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Berlin Blockade
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.
This arrangement reflected the Allied solution for the whole of Germany. Berlin was an island with special status governed by four nations in the sea of the Soviet Zone of Occupation.
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.
Still bound by very complex regulations, West Berlin began to rebuild in earnest. It was given special treatment by West Germany and by the Allies. Its survival became a symbol of Western commitment against Soviet style communism. Money was pumped in, industries revived, a new University created, since Communist professors and principles dominated the Humboldt University in East Berlin. But the East German Government, certain that West Berlin would eventually fall to them, was richly inventive in tactics of intimidation. Highways were blocked for hours or days at a time, as were canal and rail corridors. Finally, they blockaded the city totally. The Americans - specifically, General Lucius Clay, - invented the Air Lift. For over a year, one B-29 after another flew into Tempelhof Airport and supplied the city until the blockade was lifted.
Americans were heroes to West Berliners during in the late 'forties and well beyond.
Berlin cleaned up the war mess, grew and prospered, not quite as dynamically as West Germany, but not too far behind.
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...
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.
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.
June 5: Supreme power passed to the victorious countries: USA, UK, France and the Soviet Union. (Kettenacker L, 1997) Their main purpose, according to the London Protocol of September 12, 1944 and subsequent agreements, was the implementation of complete control over Germany (Douglas R, 2013) At the heart of this policy lay partition of the country into three zones of occupation, section of Berlin into three parts and the creation of a joint Supervisory Board of three commanders. The division of Germany into zones of occupation had ever recaptured her desire for world dominance.
In Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence and Morality,” Singer makes three claims about moral duty; that avoidable suffering is bad, that it is our moral obligation to help others in need, and that we should help those in suffering regardless of their distance to us or if others are in the same position as we are to help. First, I will elaborate on Singer’s arguments for each of these positions. Next, I will discuss two objections to Singer’s position, one that he debates in his writings and another that I examine on my own, and Singer’s responses to those objections. Then I will examine why Singer’s rebuttals to the objections were successful.
The strong principle is this “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought morally to do it” (136). Singer’s point with this principle is that we are obliged to limit moral wrong, as in this case from famine, in anyway not morally wrong until that point at which by giving any more we cause as much suffering to ourselves as the amount of suffering we relieve. This principle, Singer thinks, is almost as uncontroversial as his assumption, of that I would say I disagree because, as I will show it doesn’t take into account the right to your
Singer presents his argument specifically in terms of famine relief and, although it has broader applicability, the discussion mostly falls under this specific topic. Thus, he conforms his argument around aspects relevant to famine and/or poverty when laying out his three core premises.
In addition, East Germany began to allow its people to pass freely to West Berlin through the Berlin Wall, and the East Germans soon began to tear the wall down. Germany was reunified in 1990, when East Germany united with West Germany (Walker 388). In 1991, the Soviet Communist Party lost control of the Soviet government. Later that year, the Soviet Union was dissolved, and the republics that made up the nation became independent states. Russia was by far the largest of these states.
A strong government can create opportunities to flourish in prosperity and their economy will boom which creates finality in their country. West Germany had stayed a capitalist country and then decided to reach out and expand until it was a welfare state. Like I said having a strong government made West Germany flourish in prosperity and their economy started to boom this made their hardships form World War 2 a distant memory to them. The United States took it upon them to aid West Germany to try to stop communism ideals from spreading there. The government provided health care, pensions, and support for college kids. On the other hand East Germany did not prosper from any of this sequence because they followed communism they were stagnated
Even though Berlin lay deep within the Soviet sector, the Allies thought it would be the best to divide this capital. Therefore Berlin was also divided into four parts. Since the Soviet Union was in control of the eastern half of Germany, they made East Berlin the capital of East Germany. The other three counties were each in control of a small part of what was to be West Germany. The Allies decided that they would come together to form one country out of their three divided parts. Those three divided parts formed West Germany. After all the land was divided the Soviet Union controlled East Germany. Just like the Soviet Union, the economy in East Germany was struggling to get back on its feet after the war. While West Berlin became a lively urban area like many American cities, East Berlin became what many thought of as a ‘Mini-Moscow’. In East Germany there was literary almost nothing. The shelves in the stores were practically bare, and what was there was not in very good quality.
East Berliners could attend movie theaters showing Western films, and many had jobs in the strong economy of West Berlin. With the thriving economy, many shopped in the well-stocked stores in West Berlin. Items like jeans, fashionable dresses, and seamless panty hoses which were unavailable in East Berlin shops were reaidly available in West Berlin shops. In addition, East Berliners and other East Germans could simply take a subway car to flee to West Berlin and on to West Germany. Even today Germans are seeing the effects of the wall.
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.
The extent to which the fact that the Western Allies did not respond with violence but with the airlift and its success was a main factor to its end will be assessed. The significance of the agreement made between the Soviets and the US in lifting not only the Berlin Blockade but also the Western counter blockade will also be evaluated. The reasons for the implementation of the blockade, the actions of the superpowers that do not contribute to the failure of the blockade, and the consequences of this crisis will not be investigated. The analysis will be done by researching different views on the blockade’s failure and the events leading up to it.... ...
Throughout the piece, Singer highlights that ‘we ought to give money away and it is wrong not to do so.’ This statement is not merely showing that it will be commendable to give money, but failing to give will be morally wrong. This obligatory nature of his argument urges people to donate the money that would otherwise be spent on luxuries. Singer’s profound conclusion has been supported by an analogy: What would you do if you see a small child drowning? There can be little doubt that, despite the inconvenience of getting our clothes muddy and shoes wet, people will attempt to save the child’s life. From this example, Singer builds on to argue that there is no moral difference between letting the child drown and
...tical and economic woes attributed to reunification, Germany would be able to fortify its status as a reunified nation in the years to come.