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The significance of the Berlin Wall
Effect of the Berlin wall
A paragraph about the effects of Berlin Wall
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Great Walls that Separate Nations
In a utopia, a land that many have strived for but none have succeeded in creating, the citizens of Earth would all come together and live in a peaceful harmony. However, this is an unobtainable dream, and there are bound to be tensions between nations. With that being said, many feel the need to build a wall to shut the nations out, which has been successful in few occasions but a complete failure in many others. The Berlin Wall was created in 1961 to stop emigration from the east to the west. It had originally been easy to cross the border, for many people from East Berlin started doing just that, but it eventually got harder. The book The Berlin Wall: How It Rose and Why It Fell states:
The crossers received
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For many years, Turkey was letting Syrians come to the country freely, but this led to many problems. Dasha Afanasieva claims, “Turkey has started building a new wall along a fragment of its southeastern border with Syria as it struggles against smuggling, illegal migration, and the threat from al Qaeda fighters among Syria’s rebel banks…Turkey has kept an open-border policy throughout Syria’s three-year civil war and has vowed to maintain it, providing a lifeline to rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad by allowing supplies in and refugees out. But the policy has had its costs”(huffpost.com). This open-border policy is the reason smuggling and numerous other problems have thrived in Turkey, and the wall was built to help secure its border with Syria. Focusing back on the Berlin Wall, it has many purposes and factors to be …show more content…
The East feared that its people would leave for the West side and learn about democracy, and this would mess up their communist propaganda, as I said in the previous paragraph the east was getting more and more nervous about its citizens crossing the border. Doris M. Epler states, “The Berlin Wall was erected by the Communist government of East Germany to keep East German citizens from escaping to the West”(11). The entire reasoning behind this wall was to prevent migration from happening, so East Germany could keep its citizens in to participate in its Communist government. These two sides of Germany had been separated for a while, but it took several years until there was a physical barrier between the two countries. Epler says, “This is what happened in the city of Berlin, once the proud capital of Germany. In 1961, the Berlin Wall was erected… It stood for twenty-eight years… The division of Germany and Berlin was to be only a temporary situation. However, it would be only forty-four years until reunification would take place” (11,27). This explains that the East and West were isolated from each other sixteen years before the wall even went up. The wall was an epic failure, as it did not prevent people from migrating from the East. Also stated by Doris, people still tried to cross even though their chances were slim, and ingenious people still managed to get to the
East Germany, which was partially owned by the United States, was democratic, whereas West Germany was communistic. Democracy's main principle is that people choose what they want to do and is held together with Capitalism. Communism is the polar opposite of Democracy. In a communistic society, there is no competition, everything is shared, and everyone is payed the same, no matter their ability, job, or how hard they work. Capitalism is probably represented by the Zooks who eat their bread "butter-side up". Communism is most likely represented by the Yooks who eat their bread "butter side down". The different ideologies are why there is a wall in the first
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
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).
Among the wall, there were multiple checkpoints. Checkpoints were open spaces that were under twenty-four hour surveillance by guards. The open spaces were used to grant access for officials and people that had special permission, to cross either side of the border. The most famous checkpoint is “Checkpoint Charlie.” This checkpoint became a symbol of the Cold war and it has been shown in movies and books. This is the checkpoint that allied personnels used to go in and out of either side of Berlin. The concrete wall kept out most people, but not all. During the twenty-eight years that the wall stood, approximately five thousand people made it across the border. Most people crossed the first version of the wall by throwing a rope over the top
Just when you think the war is over, and there will be peace between countries, the aftermath of the war begins. The Cold War began after World War II in Europe. The conflict between the United States and their allies (capitalist) and the Soviet Union and their allies (communist). The Cold War was political and military tension that remained even after the war was over. The power struggle between capitalism and communism was fierce with each trying influence other countries. Fearing communist invasion, the United States felt the need to keep communism under control and within limits. The United States began their battle for containment. There are three prime examples of how the United
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.
Soviets blocked off all land into Berlin and airlifted supplies into Berlin. Now during this time at home, there were many people scared of communism also. Many were accused of being communists due to the Red Scare.
At first, the divisions between East and West Berlin were uncertain. There was nothing that divided the city. For more than ten years after the official split of the city, East Berlin saw a major emigration of East Germans, unhappy with the communist system. With nothing physical to separate East and West Berlin, migration from totalitarianism to democracy was as easy for East Berliners as changing houses. The Soviet Union went against their promises to the people of East Germany, and made East Germany a Communist country. This decision by the Soviet Union separated East Germany even more from the rest of Europe. East Germany was now all by itself, and by the summer of 1952 th...
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.
Which marked the start of the Cold War: Churchill’s Iron Curtain Speech (1946), Truman Doctrine (1947) or the Berlin Blockade (1949)?
Leading into the 1960s, many skilled East German workers such as engineers, technicians and professors were escaping across the inner German border to West Germany, where they saw increased economic prosperity. Walter Ulbricht, the leader of East Germany saw this development, and closed the inner German border in 1953. However, residents were still able to escape through Berlin into West Berlin, where they could take a short flight into the GDR. Khrushchev viewed Berlin as a “malignant tumor”, and ordered the Allies to withdraw. The Allies refused, leading to the construction of the Berlin Wall, a barrier made out of barbed wire and concrete that separated East and West Berlin, and surrounded the outer portion of West Berlin.
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.
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).
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 alienation of intellectuals and the authoritative nature of communist regimes further contributed to the failure of communism in Europe. However, the collapse of the Berlin Wall would not have occurred had it not been for Gorbachev’s Glasnost, Perestroika, and the end of the Brezhnev Doctrine. Along with German official Schabowski whose actions were the catalyst for the mass exodus of persons from the GDR into West Germany. The Collapse of the Berlin Wall would not have occurred so swiftly had Gorbachev not tried to implement reforms to communism.
The Berlin Was created for a very important reason. After World War II the Allied powers divided conquered Germany into four zones, occupied by the United States, Great Britain, France, or the Soviet Union. The capital city of Berlin was also divided into four zones. As the relationship between the Soviet Union and the other three Allied powers quickly fell apart, the cooperative atmosphere of the occupation of Germany turned competitive and aggressive. Although the goal of the Allies was to unify Germany, the change in relationship of the Allies with the Soviet Union turned Germany into West against East, or democracy against Communism. The West was influenced by the United States, Great Britain, and France and was democratic. The East, which was controlled by the Soviet Union, was under Communist regime.