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Challenge of Germany Unification
Challenge of Germany Unification
The cause of the second Berlin crisis
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Berlin was a reoccurring city of crisis. The Western Allies worked to aid the people of West Berlin, during their struggles of opposing communists’ ways. The allies went through a blockade, airlift and even a twelve foot concrete wall to provide a lasting solution to the relationship between East and West Germany. Insert thesis You cannot not solve a permanent problem, with a temporary solution. (Buhite 194)
The United States of America, Great Britain, and France were the three western allies. Berlin was divided into 4 sections between the US, Britain, France, and Russia, during the London Conferences. West Germany was occupied by the United States, Great Britain, and France known as the Federal Republic of Germany. East Germany was controlled by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) and it was referred to as the German Democratic Republic. The three western allies came together to form a currency and working economic unit for the West, which is known as the London Program. (Cold War 1)
The first crisis of Berlin was the blockade. It began on June 24, 1948. (Taylor 54) ...
The October Crisis was one of the most memorable defining moments in Canadian history in the 1960s, and it truly tested the length in which Pierre Trudeau would go to stop these terrorist attacks. The October Crisis followed the various violent acts committed by the Front de Libération du Québec who wished for Quebec independence; mailboxes were placed with bombs, and the Montreal Stock Exchange was bombed in 1969. The October Crisis began on October 5, 1970, where James Cross, a British trade commissioner, was kidnapped by the FLQ. In exchange for the safe return of Cross, ransoms were demanded for the FLQ. While the government worked in trying to rescue him, Pierre Laporte, a cabinet minister for Quebec, was captured five days later. On October 15, 1970, the first time the War Measures Act was used during peacetime occurred; Premier Robert Bourassa and Trudeau decided it was necessary in stopping this possible terrorist threat. 450 suspects were arrested by police, most being released right after. Meanwhile, Laporte had been murdered and stuffed in the trunk of a car; this ended most public support for the FLQ and soon the threat of terrorists diminished. Eventually, Cross was discovered and he was
The period after World War One was very politically unstable. Many different kinds of governments, such as fascism and communism, were coming up all over Europe. One country that especially faced this political fluctuation was Germany. After the war, Germany was forced into a democracy known as the Weimar Republic, but this government soon collapsed and Hitler’s fascism took over. There were various factors that contributed to the fall of the Weimar Republic, but three major ones were the lack of popular support for the government, the lack of efficiency and internal organization, and the competition of other, more conservative parties such as the Nazis.
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.
After the First World War Germany recognised her first ever democratic government, the Weimar republic lasted from 1918 – 1933 an astonishingly long time given its turbulent start. The November revolution saw the election of soldier and worker councils similar to that of the Russian revolution in 1917, it spread across Germany like wildfire and in turn split the country before a democracy could even be instated nevertheless on November 9th 1918 the German republic was established. From then on The Weimar Republic was set on unstable and insecure path and this is why it is one of Germanys most important historical periods; it was Germanys earliest form of non-imperial government and rule and its collapse in 1933 paved the way for the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party. For these reasons there have been endless works published on the Weimar republic and the outpouring of literature post world war two focuses on the collapse of the Weimar republic and how the Nazi party came to power. However, to understand why the debate surrounding the Golden Era in the Weimar Republic is an interesting one and lacking in historical works, it is key to examine the historiography of the Weimar republic as a whole. Furthermore, to understand why historians focus on other periods in the Weimar’s history in particular the consequences of the treaty of Versailles and the consequences of the Wall Street crash in 1928 which led to its collapse.
By contrast, during 1945-1948 Russia had been stripping the factories of east Germany of machinery to take as reparations. Western efforts to restore Germany were seen by Stalin as a direct attack. Berlin (like Germany) was divided into four sectors, but it was deep in the Russian sector of eastern Germany. On 24 June the Russians stopped all road and rail traffic into Berlin. Stalin said he was defending the east German economy against the new currency, which was ruining it. The western powers said he was trying to starve west Berlin into
Leaders are always looking to demonstrate their power. They want to show the world that they are the ones in authority, that no one should cross their path or challenge their ideas. To do this leaders burn books that they want to efface from the minds of their followers. Book burnings are always a part of a massive turning point in history, either for good or bad. In most cases book burnings appear towards the beginning of the battle, to strengthen everyone’s opinion to be with or against whatever the leaders may be burning. Burnings of books appear all over history, and all over the world, so they were not a rare sight to see or hear of. The Nazi regime burned books on May 10, 1933 in Berlin; it was one of the first book burnings that they preformed around Germany before and during WWII. The German poet Heinrich Heine in 1822 perfectly predicted what the Nazi regime was going to do during WWII in one sentence: “Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too” (Heine), which leads to the fact that the Berlin Book Burning was just the start of a new gruesome period in time. Though just because book burnings took place on several occasions in history does not mean it did not affect anyone, matter of fact it was of massive importance. The Berlin Book Burning had a colossal impact on the Nazis; it allowed their ideas to spread, it increased the awareness and fear of the Nazis, and it helped ensure the ignorance of the Germans.
The Berlin Wall oppressed people and literally trapped them in Eastern Germany with little to no freedoms. Many people risked their lives trying to escape Eastern Germany in a multitude of ways. Berlin was a main access point for people attempting to cr...
World War 2, which is also known as the Second World War was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. World War 2 was primarily fought between the Axis powers led by Nazi Germany, against the Allies led by the Soviet Union joined by the United States, Britain, and France. World War Two began when Hitler invaded Poland in order to gain living space for his "superior race" on September 1, 1939 The Battle of Berlin was a major battle in World War Two and holds great importance because it was the final end of World War Two in Europe, ended the Third Reich, rebuilt Germany, and resulted in the separation of Berlin. If the battle had not taken place Germany would not have surrendered to the Soviet Union. Other consequences occurred due to the German defeat as well. The Battle of Berlin played a very important role in World War Two and made history.
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.
Prior to the construction of the Berlin Wall, boarders 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.
presidents in their hearts and minds. The clock was ticking for the government and they did not know how much time that they had before populace would riot (“Berlin Wall
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.
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.
In June 1948 the Russians (who wanted Germany all for themselves) closed all of the highways, railroads and canals from Western-occupied Germany into Western-occupied Berlin. Russia’s reasoning for the Berlin Airlift was to eventually drive France, Britain and the U.S out of Berlin for
The Berlin Wall was a divider between East and West Berlin, the capital city of Germany. It stretched for miles upon miles. Ninety-seven miles in total, and 11.81 feet in the air. After 30 separated years, families were worried to know if there family members that were separated by the wall. Parts were taken all around the world brought by people who were at the site when it fell on November 9, 1989. This is a wall that will be remembered for hundreds of years in not only Germany, but everywhere in the world.