argumentative essay on the berlin wall

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The History of Berlin Wall

• Categories: Berlin Germany

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Published: Sep 20, 2018

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Table of contents

Berlin wall essay outline, berlin wall essay example, introduction.

• The significance of the Berlin Wall in dividing East and West Berlin
• The political context of the Allies and Soviets in post-World War II Berlin

The Berlin Wall's Construction and Purpose

• Nikita Khrushchev and Walter Ulbricht's decision to build the Berlin Wall
• The role of the Berlin Wall in preventing East Berliners from fleeing to the West
• Efforts to retain essential workers in East Berlin

The Challenges of Crossing the Berlin Wall

• Description of the physical barriers, including the "Death Strip"
• The desperation of East Berliners and creative methods used to cross
• The impact on families and professional lives due to the wall

The Fall of the Berlin Wall

• Schabowski's announcement and its consequences
• The destruction of the wall by the people
• The broader implications of the Berlin Wall's fall, including the end of the Cold War and reunification of Germany

Consequences and Legacy

• The lasting impact of the Berlin Wall on the people of Berlin
• The role of the wall in shaping the city's landscape
• Reflections on the significance of both the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall

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The Berlin Wall: A Historian‘s Perspective on Its Purpose and Impact

• by history tools
• May 26, 2024

Introduction

The Berlin Wall, a symbol of the Cold War and the division of Germany, stood as a stark reminder of the ideological differences that shaped the latter half of the 20th century. Constructed overnight on August 13, 1961, the wall‘s primary purpose was to stem the tide of East Germans fleeing to the West in search of a better life. In this blog post, we‘ll delve into the historical context and reasons behind the construction of the Berlin Wall, as well as its impact on the city and its people, from a historian‘s perspective.

Historical Context: The Division of Germany and Berlin

The division of Germany and Berlin can be traced back to the aftermath of World War II. At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Allied powers (the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union) agreed to divide Germany into occupation zones following its surrender. The subsequent Potsdam Conference in July-August 1945 further solidified these plans, with Berlin, located within the Soviet zone, also divided into four sectors.

As tensions between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union escalated, the differences in their political and economic ideologies became increasingly apparent. In 1948, the Soviet Union imposed a blockade on West Berlin, cutting off all land and water routes to the city. The Western Allies responded with the Berlin Airlift, supplying the city with food and supplies by air for nearly a year until the blockade was lifted in May 1949.

The division of Germany was formalized in 1949 with the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) in the Western-controlled zones and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) in the Soviet zone. The formation of NATO in 1949 and the Warsaw Pact in 1955 further entrenched the Cold War divide between the capitalist West and the communist East.

Life in East and West Germany: A Stark Contrast

The differences in living conditions and political systems between East and West Germany were stark. West Germany experienced rapid economic growth, known as the "Wirtschaftswunder" (economic miracle), thanks to the Marshall Plan and its adoption of a social market economy. Citizens enjoyed a higher standard of living, political freedom, and access to consumer goods.

In contrast, East Germany struggled with a centrally planned economy, resulting in lower productivity, shortages of goods, and a lower quality of life for its citizens. The GDR government maintained strict control over society, employing a vast network of informants (the Stasi) to monitor and suppress political dissent. East Germans faced travel restrictions, limited access to information, and political repression.

These disparities led to a growing number of East Germans fleeing to the West. Between 1949 and 1961, an estimated 3.5 million people, or roughly 20% of the East German population, had left the GDR, with many of them being young, educated, and skilled workers [1]. This brain drain had a significant impact on the East German economy, costing an estimated 22.5 billion Deutsche Marks (equivalent to $6.3 billion in 1961) [2].

The Berlin Crisis and the Construction of the Wall

The ongoing exodus of East Germans through Berlin, which remained the easiest crossing point between East and West, led to a series of events known as the Berlin Crisis of 1961. On June 4, 1961, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev issued an ultimatum to the Western powers, demanding the withdrawal of all armed forces from Berlin within six months and the establishment of a "free city" of West Berlin. Failure to comply, he warned, would result in the Soviet Union signing a separate peace treaty with East Germany and handing over control of access routes to Berlin to the GDR.

U.S. President John F. Kennedy, who had taken office just months earlier, met with Khrushchev in Vienna on June 3-4, 1961. During these tense discussions, Kennedy made it clear that the U.S. would defend West Berlin and its access routes, but he also expressed a willingness to compromise on issues such as the recognition of East Germany and the presence of Western troops in West Berlin. Khrushchev, interpreting Kennedy‘s stance as a sign of weakness, increased pressure on the city in the following weeks [3].

