The Berlin Wall Analysis

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Recommended: Post-revisionist view of the cold war

Dan Birger
Mrs. Celli
European History Advanced
May 27th, 2014

The Berlin Wall; A World Divided
On August 13, 1961, the residents of East Berlin found themselves cut off from friends, families and jobs in the West by a tangle of barbed wire that ruthlessly cut the city in two. Within days the barbed-wire became a 103-mile-long wall guarded by three hundred watchtowers. The wall symbolized the struggle between Soviet Communism and American capitalism—totalitarianism and freedom. This would take place for the next thirty years (Taylor)
Synopsis
The author, Fredrick Taylor did an outstanding job of collecting official history, archives and personal accounts that tell the complete story of the rise and fall of The Wall. Taylor sets the scene with the defeat of the Nazis in 1945. The Soviets occupying the east of Berlin, and American, French and British forces in the west, Berlin was suddenly the embodiment of the post-war world’s great divide. Before long, thousands of young East Berliners were crossing the open border to take up better education and employment opportunities in West Germany. The leader of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Walter Ulbricht noticed this and turned to Moscow for help. By 1961, two million East Germans had deserted their country and radical action was required. Then officially on the morning August 13th, 1961, the first barbed wire and then concrete barriers appeared, prompting a wave of desperate escape attempts. Taylor does a great job of narrating the desperate bids for freedom. The desperation of people and the things that they did were shocking. Some swam through the icy waters of the river Spree, some went through sewer pipes, and some were crazy enough to try going through the frontier with fo...

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... wall was created 53 years ago. It was destroyed 25 years ago. A lot has happened since, and looking back, even a 16 year old kid could think of a better solution to a problem. When someone is present, it is so much more difficult to predict your opponent’s moves and it is a lot harder to make decisions. The key to the different interpretations is the point of view. A person that has seen what had happened in Berlin with his own eyes and has gone through the whole process is going have a different interpretation then a kid who has never experienced anything similar to the wall and its symbol. That is something that makes the cold war so unique. It is very rare to see two nations go to war (technically) and not fight each other with weaponry.Taylor’s interpretation of the situation in Berlin is far more accurate because he understands and researches this in depth.

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