Seriah Carrillo
Mr.Williams
U.S. History
15 May 2018
The fall of The Berlin Wall
The fall of the Berlin Wall was the first step towards German reunification.The political,economic, and social impact of the fall of the Berlin wall further weakened the already unstable East German government. The fall of the Berlin wall impacted the social,economic, and political throughout the time period of the starting stages of the Berlin wall falling.
On August 13,1961,The Berlin Wall was built by a barbed wire and concrete Antifaschistischer Schutzwall between East and West Berlin by the communist government of the German Democratic Republic. The purpose of the wall was to keep western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state but it was mainly to serve the purpose of stemming
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mass defections from the two sides. On that evening, Premier Khrushchev had gave permission to the East German Government to stop emigrants by closing the border for good. Within two weeks, the Berlin wall was completed with makeshift barbed wire and concrete to divide one side of the city from the other. While the Berlin wall was still standing, at least 171 people were killed trying to get over,under, or around the wall but, escaping from east germany was not impossible. For 28 years, more than 5,000 East germans were able to cross the border by jumping out of windows,climbing over the barbed wire,flying in hot air balloons,crawling through the sewers, and driving through unfortified parts of the wall at fast speeds. November 9,1989 was the day that began the fall of the Berlin Wall. When the cold war was starting to improve across Eastern Europe, a spokesman from the East Berlin’s Communist Party announced that a change in the city’s relations with the west would start at midnight on that day. He said that citizens of GDR were free to cross the border and then the East and West Berliners went straight to the wall,drinking beer,champagne and started to chant “Tor auf” (Open the gate). More than 2 million people from the east were starting to visit the West that weekend in celebrating from what was called “The greatest street party in the history in the world.” Hammers and picking away chunks of the wall were what people were doing to the wall while others were using cranes and bulldozers to pull down section after section. The wall was soon gone and Berlin was united for the first times since 1945. The Fall of The Berlin wall caused a geographical,physical separation, and soaked on a deeper level into the hearts and lives of people living between the barrier. While the West was thriving, the East was growing very slowly in the communist environment. The wall prevented access of such items which one might call unimportant, but were important forging a way of life craved by all, including the East Germans who indeed lacked the trivial necessities. With The Berlin Wall coming to an end, many East Germans were unable to get jobs that paid well due to them migrating to the west. This lead to many feelings to where they felt like a second class citizens. On the other hand, the West Germans complained that the east have taken over the job markets by working for less which they felt had a lead to economic standards which had damage to the social standards. While the Berlin Wall was still up, the government were not letting people pass or enter either side of the wall. East Germany was protecting the wall with floodlights, vicious dogs, machine guns, and patrolling soldiers that were set up by the German Democratic Republic East Germany government and they tried to set more armed forces to make sure a bunch of people would not escape. The guards killed more than 100 people that tried to escape which lead to more people becoming disappointed with the economy and the political views that East Germany was doing which lead to even more people fleeing everyday. The German Democratic Republic West Germany was afraid that the wall would be taken down that it would probably caused a major war between the sides. Since both sides would have major consequences with the actions, they had to come up with a decision together. When the wall came down, the Eastern Bloc nations that had lived under the Soviet Union, they got taken down not long after the wall got knocked down which marked the end of the Cold War. The Berlin Wall was not really a difficult time period as of what people think, the wall reached in Hungary which had Gorbachov making serious attempts to get himself involved in the West which had financial aid going straight the Soviet Union from the western world. Their were a bunch of investment by the two formers sides of Germany and both had a difficult time with the reunification not just because of West Germans consumers endured heavy taxes to not only pay for the reunification, but also the folk in the east as well which made their Eastern Marks become worthless. Germany was so successful with the collapse of communism by acting like a bridgehead to the Soviet Union. The Berlin Wall was certain Germany would trade more with that were not in the EU then countries that were in the EU. The lesson from this major period was that the Berlin Wall was to keep the two sides safe and protected from each other, but it ended up becoming a huge and dangerous problem for the government, and people in East and West germany.
Both sides wanted reunification so they block each sides so that no one could enter or exit either side which would end up having a bunch of people still try to get through the wall. This applies to U.S. history because it was a symbol of suppression of human rights by the Eastern Bloc during Cold War, but it was more convenient to the western democracies then rhetoric. It is the reason why the Cold war ended due to the two sides ending the bad blood between each side and wanting the both sides to be free and allowing anyone to come into the sides. They ended up solving their ways and ended up being happy that the wall was taken down.
