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 …show more content…
The Berlin Wall was a concrete symbol of suppression of human rights by the Eastern blockade during the Cold War. The building of the wall divided families and neighborhoods in August 1961. The wall represented solitude of violence and anger in the post-war world. The autumn of 1961, threatened the world with the risk of military conflict, one that could easily escalate into a nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and Soviet Union. 1961, Berlin remained under watch and kept a special status .Berlin represented an escape hatch where East Germans could head to the now West in pursuit of political freedom and a higher standard of living than their Stalinist masters allowed them. Between 1945 and 1961, 2.5 million had fled reducing the population by 15 percent. Most immigrants were young and well trained. Most Germans believed the building of the Wall to be a painful blow. Not just an act of brutality, but proof that many hoped, distant, or dreamed. There was outrage among West Germans. The West had promoted the recreation of a unified German state. The crisis made it clearer. It accepted Germany divided and saw no reason to oppose it. At the end of July 1961, a new American President was elected named, John F. Kennedy, which who already ordered a military build-up to help with the Soviet and Warsaw Pact on Berlin. The first deaths at the Wall came. East Berliners tried to escape to the West when they plunged from high windows and roofs to their deaths. Ten days after “barbed wire Sunday” a young Berliner was shot coldly as he tried to swim across a canal into the West. Deaths were almost the first of two hundred during the Wall’s existence. Hundreds wounded and thousands were punished for their escape plan along with jail and harsh conditions. The reality of the Wall had never been challenged through
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.
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
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;...
Walls are built up all over the world. They have many purposes and uses. The most common use of a wall is to divide a region. One of these famous walls is the Berlin Wall, which was constructed in 1961. This Wall was erected to keep East Berlin out of West Berlin, and even America had its own wall well before this one. There were a few major differences though. America’s wall, in contrast, was not a physical one that kept capitalism from communism. America’s wall was of a psychological variety, and it spread across most of the nation. America’s wall was more of a curtain in the fact that one could easily pull it aside to see what behind it, but if one didn’t want to they didn’t. This curtain was what separated whites and blacks in America, and one famous writer, James Baldwin, felt there was a need to bring it down. He felt that one should bring it down while controlling his or her emotions caused by the division. One of the best places to see the bringing down of the curtain and the effects that it had on the nation is where the curtain was its strongest, in Birmingham, Alabama.
The Berlin wall appeared to be an actual iron curtain. With the panic that came with the wall, Kennedy followed not long after, arriving in Rudolph Wilde Platz to an estimated 1.1 million free Germans (Widmer 2013). At the time, this was over half of West Berlin that came to attend their ray of hope. The people weren’t week, but instead, seeked the truth of freedom in the words of Kennedy’s speech. With confidence the President spreads his words of freedom. John Kennedy’s energy lifted the spirits of West Berlin. Democracy was felt throughout the entire crowd.
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.
In conclusion Berlin Wall was an important milestone in the growth of the Cold War. It was the expansion that represented the thinking of a determined Communist system. Western Capitalism, which was more powerful, eventually defeated the system. The massive wall that did so much harm to a country was finally destroyed, and the people of Germany could now live the way they all wanted to live. They could live the life of freedom. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall East Germany has went through a lot of changes, and it still is not easy for all of the people in East Germany. But no matter how hard it is for the people of East Germany now, it is better than being alone and separated from their families, friends and rest of Europe.
Each section was controlled by a different country; United States, France, Britain, and the Soviet Union. The Capital Berlin, being inside the Soviet controlled East Germany, was also divided into two sections, East and West Berlin. West Berlin was controlled by the United States and East Berlin was controlled by the Soviet Union. Starting on August 13 1961, Berliners woke up to a barrier separating the east from the west. East Germans had closed off the border with barbwire and guards. Many families were separated. Many jobs were lost. Two days after the border had been closed off, a wall had begun to get built.
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.
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.
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.
After World War II, when Germany was defeated, it was divided into four zones, one for each of the Allies. The eastern part went to the Russians. The other Allied Powers, France, Britain and the U.S. divided the Western portion of the city among themselves.
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 ...
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.
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).