There are many events concerning the rising and the falling of the Berlin Wall, I will attempt to explain some of them in my following report. The person responsible for the rise of the Wall was Walter Ulbricht. He was a longtime member of the German Communist Party. After 1958 the German Democratic Republic (GDR or East Germany) entered a new state of development. As a result of this a sharp rise of industrial output was ordered in East Berlin. This was a part of a Seven - Year Economic Plan to bring per capita consumption in the GDR up to the level of the Federal Republic or Germany (FRG or West Germany).
The one major loop hole of this scheme was the open border to West Berlin. Which hundreds of East Germans left the country daily. Most of them went underground and weren’t notice. Even regular spot checks by police had no effect because most people avoided it by making several trips few belongings at a time. This flow of refuges continued for about a six month period. After that it stopped for a little while, but as soon as the effect of the Seven-Year Plan began to be felt the flow of refuges arose again.
In 1959, it was a total of 144,000 refuges and in 1960 it rose to 199,00 and in the first seven months of 1961 it rose again to 207,000. This included hundreds of professional people 688 doctors, 296 dentists, 2,698 engineers. The total estimation of 2.5 million people had fled between the years of 1949 and 1961.
Although Berlin was politically divided after the end of World War II. To emphasize the point of and to stop the flow from East Berlin. It was physically divided by a wall in 1961. Fleeing the republic was now a criminal offense. The people of East Berlin were
effectively locked in their country. In the summer of 1961 Ulbricht persuaded the Russians that force was the only way to stop the fleeing of all the people.
Early Sunday morning August 13, 1961 the Wall went up. The GDR began to block off East Berlin from West Berlin by means of barbed wire and antitank obstacles. Streets were torn up, and barricades of paving stones were erected, and tanks were gathered in crucial places. The subways and local railway services between East and West Berlin were interrupted.
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
East Germany’s refugee problem had its roots in the end of World War II. The nationalization of industry and agriculture under the Soviet controlled government led to many shortages that are common in communist countries. Citizens were low on food, shoes, housing, and other consumer goods. As if things could not get worse, Moscow demanded reparations during the first decade after the war. They took many of East Germany’s resources. (Kenny) By 1961, some 2.5 million Germans had fled. This reduced the GDR’s population by around fifteen percent. (Taylor) The mass amount of people escaping caused problems for life in East Germany. Twenty percent of the doctors had left between 1954 and 1961. Engineers, nurses, teachers, and skilled workers were fleeing as well. (Kenny) Jens Schöne, a Berlin historian, said, “Normal people were fed up. They didn’t want to wait fifteen years for a car, they didn’t want to work in a factory; they wanted to be able to t...
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 ...
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
...haven’t really seen since 1945. There was a two-day long party for the Berliners, and all who crossed to the West side each received $100 in German money. One spokesman for East Berlin’s Communist Party said there was a “change in the city’s relations with West Berlin.” West Berliners were holding beer and champagne and were yelling, “Open the gate!” About 2 million people crossed from the East to the West, and were described by a journalist as “the greatest street party in the world”. Many people chipped off pieces of the wall while bulldozers and cranes tore the wall down. Spray painted on the wall was, “Only today is the war really over.”
Also this post war period was a competition between this to last countries. They were the most important mundial powers at the time. They tried to show which one of them was better according to their political system, american capitalism or soviet communism. This political differences had a stronger impact in Berlin where this countries were separated by a road. “For the Communist Government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), West Berlin was a constant provocation, as it was an easy escape route for many East Germans who wanted to flee the country.” (“The building of the Berlin Wall”). In order to stop this mass exodus, which weakened Soviet economy and position in the War, they built the Berlin Wall and made the passage impossible in
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.
For many, the fall of the wall proved the triumph of capitalism over communism. East German communist leaders were forced out of office. Negotiations began for the complete reunification of Germany. West German Chancellor H. Kohl assured the world that a united Germany would be no threat to peace. In October 1990, he became the first Chancellor of a reunited Germany. The construction of the Berlin wall in Germany between the 13th of August 1961 – 1989 increased tensions to a significant extent as it was a sign of dominance portrayed by the USSR, was a follow up from the Bay of pigs and U2 spy plane crisis and the US were trying to combat the USSR by setting up the Berlin airlift and demanding peace in the east. The Berlin Wall was arguably the greatest source of tension during the Cold War due to the many significant events happening before and after the construction of the wall. Finally, the construction of the Berlin Wall created significant tensions between the two superpowers, USSR and the USA, which developed into other tensions arising in the Cold War Period. I have analysed the topic ‘To what extent did the construction of the Berlin Wall increase tensions during the Cold War period’ and developed 3 strong body paragraphs that support my
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.
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...
James Madison is known for being the “Father of the Constitution” because he drafted U.S. Constitution and sponsored the Bill of Rights. Madison established the Democratic-Republican party with Thomas Jefferson, who was president at the time and joined the Virginia militia.. James then became the president and served two terms with first lady Dolley Madison and was the last founding father to serve as president. James Madison accomplished all of this and more before dying on June 28, 1836 at the Montpelier estate in Orange County, VIrginia.
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.