The Berlin Wall : The Cold War

Section three of Patrick Major’s book Behind the Berlin Wall: East Germany and the Frontiers of Power published in 2010 from the Oxford University Press Inc., called The Fall of the Wall: 9 November 1989 is about developing the reasons for the fall of the wall. The author starts with describing the political, financial and economic situation in East Germany and the other eastern

Following the fall of the Third Reich at the end of WWII Germany was split between east and west into two different countries. In the east the German Democratic Republic was under communist rule and was supported by the Soviet Union. The Federal German Republic was a democracy that was part of NATO. As part of the division of Germany following WWII, Berlin, the capital of Germany was divided evenly between the two nations. However, the entire city of Berlin was deep inside of the GDR, so the Western half of the city was democratic but it was surrounded by communist territory. This made West Berlin a place where many East Germans would try to escape to. As a result of this the German Democratic Republic built a wall surrounding West Berlin to stop its own people from escaping to freedom.

Berlin Wall, known as the Iron Curtain, divided and separated the entire Europe in two. Berlin Wall was meant to stop people from escaping to the West. Many people didn’t have a chance to react before the wall was set up. No one was allowed to cross to the other side without permission. Tens of thousands of people were separated in just one night. On both sides, separated brothers, sisters,

This is a newspaper source from the London Herald dating Saturday 11th of November 1989. This primary source demonstrates the views of the British towards the fall of the Berlin Wall, what it symbolised and how it affected the political world.

At the beginning of the Cold War, the communist government in East Germany (GDR) and the Soviet Union agreed that a wall, restricting the people’s free access to the west (Allies), was the only way to solve the mass exodus that threatened the East German economy and made the Soviet Union look inferior to their rival the United States. The Berlin Wall, which enclosed West Berlin, was constructed, and the East Berliners were trapped behind a desperate and failing Iron Curtain until a revolution finally led to their freedom.

The Berlin Wall symbolized many things for different people. For the Germans it served as their punishment from World War II, this punishment divided up their country and separated many people from their families who might have lived in different parts of Germany. Everyday things that were accessible to them like going to the grocery store or visiting family members were now made harder since in order to cross to the other side of the wall people would have to go through security checks. The Wall also represented death because if someone were to try to escape to the other side of the wall they would be shot dead. To other countries the Berlin Wall represented communism as well as division between two different forms of government. During

The Berlin wall was a wall that was up to 15 feet high, which separated East and West Berlin during the Cold War. It lasted 28 years from 1961 and 1989. Throughout this time period, many people living in East Germany left and fled to West Germany because they had a better economic system. Since their lost in WWII, East Germany built the wall to prevent access to West Berlin. Because of this separation that lasted 28 years, many families, friends and relatives were separated. The wall slowly progressed to become even more advanced so that it would be harder for people to get to the other side. About 5,000 people survived, 5,000 people got caught and 191 more were killed. People were willing to do anything at any means just to get over the wall

The Berlin Wall was built on August 13, 1961. It was built because millions of East Germans were defecting to the West via West Berlin. In the documentary it was said that before the wall was built one person every three minutes was defecting to the West. This was threatening East Germanys labor force and its economic survival. The GDR said the official reason for the wall was to keep out anti-socialist influences.

On August 13, 1961, the Soviet Union that controlled East Berlin (and East Germany) rolled out a wall of barbed wire overnight to separate their claims on East Berlin from the Allies that controlled west Berlin because they thought that the allies were damaging their communist regime in the East. The reason for this ‘overnight barricade’ was to keep the “Western fascists from undermining their city” . Families were broken apart and if you were at the wrong side of the wall at the wrong time, you would be separated from your families by a string of barbed wire that later became a giant concrete wall. This was seen as a somewhat aggressive action and immediately began making political actions to make the Soviets tear it down. When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union, he noticed that it was causing famine and chaos in East Berlin, so he agreed to demolishing the wall that his predecessors had built.

The Berlin Wall remained for almost 30 years, part the city of Berlin into comrade East Berlin and majority principle West Berlin. Conceived of the fragmenting of Germany by the Allies toward the terminal of Humanity War II, the splitter was an image of socialist tyranny, the most obvious component of the Iron Curtain. It isolated families, cut people off from their employments and left due East Germans peering into th­e energetic Western United States from their boring socialist condominium.

The fall of the Berlin Wall was one of the most influential events of the Cold War. After losing the election is 1945, Winston Churchill gave a very prophetic speech about the “Iron Curtain” forming in Germany. Sixteen years later, barbed wire stretched across Germany creating the beginning of the Berlin Wall. Later reinforced with concrete, the Berlin Wall’s purpose was to stop the migration of the East Germans to West Germany. The Berlin Wall also served as a symbol of the beginning of the Cold War.

In The Year That Changed The World tells the first hand experience of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. The main factor in the collapse of the wall was the never ending fight of the individuals who had fallen under the communist state. Most of these individuals came together and fought in order to achieve their goal of a non-communist state and German unification. The Cold War was the conflict between the Eastern bloc (Communist) against the Western Bloc (Capitalist), the separation between them began to be known as the Iron Curtain. The Berlin Wall was physical representation of the war for most people, a city divided into two. This important part of history led to the beginning of the Cold War period and the end. The fall of the Berlin Wall made 1989 the year that changed the world. In The Year That Changed the World Meyer conveys that success is easily accomplished in cooperation rather than separation.

When I started looking for topics a few weeks ago I wanted to learn more about the Berlin Wall. I have since realized that to study the history of the Berlin Wall in one semester is something that would only allow me to skim through various sources and information, there is simply too much information to learn and so much of it available that I have chosen to focus my research so far on the Fall of the Berlin wall. The events of the mid-to-late 80s that changed the political atmosphere enough to bring the wall down.

The first source which will use to support the thesis will be Serge Schmemann’s book When The Wall Came Down: The Berlin Wall and the Fall of the Soviet Communism, written in 2006 and published by Kingfisher. Schmemann received the Pulitzer Prize for his work over the reunification of Germany, he is also a graduate of Harvard College and holds an M.A. from Columbia University, as well as an honorary doctorate from Middlebury College. In 1989, the year of the Berlin Wall coming down, Schmemann was chief New York Times correspondent in Germany.It is understood that the book was created sometime after the Cold War topic, but Serge Schmemann was a first-person witness to the event of the Berlin Wall opening. Schmemann traveled through Eastern Europe as one Communist government after another toppled under the will of the Eastern Germany people.Giving not only his perspective but others as well of their

While studying about Europe in the twentieth century, it became clear that the cold war had a lasting impact on the history of Germany as well as America’s view on communism. In our text book the Allies, especially the U.S., are always presented as being strongly opposed to the building of the Berlin Wall. So why had the Berlin Wall been allowed to last for twenty-eight years? During a search to find out more as to the reason for this lengthy existence, I came across the website for the magazine History Today, or www.historytoday.com. There was an article entitled “The Berlin Wall: A Secret History”, its author Frederick Taylor states a dissimilar point of view concerning the Allied leaders’ response to the construction of the Berlin Wall than that of the text book. History Today’s website offers many articles about several eras throughout history, as well as, unique perspectives on historical events.