Meanwhile, the East German government, led by Walter Ulbricht, had been planning to seal off the border between East and West Berlin. On August 12, 1961, Ulbricht signed an order to close the border and begin constructing the wall. That night, in an operation codenamed "Rose," East German soldiers and police began erecting barbed wire fences and barriers along the border. Within days, construction of a more permanent concrete wall began, complete with guard towers, landmines, and orders to shoot anyone attempting to escape [4].

The international community reacted with shock and condemnation to the wall‘s construction. U.S. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson visited West Berlin on August 19, 1961, and declared, "We have a solemn obligation to defend this city. The commitment of the United States to the freedom of West Berlin is unshakable" [5]. Despite these strong words, the Western powers ultimately accepted the wall‘s presence, focusing instead on maintaining their access rights to West Berlin.

The Impact and Legacy of the Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall had a profound impact on the city and its residents. Families and friends were separated, and East Berliners were cut off from the economic opportunities and freedoms of the West. The wall also became a flashpoint for Cold War tensions, with U.S. and Soviet tanks famously facing off at Checkpoint Charlie in October 1961.

Despite the wall‘s formidable presence, many East Germans still attempted to escape. Between 1961 and 1989, an estimated 5,000 people successfully defected, while at least 140 people lost their lives trying to cross the border [6]. The most famous casualty was 18-year-old Peter Fechter, who was shot and left to bleed to death in the "death strip" on August 17, 1962, in full view of Western media and onlookers.

The Berlin Wall remained a symbol of oppression and division until November 9, 1989, when, amid growing protests and a rapidly changing political landscape in Eastern Europe, the East German government announced that citizens could freely travel to the West. Thousands of jubilant East and West Berliners gathered at the wall, chipping away at the concrete with hammers and chisels in a powerful display of unity and the triumph of freedom over tyranny.

The fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for German reunification, which was formally achieved on October 3, 1990. The reunified Germany has since become a leader in the European Union and a symbol of the continent‘s post-Cold War integration and prosperity.

The Berlin Wall, built to prevent the mass emigration of East Germans to the West and to protect the GDR‘s faltering economy, stood as a powerful symbol of the Cold War divide for nearly three decades. Its construction had a profound impact on the lives of Berliners and served as a stark reminder of the ideological differences that shaped the post-World War II era.

From a historian‘s perspective, the Berlin Wall represents not only the physical division of a city and a nation but also the human cost of political ideology and the struggle for freedom and self-determination. Its legacy serves as a reminder of the importance of unity, cooperation, and the ongoing fight against oppression and division in all its forms.

As we reflect on the history of the Berlin Wall and its impact on the world, we must strive to learn from the past and work towards a future where the ideals of freedom, democracy, and human rights are upheld and protected for all.

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The rise and fall of the Berlin Wall and why it matters today.

The Berlin Wall stood for 10,316 days. As of Feb. 5, 2017, it has now been breached for over 10,316 days. From now on, Berlin will live with the memory of the wall for longer than it lived with the wall itself.

For the generations that grew up in a divided Berlin, the fact that the young will not experience such a life must be seen as evidence of the city’s achievement. Still, there is something lost as the hard-won lessons and perspectives of living in the shadow of the wall begin to recede. The editors at America were hard at work, observing and commenting on developments from around the world, throughout the 10,316 days the Berlin Wall stood. And as with most people around the world, for most of that period the editors seldom noted the wall’s existence. It was a fact of life, a physical manifestation of the Cold War and its underlying ideological conflict. But at its rise and then at its fall, America ’s editors took note. Their writings help us understand the continued relevance of the physical symbol of the Iron Curtain.

The wall rises

On June 10, 1961, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev presented President John F. Kennedy with an ultimatum: The Western Allies must leave their zones of occupation in West Berlin or the Soviets would take unilateral action to seize the city. America ’s editors were not impressed, writing in the June 14, 1961, issue: “Anyone who has followed the Berlin question for the past three years knows that the West cannot accept any of the choices offered by the Soviet memorandum. If we do, we throw away the key to the defense of Western Europe and the key to our own security. Khrushchev knows in advance that we must reject his proposals, no matter how often he shouts that West Berlin is like a cancer on his face or a bone in his throat.”

