian Chancellor, and their purpose both the same as well, to bring down the Berlin Wall, and the parting between whole communities, families, and friends be closed.
Before the wall got built in1961, East German peoples could travel to West Berlin to visit there family’s. On May 8th, 1945 the World War II ended. June 24th, 1948 the Soviet Military started the Berlin Blockade. Germany was divided in four different parts after World War II. Each part was controlled by a different part of a country. Twenty- eight years and “Iron curtain” East and West Berlin got divided in the heart of Germany.
At first, the divisions between East and West Berlin were uncertain. There was nothing that divided the city. For more than ten years after the official split of the city, East Berlin saw a major emigration of East Germans, unhappy with the communist system. With nothing physical to separate East and West Berlin, migration from totalitarianism to democracy was as easy for East Berliners as changing houses. The Soviet Union went against their promises to the people of East Germany, and made East Germany a Communist country. This decision by the Soviet Union separated East Germany even more from the rest of Europe. East Germany was now all by itself, and by the summer of 1952 th...
In the last fifty years the German Democratic Republic has been a nonstop changing country. In Germany, the terms “East” and “West” do not just represent geographically regions. It runs much deeper than that, and there is still a large gap in the way of life, and political and social conditions of the whole country. While most German’s were sleeping on the night of August 13, 1961, the East German government began closing its borders. In the early morning of that Sunday, most of the first work was done: the border to West Berlin was closed. The East German troops had begun to tear up streets and to install barbed wire entanglement and fences through Berlin. Between 1961 and today, the Berlin Wall saw many changes, and so did the people that it entrapped.