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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.
Following the conferences during World War Two, Germany was split up into two zones. Occupying West Germany and West Berlin was France, Britain and The United States, while the Soviet Union occupied Ea...
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 and tried taking its way around to get control of East Berlin by building the Berlin Wall. The creation of this “concentration camp” on a much larger scale, gave the GDR total control over the people. The reasoning that the German Democratic Republic provided for the creation of this gigantic wall was that many of its skilled labor were leaving to the “free land” or the West, causing an economic downfall in the East.
Taylor, Frederick. "The Berlin Wall: A Secret History." History Today Feb. 2007: 43-49.SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 20 Feb. 2012.
Garton Ash says you cannot recreate the liberation and emotional intensity of those that watched the wall fall. If you did not live on the East side of the Berlin Wall you cannot begin to understand what it felt like to see and know the there was no longer a wall. If you were not present at the time, you cannot recover those memories of liberation or recover what people did not know at the time. Garton Ash says that people say they foresaw the fall of the Berlin Wall, but they did not know when and how it was going to happen. Garton Ash said the only person he knew that said the Berlin Wall would fall was Ursula. The women he lived with when he moved to Berlin in 1978. Ursula had a dream that just for one night the wall would
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 precipitated the Reunification of Germany in 1990. Negotiations and talks between East German’s Lothar de Maiziere and West German’s Helmut Kohl and the four occupying powers of United States, United Kingdom, France, and Soviet Union resulted in the Unification Treaty or the “Two plus Four Treaty” recognizing the sovereignty of the newly unified German state. The five states of German Democratic Republic or East Germany united with Federal Republic of Germany or West Germany and Berlin became a unified city on October 3, 1990 marking the die wende or Turning Point. “By early 1991, however, not much more than a year after the barricade surrounding the Brandenburg Gate was actually removed, most Germans, East and West, were asking themselves whether the Wall’s absence was, by itself sufficient to bring the nation together again” (McAdams 199).” Zealous attempts to restructure East Germany’s economy after reunification in 1990 led to massive debt and high taxation, sparking disillusionment and frustration among German citizens, which resulted in a divided and unequal economy.
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 Germany, the terms “East” and “West” do not just represent geographical 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 install barbed wire entanglement and fences through Berlin.
The Berlin Wall was put up for one of the most historically common reasons any country would do anything radical: political and economical gain. East Germany was controlled by communist Russia. In contrast, West Germany was controlled by the U.S., France, and Great Britain. Germans who lived in East Germany wanted to move to West Germany to seek better living styles. Approximately 2.7 million Germans escaped from East Germany to West Germany. As a result, East Germany had an astonishing lack of population. Of course, that was a detrimental blow to the economy of East Germany, including a scarce work force. To put a stop to escaping Germans, East Germany constructed the 103 mile, 12 foot high Berlin Wall. To increase East Germany’s population, people were allowed entry into East Germany by means of the Berlin Wall. However, people were not allowed to depart from East Germany by means of the Berlin Wall. Basically, once people entered East Germany, they were not departing. Building the Berlin Wall was a complete violation of the Germans’ right to freedom, all for political gain.
As the Soviet Union approaches Berlin from the East, the allied forces invade from the west. Hitler’s German war-machine was crumbling. The United States had to make an enormous decision. Should they attack the Red Army of the Soviet Union? Should they keep the increasingly shaky alliance with the Russians and end the war in Europe? America chose to remain allies, resulting in a decision that affected the world for the next 46 years. World War 2 had concluded but now there was a new enemy, the Soviet Communist.
The Berlin Blockade What were the main factors that ultimately led to the failure of the Berlin Blockade? Word Count: 1957. TABLE OF CONTENTS A. Plan of the investigation. 3 B. Summary of Evidence. 4 C. Evaluation of Sources............................. 6 D. Analysis.................................. 8 E. Conclusion.
In 1947, the Western portion of Germany instituted a government under the watchful eyes of the Western Allies. The Soviet sector followed suit in 1949. During this period, the elaborate governance structure of greater Berlin broke under the strain of Cold War tensions. What emerged was West Berlin, which took up ties with West Germany, known as the Federal Republic of Germany. East Berlin, which comprised the ruins of the old and historic center of Berlin and outlying districts to the East, became the capital of the German Democratic Republic. After World War II, the Americans pumped capital into West Germany through the Marshall Plan, which resulted in one of the world's strongest economies, enormous prosperity and a stable democracy. Germany has been divided ever since and though at every opportunity, lip service was paid by all western nations to its eventual reunification, no one took the matter seriously.
The division of Germany into West Germany and East Germany emerged as a stopgap solution for the woeful state of the nation following its defeat in the Second World War. With the United States (US) ultimately gaining full control over West Germany, East Germany increasingly became alienated towards it, as it went under the influence of the Soviet Union (USSR). West Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), rapidly grew into one of the most politically and economically influential nations in Europe representing the democratic interests of the US in the region, while East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR), went seemingly the other way. East Germans became increasingly disillusioned by the way their politicians have promoted communism in the GDR, characterized by oppressive measures and sheer inequality in living standards. The Stasi, the secret police unit of the GDR, closely monitored East Germans and purged those who are suspected or proven dissidents, while politicians of the nation enjoyed living standards that are way superior compared to the average East German. West Germans, on the other hand, enjoyed the benefits of political and economic reforms brought forth by the democratic influence of the US. Therefore, discontentment among East Germans increased the prospect of unification of the FRG and GDR – an issue that was never written off in consideration, only further complicated by political differences. Nevertheless, eventual unification of the FRG and GDR following the symbolic collapse of the Berlin Wall did not completely result to favorable circumstances, as problems that continued to alienate matters between the Western and Eastern sections of Germany remain unresolved (Brockman ...
The histories of the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall separated the people of East Berlin from the people in West Berlin. Berlin Wall separated people from their families and people from keeping their jobs. So many people have died from not being able to eat. What happen before the wall got built, why it was built, why the wall got knocked down, and what happen after the Wall got knocked down.
The alienation of intellectuals and the authoritative nature of communist regimes further contributed to the failure of communism in Europe. However, the collapse of the Berlin Wall would not have occurred had it not been for Gorbachev’s Glasnost, Perestroika, and the end of the Brezhnev Doctrine. Along with German official Schabowski, whose actions were the catalyst for the mass exodus of persons from the GDR into West Germany. The collapse of the Berlin Wall would not have occurred so swiftly had Gorbachev not tried to implement reforms to communism. Europe was divided into two blocks; the communist East and the democratic West was governed collectively by the French, British, and Americans, respectively.