Berlin was indeed a problem for the Soviets. An outpost of freedom behind the Iron Curtain, West Berlin provided not only a ready example of a political alternative for East Germany’s oppressed population but also a practical means of escape. Voting with their feet, millions of East Germans were condemning communism in the clearest terms by using West Berlin as an escape hatch. Khrushchev intended to close the hatch. From now on, Berlin will live with the memory of the wall for longer than it lived with the wall itself. The editors next weighed in on the escalating crisis in the Aug. 12, 1961, issue: “As we start out down this snaky and dangerous road of ‘negotiating’ the Berlin crisis with Khrushchev, the President’s thinking is undoubtedly dominated by considerations as those that follow. We must somehow buy time on Berlin without backing down on our commitments to that city or selling out some other vital interest of the free world. How is this to be accomplished?” For the editors the main consideration was a military one: “Despite the modest buildup we plan for our conventional forces, we are and shall remain overwhelmingly outfaced by the conventional forces of the Soviet Union. True, we have our stockpile of H-bombs, but Khrushchev is convinced that, so long as he fights with conventional weapons, we would never be morally callous enough to push the big nuclear button. Our military position, therefore, is weak. This makes our bargaining position weak.” Yet the editors were clear that despite Soviet pressure, the United States must not back down: “Whatever political ‘accommodations’ we make with the Soviet Union, they must not lead us onto the slippery path of appeasement. Once we set our feet on that road there will be no place left on which to make a stand. This thought must be uppermost in Mr. Kennedy’s mind.”

On Aug. 13, 1961, the day after the issue including that editorial, construction on the Berlin Wall began. In a sense the wall can be said to have prevented a military confrontation, as it represented the Soviets’ giving up any hope of reuniting Berlin under communist control. They would solve their problem of emigration with a border wall instead. Peace would be maintained, but it was the citizens of Berlin that would pay the price. Over the course of the next 10,316 days, at least 140 people would lose their lives as a result of the wall.

By the Oct. 14, 1961, issue, the editors were suggesting that the world need not be so single-mindedly following the events Berlin, writing: “World attention is focused on Berlin these days to the exclusion of almost all else. Yet, as President Kennedy reminded his listeners during his recent UN address, Berlin is not the only place where peace is imperiled. There is an insidious ‘creeping war’ in South Vietnam. Because of its ‘creeping’ character, it may not strike us as a deadly serious affair. Nevertheless, as the President pointed out, aggression is no less real when men are knifed in their homes rather than shot on the battlefield. And aggression anywhere is a threat to all.” At least 140 people would lose their lives as a result of the wall.

The nation’s Cold War attention would indeed soon turn away from Berlin and toward Southeast Asia, driven there by a war that America would at first support . For Berlin, the wall would become a fact of life, occasionally thrust into the spotlight when used a stage by President Kennedy in 1963 or President Reagan in 1987 (or David Bowie in 1987 and Bruce Springsteen in 1988 for that matter) but otherwise an accepted, if resented, part of life for West Berliners. It was among East Berliners that the seeds of the wall’s collapse were being sown.

The wall falls

On Nov. 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall “fell,” as the East German government suddenly allowed its citizens to pass through to the Western side Rarely has such a major development taken the world so completely by surprise. America addressed the momentous implications of in an editorial titled “Glasnost as a verb: to open a wall,” run in the Nov. 25, 1989, issue: “Now that we have all had a chance to pinch ourselves and rub our eyes, the momentous implications of Nov. 9 are coming clear.” The main question the opening of the wall raised was German reunification, which at the time was not a foregone conclusion: “The speed and the force with which the topic of German reunification came rushing to the fore have been breathtaking and inevitable—the speed matched that of the wall’s collapse, and the force came from the wall’s having functioned as a symbol of artificial, enforced division. Not everyone is pleased at that prospect. Margaret Thatcher, whose party and Government have seemed content to live with a divided Ireland (in no rush, at any rate, to solve the “Irish question”), said predictably that any talk of German reunification was much too fast.”

Walls are not a thing of the past. The democratic optimism ushered in by the end of the Cold War has been significantly tempered. Refugees today continue to flee communist regimes such as North Korea, which has built a border that rivals even the Iron Curtain in brutality and efficiency. In Europe, developments such as Brexit, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the construction of a Hungarian border wall have marked the return of hard borders to a Europe that for the past two decades seemed to be moving in the opposite direction. In the United States, the proposal to build a massive border wall has become a major flashpoint in our politics. While building a wall to keep people in certainly reflects worse on a society than building one to keep people out, the idea shares the delusion of the Berlin Wall, which is that force can forever contain human aspirations. The circumstances that led to both the rise and the fall of the Berlin Wall remind us that the instinct of the human animal is always to move, to be free and to seek better, regardless of any divisions of race, class, nationality or creed. Remembering the Berlin Wall, for all its horrors, also represents remembering this enduring and universal truth.

Antonio De Loera-Brust is a Joseph A. O'Hare Fellow at  America .

This whole article is about open borders. The article ends with a non-sequitur, a bait and switch. The horrors of socialism/communism get diverted in the end to allow an endless stream of migrants into societies that are successful because they have a different culture, one amenable to individual freedom.

Maybe the author should be recommending free market capitalism for the countries where the migrants come from. The United States and Western Europe cannot handle them all especially those who are hostile to western civilization of which many are.

Everyone should watch the movie, "The Lives of Others" to see the tragedy that was East Germany.