11 months after the wall was taken down, East and West Germany would officially become reunified under the name the Federal Republic of Germany. The fall of the Berlin Wall was a celebration of the two sides finally coming together as one and not as separate anymore and has been this way ever since October
3,2011. Citations https://owlcation.com/humanities/How-the-Fall-of-the-Berlin-Wall-Affected-the-World https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/berlin-wall http://www.rocketswag.com/travel/europe/germany/berlin/Social-Effects-Of-Berlin-Wall.html https://www.worldfinance.com/inward-investment/europe/was-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall-as-economically-significant-as-some-suggest https://theberlinwallprojectcivics.weebly.com/political-impact.html
The main reason why the Berlin Wall caused the USSR to lose the Space Race to the United States was because the USSR was a communist nation, and therefore so was East Germany. The East Germans did not like living in a communist society. This caused hundreds of thousands of East Germans to flee to the West to live in a democracy (Burgan 14). With this being the case, the USSR had no civilian support in Germany, and often had to stop East Germans from fleeing west to freedom. This caused the USSR to employ more border control, which cost the government more money, and therefore hurting the economy of East Germany, as well as in the USSR. In addition to no civilian support, Communist Germany was not granted Marshall Plan (Burgan 32). Marshall Plan was the economic aid provide...
My first reason why it was not worth the costs is the wall actually did not keep people out. It was not very protective. The wall affected so many things. It affected life styles, people's daily routine. It also affected families. (Doc. E). The wall was not one big long wall. It stretched three hundred miles to the west and there was a watchtower beyond the wall end. But there were still places that were not protected by the wall. The Xiongnu could just walk around the wall and them come in and invade. People may think that they are fine because the wall is protecting them but they need to be aware that there are spots that are not protected by the wall. They would spend so much money on this wall to protect people when it really does not protect them that well (Doc. D). One of the most important reasons is that they had to pay the Xiongnu to stay out and not invade them. They paid them with Silk Thread and Silk Fabric. The amount they gave them from the year 51 BCE to one BCE they almost tripled the amount! It increased a lot. If they had to pay them to stay out them that proves that the Great Wall does not work.
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
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.
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.
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.
Second of all the Berlin Wall was built was because of before it all started East Germany’s leader Erich Honecker demand the wall to be built because of many events happen. Also is because Erich Honecker wanted to cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and East B...
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.
In the last fifty years the German Democratic Republic has been a nonstop changing country. In Germany, the terms “East” and “West” do not just represent geographically regions. It runs much deeper than that, and there is still a large gap in the way of life, and political and social conditions of the whole country. While most German’s were sleeping on the night of August 13, 1961, the East German government began closing its borders. In the early morning of that Sunday, most of the first work was done: the border to West Berlin was closed. The East German troops had begun to tear up streets and to install barbed wire entanglement and fences through Berlin. Between 1961 and today, the Berlin Wall saw many changes, and so did the people that it entrapped.
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 Berlin Wall was built in 1961 during the Cold War between Soviet Russia and the United States. The wall was built to separate Soviet controlled East Berlin from US controlled West Berlin. It soon became a physical barrier that symbolized the differing political and social ideologies of the two superpowers. The Berlin wall stood for 28 years separating a city into two very different sections with differing governments, economies and social organization. The importance of Berlin in International politics stemmed from Germany’s role in World War II. After WWII ended, Berlin was divided between the victors, France, England, the US and the USSR. The area surrounding Berlin was under Soviet control making West Berlin a strange island of democracy,
In this scenario, the building of the Wall was merely a precursor to the Soviet peace treaty, which would hand over control of Berlin’s access to East Germany, forcing either a Western recognition of East Germany, or a confrontation possibly leading to war. It appears, however, that Ulbricht was the only player who regarded the Wall in this manner. Khrushchev was still willing to keep the peace treaty and the ultimatum on the table, but was growing concerned that the United States and the West were not buckling under the pressure, and that Ulbricht’s path might lead more likely to the latter outcome. He thus began to back, slowly, away from confrontation over Berlin, just as he had in 1959 and ...
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 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.