The Berlin Wall-- The Effects on People
After World War Two and the fall of Hitler's reign, Europe was in shambles. Cities were destroyed; thousands of people had no homes, and millions of people were injured. Yet due to remaining conflict among the countries participating in World War Two, a wall was built in the heart of Germany’s capital, Berlin, tearing thousands of families apart. The wall’s construction started April 13, 1961, and was torn down on November 9, 1989. This wall would come to be known as the Berlin wall and represented an event in history that had a major impact on society around the world. When World War Two ended and Hitler was stopped, different countries’ troops controlled different parts of Germany. Germany was divided
Many families were split in two, forbidden from seeing each other. If Germans tried to cross the wall it was punishable by death; yet many Germans risked their lives because the conditions in East Germany were so bad. Two East Germans planned to escape using a homemade hot air balloon;, their first two balloons were unsuccessful, but the third balloon was successful and they managed to escape to West Germany. Other Germans attempted to dig tunnels under the wall, some succeeded while others failed. Many tried to make homemade airplanes in order to escape the oppression in East Germany. No one knows the exact amount of people who died trying to escape East Germany and how many successfully made it across, but the numbers would surely be alarming. When the Berlin Wall was built, thousands of people disagreed with the decision. Children grew up without mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles. Many peoples’ lives were forever impacted in a negative way because of the Berlin wall.
At the time, the U.S was in the middle of the Cold War and did not want to interfere with the wall because of the high tensions between America and the USSR. [President] “Kennedy denounced the Berlin Wall but made no attempt to impede its construction. The Western European military alliance formed early in the Cold War decided they were unwilling to go to war with the Soviet Union over [The Berlin Wall].” (The Kennedy Crisis). The fear of the soviet Union played to the USSR’s advantage when the alliance was deciding whether or not to take issue with the
The feud between the United States of America (USA) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) lasted from the end of World War II until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The fuel that powered their feud was the desire to be the greater superpower. After World War II ended, the USSR gained control of Eastern Germany. On the night of August 13, 1961, a wall was constructed that divided the already separate East and West Berlin. This wall would become what was known around the world as the Berlin Wall. It stood as a barrier to freedom from the East Berliners. The Berlin Wall in Germany caused the USSR to lose the Space Race to the United States in 1969 because the USSR was communist, they alone had control of East Germany, and the United States was tough competition. With the Berlin Wall making tensions high in Germany during the 1960s, the USSR had a lot more business to take care of than they had thought.
The alliance formed between the US and USSR during the second world war was not strong enough to overcome the decades of uneasiness which existed between the two ideologically polar opposite countries. With their German enemy defeated, the two emerging nuclear superpowers no longer had any common ground on which to base a political, economical, or any other type of relationship. Tensions ran high as the USSR sought to expand Soviet influence throughout Europe while the US and other Western European nations made their opposition to such actions well known. The Eastern countries already under Soviet rule yearned for their independence, while the Western countries were willing to go to great lengths to limit Soviet expansion. "Containment of 'world revolution' became the watchword of American foreign policy throughout the 1950s a...
To secure its economy and to maintain it, the German Democratic Republic decided to build the heavily protected Berlin Wall. This would limit the number of exodus from the East and give the German Democratic Republic a large advantage over its population. As the wall had many purposes, one of them was to see if the West would retaliate in any way in response to this move. When there was no involvement from the any of the powers that controlled the West, German Democratic Republic took advantage of this situation to its favor and increased its control. It restricted Britain and France to enter East Berlin from their normal waypoints, rather commanded them to take the route through the American passage which, moreover, was heavily guarded and every personnel was checked before entering.
June 5 supreme power passed to the victorious countries: USA, UK, France and the Soviet Union. (Kettenacker L, 1997) Their main purpose, according to the London Protocol of September 12, 1944 and subsequent agreements, was the implementation of complete control over Germany (Douglas R, 2013) At the heart of this policy lay partition of the country into three zones of occupation, section of Berlin into three parts and the creation of a joint Supervisory Board of three commanders. The division of Germany into zones of occupation had ever recapture her desire for wor...
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)
Dowling, Timothy C. “Berlin Wall: Cold War.” World at War: Understanding Conflict and Society. ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 7 Mar. 2014.
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.
On September 30, 1938, France and Great Britain agreed to let Nazi Germany have a piece of Czechoslovakia. Hitler told the British and French that it would be his last demand for territory in Europe. Hitler ended up breaking this pact when he took over Prague. During that same year, Germany attacked Poland and defeated them in one month. Poland was then split into two parts with Hitler's Nazi Germany taking part and Stalin's Communist USSR taking the other part. The invasion was what started World War II.
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.
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 number of East Germans fleeing to West was an embarrassment to the Communists, and something had to be done to pro...
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 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.
February 1945, Germany had not been defeated so Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill (the Big Three) came to an agreement to divide Germany into 4 zones. These zones were to be used for occupation. The Big Three also decided to allow free elections in countries located East of Europe. Also Russia was invited to join the United Nations and was given a responsibility to join the war against Japan once Germany was defeated.