But maybe there is another alternative. According to the Vatican in the last couple days the United States is a bad place for migrants. They are recommending China as the ideal country to live according to Catholic social principles. I kid you not. From U.K. Catholic Herald.

China is the best implementer of Catholic social doctrine,’ says Vatican bishop

So I suggest thr author investigate how to get the world's migrants to China. This would be in sync with another America editorial by Kenneth Clarke that the United States is a bad place to live. Maybe the wall should be built to protect any migrants who may mistakenly want to come here.

I saw the headline....I saw the author's name and based on his prior articles in America this article's last paragraph was as predictable as the sun rise. What a piece of overwrought nonsense!

In the spirit of this essay, I suggest the author remove the locks from his doors. Better yet, remove his doors.

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When did the Berlin Wall fall?

What was the “death strip”.

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Berlin Wall

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Why was the Berlin Wall built?

The Berlin Wall was built by the German Democratic Republic during the Cold War to prevent its population from escaping Soviet -controlled East Berlin to West Berlin , which was controlled by the major Western Allies. It divided the city of Berlin into two physically and ideologically contrasting zones.

The border between East and West Germany was opened on November 9, 1989, following anti-government protests in East Germany and the democratization of other eastern and central European states. Sections of the Berlin Wall were subsequently torn down by East German border guard crews and residents of a reunified Berlin.

The “death strip” was the belt of sand- or gravel-covered land between the two main barriers of the Berlin Wall. It was constantly under surveillance by guards in watchtowers, who could shoot anyone they saw trying to escape. Fleeing citizens who initially avoided being detected or shot could be tracked down by following their footprints in the death strip.

Does the Berlin Wall still exist?

Segments of the Berlin Wall still exist in modern Berlin, notably on display at the Topography of Terror museum, the Berlin Wall Memorial, and the East Side Gallery. Pieces and whole segments of the wall are also on display in museums all over the world.

How tall was the Berlin Wall?

The Berlin Wall was actually a system of barriers that included two walls. In the system’s final form, the outer wall, called the Vorderlandmauer, was 11.5–13 feet (3.5–4 metres) tall, and the inner wall, the Hinterlandmauer, was 6.5–10 feet (2–3 metres) tall.

Recent News

Berlin Wall , barrier that surrounded West Berlin and prevented access to it from East Berlin and adjacent areas of East Germany during the period from 1961 to 1989. In the years between 1949 and 1961, about 2.5 million East Germans had fled from East to West Germany , including steadily rising numbers of skilled workers, professionals, and intellectuals . Their loss threatened to destroy the economic viability of the East German state. In response, East Germany built a barrier to close off East Germans’ access to West Berlin and hence West Germany. That barrier, the Berlin Wall, was first erected on the night of August 12–13, 1961, as the result of a decree passed on August 12 by the East German Volkskammer (“Peoples’ Chamber”). The original wall, built of barbed wire and cinder blocks, was subsequently replaced by a series of concrete walls (up to 15 feet [5 metres] high) that were topped with barbed wire and guarded with watchtowers, gun emplacements, and mines. By the 1980s that system of walls, electrified fences, and fortifications extended 28 miles (45 km) through Berlin, dividing the two parts of the city, and extended a further 75 miles (120 km) around West Berlin, separating it from the rest of East Germany.

The Berlin Wall came to symbolize the Cold War ’s division of East from West Germany and of eastern from western Europe. About 5,000 East Germans managed to cross the Berlin Wall (by various means) and reach West Berlin safely, while another 5,000 were captured by East German authorities in the attempt and 191 more were killed during the actual crossing of the wall.

East Germany’s hard-line communist leadership was forced from power in October 1989 during the wave of democratization that swept through eastern Europe. On November 9 the East German government opened the country’s borders with West Germany (including West Berlin), and openings were made in the Berlin Wall through which East Germans could travel freely to the West. The wall henceforth ceased to function as a political barrier between East and West Germany.

Berlin Wall’s Importance for Germany Essay

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Introduction

Reasons for berlin wall construction, berlin wall construction, effects of berlin wall, flattening of the wall.

The post Second World War was characterized by many political challenges in Europe. In Germany, the government struggled to consolidate its political power through various mechanisms.

In August 1961, “a fence was erected by the German Democratic Republic that is popularly referred to as East Germany” (Rose & Bailey 2004, p.34). The wall demarcated the West Berlin territory from East Germany. Watch towers were also erected strategically at various intervals along the wall with an aim of checking on illegal intrusion or exit from East Germany.

The Eastern Bloc contended that the barrier would save its masses from the fascist influence that was likely to jeopardize the development of socialism in the nation. Ideally, the wall was meant to suppress mass departure of citizens from East Germany after the Second World War. It was also meant to prevent the citizens from supporting fascist ideologies. This historic wall was formally known as the Anti-Fascist Defense Fortification.

