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An essay on the berlin wall
The impact of the Berlin wall
An essay on the berlin wall
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For more than two decades, the Berlin Wall divided families, friends, and its nation apart.It was a symbol of an Iron Curtain that separated the free Western countries and the Soviet countries of Eastern Europe during the Cold War. The Communist erected the Berlin Wall wanted to stop their people from migrating to the Free World or West sector.
By the end of the World War II, Germany and its capital city, Berlin, was divided into four different divisions for the U.S., France, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union as they reached an agreement. The Western nations (America, France, and Great Britain) ruled the other half of Berlin and had a democratic power. The Soviet Union was allowed to retain the Eastern part of Germany and had a communist
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They built this wall to retain the East Berliners secured within their police state. Moreover, along the wall are heartfelt memorials to those whose last act of life was one of rebellion and bravery. Still, the Communist wanted to isolate West Berlin and take this boundary of the free world into the Socialist camp. This blockage constructed over blocks of stones screened with wire and guarded weapon. There were also numbers of individually attempts to escape, which some succeed, and some died. Over time, East German officials replaced the wall with a mass of reinforced concretes that harder to climb over. Soon, this wall was completely splitting apart access to the west, placing family and friends divided for decades.
The speech "Tear down this Wall." by President Ronald Reagan set remarkable work to the fall of the Berlin wall. Which he invited the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to torn down this wall if he wanted peace and prosperity.Finally, in 1989, as the Soviet Union was beginning to collapse and losing their control in East Germany. The Soviet Union leader starts to announce a change to his city relationships with the West. The borders were open to moving between Eastern and Western Germany freely. After all, Germany was a reunified
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...
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
...speech to the world where he was quoted as saying, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” The speech was given at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin (“Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall: President Ronald Reagan”). This speech signified the beginning of the end of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. President Reagan’s foreign policy tactics are another reason why he was a great president.
As the wall rose, mass panic caused many Germans in East Berlin to flee in hopes of evading the chains of communism. Those who didn’t cross into West Berlin were trapped, forced to live the Nazi way of life, separated from freedom. With Berlin dwindling from the previous war, the people were neither strong nor weak, but their fears grew. The fear that the Nazis would soon consume all of Berlin plagued the people of West Berlin (Widmer 2013).
Walls are one of man’s oldest defenses; physical barriers that are erected to keep people out, or, in some cases, to keep them in. Walls are physical fortifications that create tension and distain among people on both sides. This is what the Berlin Wall, or der Mauer in German, was; a physical barrier created in Berlin, Germany during the Cold War. It was created by the East Germans in an attempt to stop East German citizens from immigrating to Western Germany. However, the Berlin wall was a crude attempt to separate the political and social variances in Germany during the Cold War, because, while it created a physical barrier, it still was unable separate people in an ethic manor.
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.
President Stalin saw the US strategy to rebuild Europe as a way to weaken Soviet influence in that region. This led to the aggressive struggle to take over control of Germany, which led to the divide of Germany. German Capital, Berlin took the hardest hit. The city was divided into the East and West. Soviets were in control of the East while the West was controlled by the Americans, British and French. West Berlin enjoyed more liberal civil and democratic freedom than their counterparts in East Berlin. Again the US and its allies were able to aggressively block any form of communist insurgencies into those areas by providing massive supply of food and other necessities for West Germany in what was known as the Berlin Airlift. This eventually led to the formation of East Germany in
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, 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.
Though times were tough for many years for some Germans, things are improving slowly. While the wall was erect, many Germans had high hopes of change and continue to strive towards equality nationwide. In June of 1963 when John F. Kennedy visited Berlin, he gave a very impacting speech to the people of Berlin, "There are some who say that Communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin" (Sidey). Although the wall no longer physically stands, it still today divides Germany and Berlin into two separate states today.
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 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.
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).
First of all, Germany was divided in half with the western half being controlled by the allies and the eastern half under the control of the Soviet Union. By 1949, Western Germany would have a democratic government while Eastern Germany became a satellite country of the Soviet Union with a communist government. The Soviet Union would continue the spread of their brand of communist government absorbing the countries of Albania, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.... ... middle of paper ... ...
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.