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Berlin wall research
Berlin wall research
Fall of berlin wall collapse of soviet union
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The Berlin Wall was one of the most significant events during the cold war. By 1961 more than three million East Germans had lost faith I the communistic ways and headed to West Berlin for a better life for their families (Bill Holland). West Berlin was in a much better economic state because they were receiving aid from the United States. The United States along with Great Britain and France gained control of western Germany and had a different plan to rebuild than the Soviet Union’s plan to rebuild their eastern half. On April 9, 1948 Joseph Stalin ordered all Trains to western Berlin to be stopped, so the United States could no longer get supplies over. When Stalin put this in place, he thought he had won the battle, and we were now on the brink of World War III, until a British commander made the suggestion to deliver to the Germans by aircraft. The United States had little faith in the idea, but made a decision that it would be worth a try and started dropping food and other items to western Berlin by aircraft which came to be known as the Berlin airlift. The Berlin Aircraft caused high tensions among the two sides. Nekita Khruschev was witnessing all the people who were turning their backs to the communism ways and seen that the democratic ways were succeeding, so he decided if they were not willing to stay, they would be forced. This was his decision to build the Berlin Wall. On August 12, 1961 the borders between east and West Berlin were closed (Ed Grabianowski) and the building of the Berlin wall had begun. Street lights in East Germany were shut off so no one could see what was happening. On the morning of August 13, 1961 the people of East Germany along with President John F. Kennedy were awoken to a very big surpris...
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...e made through all border checkpoints between east Germany into west Germany or west Berlin” (Jennifer Rosenberg). When the people heard about this announcement they knew it was just too good to be true. They rushed to the wall to find, to their surprise, that the wall was actually open. People stormed to the other side to find families and friends that they had not seen in decades. Others stayed and began chipping away at the wall with hammers and chisels (Jennifer Rosenberg). The iron curtain finally descended when the Berlin wall fell on October 3, 1990. Within a year of the Berlin wall falling, Germany reunited under a single democratic government, the Federal Republic of Germany. The falling of the Berlin wall was the end of the long ad drawn out Cold War between the warring nations. Today the Berlin is marked as one of the greatest events during the cold war.
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
At the end of WWII, the United States, Great Britain, and France occupied the western zone of Germany while the Soviet Union occupied the east. In 1948, Britain, France, and the U.S. combined their territories to make one nation. Stalin then discovered a loophole. He closed all highway and rail routes into West Berlin. This meant no food or fuel could reach that part of the city. In an attempt to break the blockade, American and British officials started the Berlin airlift. For 327 days, planes carrying food and supplies into West Berlin took off and landed every few minutes. West Berlin might not have made it if it wasn’t for the airlift. By May 1949, the Soviet Union realized it was beaten and lifted the blockade. By using the policy of containment, the Americans and the British were able to defeat the Soviets.
On February 12th The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded by a multiracial group of activists, who answered "The Call," in the New York City, NY. They initially called themselves the National Negro Committee. Founded in 1909 The NAACP, or National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, has been active in its attempts to break legal ground and forge better opportunities for African Americans. At the beginning in 1909, some twenty persons met together in New York City for the purpose of utilizing the public interest in the Lincoln Centennial in behalf of African Americans. The history, function, purpose, and current activities of the organization is important.to work on behalf of the rights of colored people including Native Americans, African Americans and Jews. (Janken 2003)
The Soviet Union blockaded any supplies coming in to West Berlin, so it’s citizens were starved of resources as well as food. The U.S brought supplies and food to West Berlin via hundreds of planes, which was later called the Berlin Airlift. Document B details the Berlin Airlift, and the importance of it to the Cold War. It also shows where the Soviet Blockade was and the major airfields where the U.S planes landed in Berlin. Document B also stated that if the U.S hadn’t have helped Berlin, it would have had to surrender to the Soviet Union. The Berlin Airlift was an example of containment in the Cold War. One of the reasons the U.S engaged in the Berlin Aircraft, was because they didn't want communism spreading to West Berlin, and they didn't want the Soviet union to have control over all of Europe. The U.S also felt that gaining the support of the citizens of West Berlin would also assist in achieving containment in the Cold
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;...
The Ku Klux Klan was a white-supremacist organization that was a product of Civil War. The group's methods evolved over time, but the key goal was to promote white power by threatening minorities. After the Civil War ended in 1865, subsequently the Ku Klux Klan was created. It was created in 1865 by six college students for the purpose of horseplay and pure amusement and not with the intention of it becoming a white supremacist group. Once however the group gained great popularity and an increasing number of followers, the philosophy of the group changed. The group began targeting and harassing African-American’s but without the use of violence. Over time however the group changed their treatment towards African-Americans and began harassing them with extreme violence. The Klan was not alone in their practices and many other discriminating groups were forming at this time. The groups decided to meet with the Klan and joined forces, they collectively drafted a constitution. They also elected a central leader by the name Nathan Bedford Forrest, his title Grand Wizard.
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.
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.
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.
Between 1961 and today, the Berlin Wall saw many changes, and so did the people that it entrapped. Prior to the construction of the Berlin Wall, borders 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. The most visible aspect of the Cold War was the Berlin Wall. Before the wall was constructed, East and West Germans could travel freely between the two states.
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.
... Cuban attack with all-out nuclear retaliation. In response to the increased Soviet ships coming with weapons, JFK ordered a blockade, which he called quarantine because a blockade is an act of war, around Cuba. For 13 days, the world held its breath as the threat of a nuclear war hung over the world, but the Soviets eventually turned back and Khrushchev agreed to remove weapons from Cuba in exchange for no US invasion of Cuba. Meanwhile in Berlin, the city was in turmoil between the East (Soviet) and the West (US controlled). In order to stop the mass exodus of East Berliners, the construction of the 90-mile Berlin Wall began. Both Kennedy and Khrushchev sought ways to ease the tension between the two groups, establishing a hotline between the White House and the Kremlin, and later this led to the Limited Ban Treaty, which banned nuclear testing in the atmosphere.
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 collapse of the Berlin Wall changed Western Europe as we know it today. The Iron Curtain, which had split Europe, had ascended and the once divided Germans were reunited under one common nation. The causal factors which resulted in the fall of the Berlin Wall were internal — communism imploded upon itself—. Gorbachev attempted to reform communism through Glasnost and Perestroika, which were supposed to incorporate economic reforms and transparency, however, history illustrates that increased liberty is incompatible with communism. Dr. Schmidtke argued that structural deficiencies led along with poor economic growth which led to the collapse of communism in Europe, and consequently the collapse of the Berlin Wall.