Prior to the creation of the Berlin Wall, it is estimated that over three million citizens breached the stringent immigration codes and moved into Western Berlin territory (Tilman 1990, p. 78). From this place, they relocated to other Western European countries. These massive emigrations were proscribed in 1961 upon the creation of the Wall. The ban lasted until 1989 when the wall was flattened and it paved way for the reunification of Germany (Buckley 2004, p. 56).

After World War Two, the war torn Germany was split into four sub territories that were under the control of the Allied forces. The capital of Berlin that acted as the main operation zone of the Allied powers was also partitioned into four territories despite being situated within the Soviet territory.

After one and half years, political rivalries ensued between the occupying forces and the Soviets. One of the key disputes was the failure of the Soviets to accept the reconstruction strategies for revamping the economy and political stability of Germany. “Britain, France, the United States and the Benelux countries later combined the non-Soviet zones of the country into one zone for reconstruction and approved the extension of the Marshall Plan” (Waters 1990, p. 89).

In post 1945, Joseph Stalin governed an amalgamation of countries in the Western Border. He also desired to take control of the weakened Germany that was at that time under the management of the Soviet. Stalin, therefore, informed the leaders of Germany that he was planning to gradually destabilize the British occupation of German territories. According to Stalin, this was the most viable way to get rid of foreign powers and reunite Germany (Tusa 2008, p. 237).

The most important mission of the Leninist Party in the Soviet region was to direct Soviet instructions to both the government machinery and the other alliance parties. Leninist ideologies would eventually be exercised as internal procedures (Pearcy 2009, p.123). The teaching of Marxism ideologies was made mandatory in learning institutions (Morton & Adler 2010, p. 324).

From 1948, Stalin started reacting to the disagreements on how to rebuild the fallen Germany. In this case, he introduced the Berlin Cordon that debarred West Berlin from accessing necessary material supplies including food (Reeves 2011, p. 301). On the other hand, the Allied powers responded to Stalin’s actions by airlifting food and logistics to West Berlin.

The Soviets carried out public crusade in opposition to western strategy change. In late 1948, the members of the Communist Party tried to interfere with the food aids, but over three hundred Berliners picketed in demand for the continuation of the airlifts. Finally, Stalin withdrew the barricade in mid 1949; thus, allowing the hauling of supplies to Berlin (Miller 2008, p. 81).

West Germany embraced a capitalist economy and created a democratic legislative body. These political and economic reforms spurred quick economic growth in Western Germany. The robust economic growth that was witnessed in the western part of Germany attracted the people of Eastern Germany who were eying the better opportunities (Cherny 2009, p. 456).

In the 1950s, the Eastern Bloc also embraced the strategies that the Soviet applied to check on emigration. The restriction posed a great challenge to some countries that had gained economic prosperity in the Eastern Bloc. Before 1952, there was no limitation to frustrate movement of people from the Eastern Bloc to Western Germany.

This freedom of movement was curtailed in April 1952, when Eastern Germany officials held a meeting with Stalin (Soviet leader). “During the discussions, it was proposed that the East Germans should introduce a system of passes so as to stop the free movement of Western agents in the German Democratic Republic” (Childs 2001, p.156).

Stalin supported the idea and encouraged the Eastern Bloc to demarcate their territories by erecting a high rise wall. Therefore, the internal German boundary between East and West was totally cordoned with a fence. However, “the boundary between the Western and Eastern sectors of Berlin remained open, but traffic between the Soviet and Western sectors was somewhat restricted” (Harrison 2003, p.145).

Consequently, Berlin attracted immigrants that were fleeing the Eastern Bloc due to the unbearable living conditions. At first, East Germany would intermittently allow its citizens to visit the Western Bloc, but that freedom was short lived. In 1956, there was a total ban on emigration to West Germany after several citizens deserted East Germany.

The introduction of stringent immigration codes in 1952 led to the blockading of the interior Germany boundary. Therefore, East Germans used the Berlin border as the only gateway point to Western Germany. The German Democratic Republic acted very quickly to contain the exodus of its citizens by introducing more pass laws in late 1957. Individuals that were found crossing over to Berlin without authentic documentation were severely punished.

However, these emigration codes remained ineffective since people could still move to West Berlin by train. Besides, there were no physical barriers that could curb illegal movement of citizens out of East Germany. The Western Border was left open for some time to avoid disrupting connections to East Germany. The construction of an alternative railway that connected Western Berlin began in 1951 and ended in 1961. This led to the complete railing of the West Berlin boundary.

East German lost its industrious residents through massive emigrations; hence, it experienced a severe problem of brain drain. Most of the emigrants were in their formative years and were well trained in various disciplines. This meant that East Germany was left with no technocrats to spur industrial growth in the country.

