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A level essay causes of the berlin wall
Politics and the Cold War
A level essay causes of the berlin wall
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The Berlin Wall ferociously slashed through the rights of the people of Germany. People have the right to go and live where they choose. Constructing a wall to trap and limit people was wrong. The people of Germany were oppressed economically and politically.
The Berlin Wall was put up for one of the most historically common reasons any country would do anything radical: political and economical gain. East Germany was controlled by communist Russia. In contrast, West Germany was controlled by the U.S., France, and Great Britain. Germans who lived in East Germany wanted to move to West Germany to seek better living styles. Approximately 2.7 million Germans escaped from East Germany to West Germany. As a result, East Germany had an astonishing lack of population. Of course, that was a detrimental blow to the economy of East Germany, including a scarce work force. To put a stop to escaping Germans, East Germany constructed the 103 mile, 12 foot high Berlin Wall. To increase East Germany’s population, people were allowed entry into East Germany by means of the Berlin Wall. However, people were not allowed to depart from East Germany by means of the Berlin Wall. Basically, once people entered East Germany, they were not departing. Building the Berlin Wall was a complete violation of the Germans’ right to freedom, all for political gain.
“Success doesn’t happen overnight.” Apparently, the Germans did not get that memo. On the morning of August 13, 1961 police and soldiers in the city’s Soviet sector began temporarily crowding streets and fortifying alleyways with trucks, tanks, bricks, and barbed wire. In addition, the asphalt and cobblestones on the linking roads were torn up. Perplexed residents observed in distress as their own c...
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...s website explained facts about escape attempts from the Berlin Wall that I thought would be helpful to my paper.
• 11. Website Title: NEWSEUM: Berlin Wall
• Article Title: NEWSEUM: Berlin Wall
• Date Accessed: February 03, 2014
This website gave me oodles and gobs of information about escape attempts from the Berlin Wall. I would not have the majority of my escape attempt information without this website.
• 12. Website Title: History.com
• Article Title: East Germans kill man trying to cross Berlin Wall
• Publisher: A&E Television Networks
• Date Accessed: February 03, 2014
This website gave me information about one of the most known casualties from the Berlin Wall.
• 13. Website Title: History
• Article Title: The Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall
• Date Accessed: February 02, 2014
This website gave me lots of information about the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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...
Berlin Wall gives a brief over-view of the Berlin Wall, its history and its fall. Provides many useful links to several other sites which offer a more in depth exploration of the circumstances surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall. This is a vital link for gaining a more comprehensive understanding of the role of the seperation of East and West Germany and the Berlin Wall itself during the Cold War era.
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
Following the beginning of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union would start what would become two of the worst genocides in world history. These totalitarian governments would “welcome” people all across Europe into a new domain. A domain in which they would learn, in the utmost tragic manner, the astonishing capabilities that mankind possesses. Nazis and Soviets gradually acquired the ability to wipe millions of people from the face of the Earth. Throughout the war they would continue to kill millions of people, from both their home country and Europe. This was an effort to rid the Earth of people seen as unfit to live in their ideal society. These atrocities often went unacknowledged and forgotten by the rest of the world, leaving little hope for those who suffered. Yet optimism was not completely dead in the hearts of the few and the strong. Reading Man is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag by Janusz Bardach and Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi help one capture this vivid sense of resistance toward the brutality of the German concentration and Soviet work camps. Both Bardach and Levi provide a commendable account of their long nightmarish experience including the impact it had on their lives and the lives of others. The willingness to survive was what drove these two men to achieve their goals and prevent their oppressors from achieving theirs. Even after surviving the camps, their mission continued on in hopes of spreading their story and preventing any future occurrence of such tragic events. “To have endurance to survive what left millions dead and millions more shattered in spirit is heroic enough. To gather the strength from that experience for a life devoted to caring for oth...
Taylor, Frederick. "The Berlin Wall: A Secret History." History Today Feb. 2007: 43-49.SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 20 Feb. 2012.
The first fourteen months of the war had been a debacle of monumental proportions for the Russians. During this time, the Germans had occupied more than a...
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).
To conclude both the Berlin Wall and the Holocaust were similar in many ways. In both they were fighting for freedom. As for the soldiers all they wanted was an opportunity to kill with no regrets but just orders from their leaders. For everyone today is still talking and researching about the history made in the past and talking about the impacts that they both made.
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 histories of the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall separated the people of East Berlin from the people in West Berlin. Berlin Wall separated people from their families and people from keeping their jobs. So many people have died from not being able to eat. What happen before the wall got built, why it was built, why the wall got knocked down, and what happen after the Wall got knocked down.
In conclusion Berlin Wall was an important milestone in the growth of the Cold War. It was the expansion that represented the thinking of a determined Communist system. Western Capitalism, which was more powerful, eventually defeated the system. The massive wall that did so much harm to a country was finally destroyed, and the people of Germany could now live the way they all wanted to live. They could live the life of freedom. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall East Germany has went through a lot of changes, and it still is not easy for all of the people in East Germany. But no matter how hard it is for the people of East Germany now, it is better than being alone and separated from their families, friends and rest of Europe.
THESIS: From research and historical analysts, we can conclude that in many cases the people of Germany have been effected socially and economically by the building and construction of the Berlin Wall.
Still bound by very complex regulations, West Berlin began to rebuild in earnest. It was given special treatment by West Germany and by the Allies. Its survival became a symbol of Western commitment against Soviet style communism. Money was pumped in, industries revived, a new University created, since Communist professors and principles dominated the Humboldt University in East Berlin. But the East German Government, certain that West Berlin would eventually fall to them, was richly inventive in tactics of intimidation. Highways were blocked for hours or days at a time, as were canal and rail corridors. Finally, they blockaded the city totally. The Americans - specifically, General Lucius Clay, - invented the Air Lift. For over a year, one B-29 after another flew into Tempelhof Airport and supplied the city until the blockade was lifted.
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 Berlin Tunnel Operation Gold (U.S.) Operation Stopwatch (U.K.)” coldwar.org, The Cold War Museum, n.d. Web 19 April 2014 < http://www.coldwar.org/articles/50s/berlin_tunnel.asp#bt2>