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Creation of the berlin wall essay
The significance of the Berlin wall
Creation of the berlin wall essay
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After World War II in 1945, Germany was divided into four sections.
Each section was controlled by a different country; United States, France, Britain, and the Soviet Union. The Capital Berlin, being inside the Soviet controlled East Germany, was also divided into two sections, East and West Berlin. West Berlin was controlled by the United States and East Berlin was controlled by the Soviet Union. Starting on August 13 1961, Berliners woke up to a barrier separating the east from the west. East Germans had closed off the border with barbwire and guards. Many families were separated. Many jobs were lost. Two days after the border had been closed off, a wall had begun to get built.
Several weeks after, the barbwire was replaced by huge cemented blocks and watchtowers arose. On August 15, 1961, they began to replace the barbwire with cement blocks. The first concrete pilings went up on the Bernauer Strasse and at the Potsdamer Platz. “East German authorities declared it would protect their citizens from the pernicious influence of decadent capitalist culture” A second fence was built...
In the year 1961, the building of the Berlin Wall called upon disasters in Germany. The United States controlled the west of Berlin while the 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 is a safe spot and a free checkpoint in the middle of terror. To stop the movement of East Berliners, the East German government decided to build a barrier that limited and halted the East Berliners from leaving.
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.
In 1943, the Allies decided to divide Germany into three zones. The US and Great Britain would split the western half of Germany and the Soviets would control the eastern half. The city of Berlin would be deep inside the Soviet side, but would be jointly occupied as a symbol of Allied unity1. This was the Attlee Plan, devised by the British and signed by US President Franklin Roosevelt, Great Britain Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin during the February 1945 Yalta conference. However, this plan did not allow for access for the United States or Britain2.
At the end of WWII, the United States, Great Britain, and France occupied the western zone of Germany while the Soviet Union occupied the east. In 1948, Britain, France, and the U.S. combined their territories to make one nation. Stalin then discovered a loophole. He closed all highway and rail routes into West Berlin. This meant no food or fuel could reach that part of the city. In an attempt to break the blockade, American and British officials started the Berlin airlift. For 327 days, planes carrying food and supplies into West Berlin took off and landed every few minutes. West Berlin might not have made it if it wasn’t for the airlift. By May 1949, the Soviet Union realized it was beaten and lifted the blockade. By using the policy of containment, the Americans and the British were able to defeat the Soviets.
After World War II, Germany was separated into four different sectors assigned to the triumphant Allied forces: the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. (Wolski) The capital was located one hundred fifteen miles into Soviet territory. (Kenny) The Western Allies believed this was unfair because Berlin was the only large city at the time. They agreed to separate Berlin into quadrants as well. (Wolski) The United States, Britain, and France joined their sectors together as a democratic state called the Federal Republic of Germany. (Taylor) Meanwhile, Russia kept their portion separate and it became known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR). However, this caused a problem because the democratic West Berlin was entirely surrounded by Soviet land. (Wolski)
The holocaust was a time of destruction or slaughter on a mass scale caused by fire or nuclear war. During the holocaust millions of Jews were killed by the Nazis during WWII. The Berlin Wall was a time in which a barrier was constructed in 1961 to separate East Berlin from west Berlin. I believe that the holocaust and the Berlin Wall made great impacts to many and had many alikes. They both had similar situations and in both the Germans were involved as was the killing.
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.
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 time period labeled as the Cold War could be described as one of great tension and fear. At the end of World War II the United States and the Soviet Union met head to head in a clash between democracy and communism. The conflict was born out of a conflict of ideals; the Soviet Union believed that democracy was a failing system and communism would spread throughout the world, and at the opposite end of that the United States hoped to contain the spread of communism. This direct conflict of ideals lead several policies and alliances, namely; the Truman Doctrine which stated the U.S. would get involved to help nations threatened by communism and the U.S.S.R.’s policy of expansion of communism. These conflicts of interest resulted in the fifty
The Soviet Union was very concerned about its security after having been invaded and almost defeated twice in the twentieth century. It felt vulnerable being surrounded by hostile democratic states and preferred to have smaller communist states protecting it, thus the Iron Curtain descended. The Iron Curtain refers to an imaginary barrier through Europe that separated Russia and its communist allies from the rest of the democratic nations in the west. The states on each side of the Iron Curtain acted as buffer states in case of war.
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 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.
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).