On the other hand, West Germany gained considerably from the high supply of trained professionals which enabled it to improve its economy. “The brain drain of professionals had become so damaging to the political credibility and economic viability of East Germany that the re-securing of the German Communist frontier was imperative” (Dale 2005, p. 256).

“The East Germany officials authorized the construction of the wall on 12, August 1961 and the German military began securing it immediately” (Gaddis 2005, p. 312). The boundary was slightly erected within the land of East Berlin to avoid trespassing on the West Berlin soil.

During its construction, it was under strict surveillance of the German combat troops who were authorized to shoot any emigrant that made desperate efforts to escape. Additionally, “chain fences, walls, minefields and other obstacles were installed along the length of East Germany’s western borders with the West Germany proper” (Dowty 2009, p. 345).

An extensive no man’s territory was also created to facilitate shooting of fleeing individuals. However, some citizens still used dubious mechanisms to move to other territories. For example, “East Germans successfully defected by a variety of methods: digging long passageways under the wall, waiting for favorable winds and sliding along aerial wires” (Thackeray 2004, p. 52).

The creation of the Berlin Wall had serious implications on the lives of the Germans both in the Eastern and Western Blocs. After the construction of the fence, several individuals that had crossed over to the Western Bloc were completely detached from their families. Berliners that lived in the East, but worked in the West were all rendered jobless because they could not cross the border.

With the erection of the wall, West Berlin was separated; thus, West Berliners staged massive strikes in demand for the flattening of the wall. The Allied forces that had vested interests in post war Germany also encouraged the creation of the wall because they felt that it would thwart the ambitions of Eastern Germany to gain control of the entire Berlin. The wall, therefore, quelled the simmering tension in Germany Blocs which was likely to end in a serious military confrontation.

“The East German government claimed that the Berlin Wall was an anti-fascist protective rampart intended to dissuade aggression from the West” (Wettig 2008, p.189). Eastern German officials also complained that subsidized goods were being smuggled out of the country by West Berliners. The Wall caused extreme anxiety and repression in East Berlin because people were quarantined in their territories; thus, making it impossible for them to transact business.

West Berliners faced the most difficult challenge of gaining access to East German. Between 1961 and 1963, West Berliners were totally banned from entering the East German territory. However, negotiations between the two governments in 1963 led to slight revision of the immigration codes in East Germany.

Thus, West Berliners could visit the country intermittently. An Individual that wanted to travel to East Germany had to seek a visa. “Citizens of other East European countries were generally subjected to the same prohibition of visiting Western countries as East Germans, though the applicable exception varied from country to country” (Pearson 2008, p.318). During the ban, it is estimated that approximately 5,000 individuals desperately tried to jump over the fence and some of them lost their lives.

In late 1989, East Germans increasingly got disillusioned by emigration restrictions. Hence, they staged protests in various parts of East Germany in demand for the flattening of the wall. Most of the individuals that participated in the Peaceful Revolution were willing to defect to the Western Bloc.

The strike worsened in November when the majority of East Germans protested against the Wall. These demonstrations compelled the leaders of East Germany to amend the border laws. One of the amendments that were passed in the late 1989 favored the pulling down of the wall. The tearing down of the wall begun in late 1989, but its official flattening started on 13 th June 1990. However, “the West Germans and West Berliners were allowed visa-free travel starting from 23 December 1989” (Turner 2010, p. 456).

The destruction of the wall sparked-off mixed reactions from foreign powers. Some European countries became very jittery when they learnt that the Germans were planning to come together. In September 1989, “British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher pleaded with the Soviet president not to let the Berlin Wall fall” (Cate 2007, p. 178). Indeed, Britain was comfortable with the division and chaos in Germany because its reunion could cause the altering of the post war territorial demarcations.

They also felt that a unified Germany would destabilize international economy and possibly frustrate the post 1945 initiatives that were meant to restore international peace (Gaddis 2005, p. 249). The Germans saw the flattening of the wall as a great development that would guarantee them both economic and political prosperity which they had been yearning for over two decades.

Buckley, W 2004, The Fall of the Berlin Wall, Wiley, New York.

Cate, C 2007, The Ideas of August: The Berlin Wall Crisis—1961, M. Evans, New York.

Cherny, A 2009, The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America’s Finest Hour, Berkley Trade, Berkley.

Childs, D 2001, The Fall of the GDR, Longman, London.

Dale, G 2005, Popular Protest in East Germany, 1945–1989: Judgements on the Street, Routledge, Routledge.

Dowty, A 2009, Closed Borders: The Contemporary Assault on Freedom of Movement, Yale University Press, New York.

Gaddis, L 2005, The Cold War: A New History, Penguin Press, New York.

Harrison, M 2003, Driving the Soviets Up the Wall: Soviet-East German Relations, 1953–1961, Princenton University Press, New York.

