In 1982, my father and I traveled to Germany to visit my brother. We decided to visit Checkpoint Charlie and The Berlin Wall. Our trip began by train and took place during the middle of the night. We were not allowed to open the blinds while traveling. At departure, our passports were confiscated and reviewed by the soldiers that ushered us onboard.
The Berlin Wall separated West Berlin from East Berlin. Construction began on August 13, 1961. Its purpose was to keep people from fleeing to the West. They were in fear of the economic and political environment. Their homes and businesses were being seized.
Visible at the crossing was a large white line that separated the two cities. On the west side, there was a museum that had pictures of people who had attempted to escape by crossing-over the line. We decided to see for ourselves what was on the other side. There was a tall white sign stating, “YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR.” We crossed over into a part of the country that many people were intent on leaving. This was quite an eerie feeling. Guards watched fro...
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
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 ...
It is 1945 and World War II has just ended with Hitler out of power however, conflict for the German people was far from over. After World War II in 1945 Germany was split up into different zones. Berlin, Germany’s capital was also divided into occupation zones; East Berlin and East Germany was run by the Soviet Union while West Berlin and West Germany was controlled by Western Allies, France, Great Britain, and the United States (Hyder). Over the next 16 years tensions rose due to defections from the East and the West this led to the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. It was built to keep the ideas of a Western democracy out of East Germany’s communist government. The Berlin Wall was built in the hopes of having a beneficial outcome for
The feud between the United States of America (USA) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) lasted from the end of World War II until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The fuel that powered their feud was the desire to be the greater superpower. After World War II ended, the USSR gained control of Eastern Germany. On the night of August 13, 1961, a wall was constructed that divided the already separate East and West Berlin. This wall would become what was known around the world as the Berlin Wall. It stood as a barrier to freedom from the East Berliners. The Berlin Wall in Germany caused the USSR to lose the Space Race to the United States in 1969 because the USSR was communist, they alone had control of East Germany, and the United States was tough competition. With the Berlin Wall making tensions high in Germany during the 1960s, the USSR had a lot more business to take care of than they had thought.
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.
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.
Germany is one country now, but many people fail to recognize that Germany was once split into two, East and West. Berlin was the dividing line and they called the concrete structure that separated the two the Berlin Wall. 1961 was the day that the Berlin Wall started to be created and the new laws enforced. The Eastern Germans were tortured and starved. The Westerns had a decent life and many Eastern Germans attempted to flee to Western Germany. The wall was erected to prevent this mass escape from happening. The question asked now is “How did the Berlin Wall affect Germany?”
The Berlin Wall, built in August of 1961, was s physical symbol of the political and emotional divisions of Germany. The Wall was built because of a long lasting suspicion between the Soviet Union on one side and Western Europe and the United States on the other. For 28 years the Berlin Wall separated friends, families, and a nation. After WWII was over Germany was divided into four parts. The United States, Great Britain, and France controlled the three divisions that were formed in the Western half and the Eastern half was controlled by the Soviet Republic. The Western sections eventually united to make a federal republic, while the Eastern half became communist.
The decision to create the Berlin Wall was very unsettling for Eastern Berliners. The reason that the Berlin Wall was created rested on the economic failings due to the unhappiness of the people. The Berliners looked for a more Democratic government, where their thoughts would be heard
Before the wall was built, the city was split, given no notice on Sunday, and “overnight brutally severed streets” (Heilbrunn) became known as ‘Stacheldrahtsonntag’, barbed wire Sunday. Shortly after, the creation of the concrete wall began. During the construction of the wall, there was outrage in West Berlin over the new barbed wire wall that ran through their city. There was outrage in East Berlin as well but it was quickly controlled by their secret police who made many arrests for any who did not want to follow the communist rule and spoke out about it. Unlike other walls built around the world to keep enemies out, this wall was designed by communists to keep people in. 11-13 feet high and was a total of 28 miles long the wall encircled East Berlin. Surrounded by “towers, guards, and dogs stood watch over a barren no man's land. A pipe, too large in diameter for a climber's grip, ran along the top of the wall.”(“Newseum:Berlin Wall”) Aside from the wall construction, there was other damage to East Berlin, “Buildings...were demolished, and the wide open area became known as "no man's land" or the "death strip," wh...
On August 13, 1961, the communist government of East Germany built the Berlin Wall to divide the East and West Berlin. Building the wall caused a short term crisis in U.S. Soviet blockade relations, and the wall itself began to symbolize the Cold War. Throughout the 1950s and into the East Berlin crossed over into West Berlin to reunite with families and escape communist oppression. The government of East Germany on the night of 1961 began to seal off all points of entrance into West Berlin from East Berlin by putting barbed wire and guarding it. The Berlin Wall succeeded in sealing off two sections of Berlin. This angered the U.S., and West Berlin began to make plans to bulldoze the wall, but failed when Soviets had armored units into position
The Berlin Wall was constructed in 1961 by the GDR (German Democratic Republic - (East Germany) under the pretext of keeping out the fascist enemy infiltrating from West Germany. In actual fact, the wall was built to keep in the population of the GDR, many of whom were fleeing to a better life in West Berlin and other European Countries. Armed border guards were sworn to protect East Germany however they knew that a better life existed on the other side of the wall. The photographer, Peter Leibing, captured the moment in history, when the first GDR Border Guard , Conrad Schumann, finally got the courage to desert his post and leap over the barricade (at that point still a barbed wire fence).
...from friends and family on each end. The barrier was then secured by other military tactics such as wiring, alarms, dogs, and sentries among other means. It was marked to prevent the immigration of the people that would morally interfere with the split between free and communist Germany. Many attempted to escape to the other side of it to reach elective regions, but it was unfortunately too much of a risk of life to cross. The wall fell almost 40 years later with the coming protests and rebellions of the late Cold War associated with other events in the 80s, and even when it was taken down there were still limitations to crossings between the east and west. The Cold War and the UN’s initiative events on Berlin had lasted nearly to this decade, and so goes to show how far it’s spread had influenced today’s countries and served as origin for the start of the war.
this wall” in reference to the Berlin Wall which separated East and West Germany. In 1989, the
Prior to the construction of the Berlin Wall, boarders between East and West Germany were closed in 1952 because of tension between Communists and Democratic superpowers and the only open crossing left in Berlin. West Germany was blockaded by the Soviets and only kept alive because of air drops made by the Western Allies (Time). The Soviets had to do something about the mass amount of people leaving Soviet East Berlin for West Berlin, and the non-communist world.