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An essay on the berlin wall
An essay on the berlin wall
An essay on the berlin wall
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Ronald Reagan's BRandenburg Gate Address was not only Reagan's first trip to Berlin as president but a speech that went through every heart and mind in Berlin, Germany. Throughout most of the speech Reagan is talking about the Berlin wall that for over 2 decade separated the communist East germany from the free west germany. In August 1961 during the Cold War, East Germany built a 100 mile long wall separating the soviet union part of Berlin from the UN part of Berlin. Berlin was originally all part of the soviet Union because of the separation of Germany it self, but it was agreed to share Berlin. The soviet Union did not want the West Germany’s fascist ways to get in the way of their communist government. On August 15, 1961 East Germany was no longer allowed to go into West Germany for food, work, or even shopping. …show more content…
Luckily over 2 million East Germans escaped over through the wall before the wall was finished.
The borders were strict and guarded by strict government soldiers and if anyone were to pass the would get killed right away, at least 171 people were killed trying to pass. In order to pass through with consent they had to go through 1 of 3 checkpoints; Checkpoint Charlie, Alpha, or Bravo. The wall splitting East and West Germany almost started a world war 3 but President John F Kennedy convinced The Soviet Union to back down. In 1989 the political view of the Soviet Union changed and it was agreed that the wall shall be taken down, all of it. East and West germans climbed on top of the wall and started hammer down on the wall to prove their soon to be freedom. It was a very emotional time as families were separated and finally reunited. For Example my father's family from Germany was separated for all of this time and were so happy to see eachother again they called all the family from around the world to come and
celebrate. The Brandenburg Gate Address was given on June 9th 1987. Reagan wanted his speech to say that the Gate was not just a diversion but once it shall be taken down, it was a long living symbol of freedom. He was supposed to be giving the speech in April for the 750th anniversary of the founding of Berlin. The President had never expected to be going to Berlin in June but decided to stop there for a couple hours on the way home from his tour of Europe. President Ronald Reagan commands the Soviet Union Leader "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." He is commanding to take down the wall because it shall no longer be a symbol of separation but shall now be a symbol of the unity of a nation.
Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” (Reagan 361) This line, while so simple, is probably the most famous from the whole speech and arguably one of Ronald Reagan 's most famous and recognizable lines ever. It sends a glaringly strong message that the United States and entire free world wants to bring Germany together not just for its own personal interests but because it genuinely cares about the state of the country. This short concise statement also shows that the president means business and that he is willing to do anything in his power to help the German people should Gorbachev accept his offer. He goes on to state that the United States is striving for peace and although it can not permit the spreading of communism, it does seek for all the people to see an increase in the standard of living and assure both sides security by demilitarizing and disarming both sides wherever
“If there is a God, he will have to beg my forgiveness.” (Quote from concentration) This quote was carved into the wall by a Jewish prisoner. Kaiserwald was one of many concentration camps used for the destruction of the Jewish race during the holocaust.
He describes the physical wall in Berlin and the wall of restrictions that divides the rest of the country as a scar, insinuating that it is ugly, unnatural, and undesirable. In the third paragraph, he creates a connection between the people of the east and west by describing them as, “fellow countrymen,” and then by saying, “Es gibt nu rein Berlin. [There is only one Berlin.] ” This connection poses an enthymeme that the people on both sides of the wall have common goals: freedom, security, and prosperity. Reagan then links these goals to the rest of the world by saying, “Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German separated from his fellow men.
"In Slaughterhouse Five, -- Or the Children's Crusade, Vonnegut delivers a complete treatise on the World War II bombing of Dresden. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, is a very young infantry scout* who is captured in the Battle of the Bulge and quartered in a Dresden slaughterhouse where he and other prisoners are employed in the production of a vitamin supplement for pregnant women. During the February 13, 1945, firebombing by Allied aircraft, the prisoners take shelter in an underground meat locker. When they emerge, the city has been levelled and they are forced to dig corpses out of the rubble. The story of Billy Pilgrim is the story of Kurt Vonnegut who was captured and survived the firestorm in which 135,000 German civilians perished, more than the number of deaths in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Robert Scholes sums up the theme of Slaughterhouse Five in the New York Times Book Review, writing: 'Be kind. Don't hurt. Death is coming for all of us anyway, and it is better to be Lot's wife looking back through salty eyes than the Deity that destroyed those cities of the plain in order to save them.' The reviewer concludes that 'Slaughterhouse Five is an extraordinary success. It is a book we need to read, and to reread.' "The popularity of Slaughterhouse Five is due, in part, to its timeliness; it deals with many issues that were vital to the late sixties: war, ecology, overpopulation, and consumerism. Klinkowitz, writing in Literary Subversions.New American Fiction and the Practice of Criticism, sees larger reasons for the book's success: 'Kurt Vonnegut's fiction of the 1960s is the popular artifact which may be the fairest example of American cultural change. . . . Shunned as distastefully low-brow . . . and insufficiently commercial to suit the exploitative tastes of high-power publishers, Vonnegut's fiction limped along for years on the genuinely democratic basis of family magazine and pulp paperback circulation. Then in the late 1960s, as the culture as a whole exploded, Vonnegut was able to write and publish a novel, Slaughterhouse Five, which so perfectly caught America's transformative mood that its story and structure became best-selling metaphors for the new age. '"Writing in Critique, Wayne D. McGinnis comments that in Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut 'avoids framing his story in linear narration, choosing a circular structure.
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
Imagine people who don’t trust you, like you, or care about you, asking you and your family to leave home for the safety of others. You don’t know when or if you are getting back. That seems pretty unfair and rude, right? Well, that is exactly what happened to Japanese Americans during WWII, except they weren’t imagining it. With forces of the Axis on the rise in the 1940’s, America was struggling to keep everyone safe. National security was at stake, so the United States acted poorly to reverse problems. During WWII, the Japanese Americans were interned for reasons of national security because the war made the U.S. act foolishly, the U.S. government didn’t trust them, and the U.S. also didn’t care about them.
...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.
Berlin and West Berlin but was located deep inside the Soviet controlled zone. Then, in 1961, the Soviet government built a wall which separated the two halves of the city. It was not until the 1980s that cold war tensions eased. through the glasnost (openness to public debate) policies of soviet leaders. Mikhail Gorbachev.
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 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 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.
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 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).
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. The alienation of intellectuals and the authoritative nature of communist regimes further contributed to the failure of communism in Europe. However, the collapse of the Berlin Wall would not have occurred had it not been for Gorbachev’s Glasnost, Perestroika, and the end of the Brezhnev Doctrine. Along with German official Schabowski whose actions were the catalyst for the mass exodus of persons from the GDR into West Germany. The Collapse of the Berlin Wall would not have occurred so swiftly had Gorbachev not tried to implement reforms to communism.
The Berlin wall was built in August 13, 1961. They started to build The Berlin Wall after World War II was over. Germany was divided into four zones due to World War II. Each of these four zones were controlled by countries. The Western sections of Germany were controlled by American, French, and the British while the Eastern was controlled by Soviets.The old capital of Berlin was also divided into four zones, but Berlin itself remained inside of the Soviet zone. When they put up the walls separating East and West Germany they did not want any body from the East side going in to the West side of Germany.