Miller, R 2008, To Save a City: The Berlin Airlift, 1948-1949, Texas A&M University Press, Houston.

Morton, J & Adler, P 2010, American Experience: The Berlin Airlift, Wiley, New York.

Pearcy, A 2009, Berlin Airlift, Swan Hill Press, Berlin.

Pearson, R 2008, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire, Wiley, Chicago.

Reeves, R 2011, Daring Young Men: The Heroism and Triumph of The Berlin Airlift-June 1948-May 1949, Simon & Schuster, Berlin.

Rose, B & Bailey, A 2004, The Lost Border: The Landscape of the Iron Curtain, Princeton Architectural Press, New York.

Thackeray, F 2004, Events that changed Germany, Greenwood Publishing Group, London.

Tilman, T 1990, The Writings on the Wall: Peace at the Berlin Wall, Prenctice Hall, Ohio.

Turner, A 2010, The Two Germanies Since 1945: East and West, Yale University Press, New York.

Tusa, J 2008, Berlin Airlift, Da Capo Press, Berlin.

Waters, R 1990, Wall: Live in Berlin 1990, Oxford University Press, London.

Wettig, G 2008, Stalin and the Cold War in Europe, Rowman & Littlefield, Berlin.

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IvyPanda. (2018, November 30). Berlin Wall's Importance for Germany. https://ivypanda.com/essays/berlin-wall/

"Berlin Wall's Importance for Germany." IvyPanda , 30 Nov. 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/berlin-wall/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'Berlin Wall's Importance for Germany'. 30 November.

IvyPanda . 2018. "Berlin Wall's Importance for Germany." November 30, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/berlin-wall/.

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Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Berlin Wall's Importance for Germany." November 30, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/berlin-wall/.

West Germans scale the Berlin Wall before East German guards as the Cold War barrier came down in November 1989.

• HISTORY & CULTURE

Why the Berlin Wall rose—and how it fell

The ugly symbol of the Cold War was built to keep East Germans from escaping to the West. A decades-long fight to flee brought it down.

For nearly 30 years, Berlin was divided not just by ideology, but by a concrete barrier that snaked through the city, serving as an ugly symbol of the Cold War. Erected in haste and torn down in protest, the Berlin Wall was almost 27 miles long and was protected with barbed wire, attack dogs, and 55,000 landmines. But though the wall stood between 1961 and 1989, it could not survive a massive democratic movement that ended up bringing down the the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) and spurring on the Cold War’s end .

The wall had its origins in the end of World War II, when Germany was carved into four pieces and occupied by Allied powers. Although Berlin was located about 90 miles east from the border between the GDR and West Germany and completely surrounded by the Soviet sector, the city was also originally divided into four quarters, but by 1947 was consolidated into east and west zones .

In 1949, the two new Germanies were officially founded. Socialist East Germany was wracked by poverty and convulsed by labor strikes in response to its new political and economic systems. The brain drain and worker shortage that resulted prompted the GDR to close its border with West Germany in 1952, making it much harder for people to cross from “Communist” to “free” Europe. ( Revisit National Geographic' s reporting from West Berlin before the wall fell. )

East Germans began fleeing through the more permeable border between East and West Berlin instead. At one point, 1,700 people a day sought refugee status by crossing from East to West Berlin, and about 3 million GDR citizens went to West Germany through the via West Berlin between 1949 and 1961.

In the wee hours of August 13, 1961, as Berliners slept, the GDR began building fences and barriers to seal off entry points from East Berlin into the western part of the city. The overnight move stunned Germans on both sides of the new border. As GDR soldiers patrolled the demarcation line and laborers began constructing a concrete wall, diplomatic officials and the militaries of both sides engaged in a series of tense standoffs .

The Berlin Wall stretched for almost 27 miles across the city and employed landmines, dogs, and barbed wire to discourage escape attempts. Still, over 5,000 people managed to reach western Europe.

Eventually, East Germany erected 27 miles of concrete wall through the city. The Wall was actually two parallel walls punctuated with guard towers and separated by the “death strip,” which included guard dog runs, landmines, barbed wire, and various obstacles designed to prevent escape. East German soldiers monitored the barriers 24/7, conducted surveillance on West Berlin, and had shoot-to-kill orders should they spot an escapee.

People did try to escape. Initially, they fled from houses right along the Wall; later, those houses were emptied and turned into fortifications for the Wall itself. Others plotted riskier escapes through tunnels, on hot air balloons, and even via train . Between 1961 and 1989, over 5,000 people made successful escapes. Others were not so lucky; at least 140 were killed or died while trying to cross the Wall.

Over the years, the Wall became a grim symbol of the Cold War. By 1989, many East Germans had had enough. They staged a series of mass demonstrations demanding democracy. Meanwhile, the Soviet bloc was destabilized by economic woes and political reforms. ( Meet the forgotten 'wolf children' of World War II. )

Businessman Alfine Fuad shows how he smuggled his family out of East Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie in 1976.

On the night of November 9, 1989, East Berlin party official Günter Schabowski announced upcoming travel reforms in response to the protests, but botched the message so badly it sounded as if the GDR had in fact opened its borders. Thousands of East Berliners flooded toward border crossings along the Wall, where confused guards eventually opened the gates.

As East Berliners pushed through, tens of thousands of West Berliners met them in a massive outpouring of emotion and celebration. As they celebrated with champagne, music, and tears, Berliners began to literally tear down the wall with sledgehammers and chisels. Less than a month later, the GDR collapsed entirely, and in 1990, Germany reunified.

The Soviet Union followed suit, and today the fall of the Berlin Wall is seen as a symbol of the end of the Cold War. Today, a double row of cobblestones marks the place where the wall once stood.

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The Cold War

The berlin wall.

In the early hours of August 13th 1961, the government of East Germany ordered the closure of all borders between East and West Berlin. As the sun rose, Berliners were awoken by the sound of trucks, jackhammers and other heavy machinery. Watched by Soviet troops and East German police, workmen began breaking up roads, footpaths and other structures, before laying thousands of metres of temporary but impassable fencing, barricades and barbed wire. They worked for several days, completely surrounding the western zones of Berlin and cutting them off from the city’s eastern sectors. Within three days, almost 200 kilometres of fence line and barbed wire had been erected. The East German government’s official name for the new structure was Die anti-Faschistischer Schutzwall , or the ‘Anti-fascist Protective Wall’. It became known more simply as the Berlin Wall. According to East Germany, the Berlin Wall was erected to keep out Western spies and stop West German profiteers buying up state-subsidised East German goods. In reality, the wall was erected to stop the exodus of skilled labourers and technicians from East to West Berlin.

The erection of the Berlin Wall made headlines around the world. For the Western powers, it was not entirely unexpected. The United States and West Germany immediately went on high alert, in case the events in Berlin were a prelude to a Soviet-backed invasion of the city’s western zones. Six days later, US president John F. Kennedy ordered American reinforcements into West Berlin. More than 1,500 soldiers were transported into the city along East German autobahns (unlike in the Berlin Blockade , access to West Berlin through East German territory was not blocked). To prepare for another Soviet blockade, Kennedy also ordered a contingent of US cargo planes to be sent to West Germany. Some experts considered the Berlin Wall an act of aggression against Berliners in both zones and demanded strong action. Kennedy was more sanguine, suggesting that a wall “is a hell of a lot better than a war”.

As weeks passed, the Berlin Wall became stronger and more sophisticated – and also more deadly. By June 1962, the East Germans had erected a second line of fencing, approximately 100 metres inside the first wall. The area between both fences was called ‘no man’s land’ or the ‘death strip’: under East German regulations, any unauthorised person observed there could be shot without warning. Houses within the ‘death strip’ were seized by the East German government, destroyed and levelled. The area was floodlit and covered with fine gravel that revealed footprints, which prevented people from sneaking across unnoticed. Structures that overhung the ‘death strip’, like balconies or trees, were booby-trapped with nails, spikes or barbed wire. In 1965, following several escape attempts where cars or trucks were used to punch through the fenceline, many sections of the barrier were replaced with pre-fabricated sections of concrete. This 3.4-metre high concrete barrier became the Berlin Wall’s most

Needless to say, crossing the border between the two Berlins became even more restrictive. Prior to the late 1950s, it had been comparatively easy for West Berliners to visit relatives in eastern sectors, using a day pass issued by East German authorities. Travelling in the other direction was more difficult. East Berliners wanting to cross the city had to show a government permit, and these were difficult to obtain. Elderly East Berliners found these permits easier to obtain because their potential defection was not detrimental to East Germany’s economy. Those with business ties or immediate family in the West could be granted permits – though these permits were often denied or revoked without reason. Permit-holders could cross the Berlin Wall at several points, the best known of which was ‘Checkpoint Charlie’ in Friedrichstrasse.

There were, of course, many attempts to cross the wall illegally. Some tried climbing, scampering or abseiling over the wall – however, the fortifications, barbed wire and armed Grepo (border police) made this a dangerous activity. Ramming through the wall or checkpoints in vehicles was a common tactic in the early years of the wall. This tactic was nullified when the East Germans rebuilt all roads approaching the wall as narrow zig-zags, preventing vehicles from accelerating. Others tried tunnelling under the wall or flying over it, using makeshift hot-air balloons, with varying levels of success. Around 230 people died attempting to cross the Berlin Wall. In 1962 Peter Fechter, an 18-year-old East German factory worker, was shot in the hip by a border patrol. Fechter bled to death in the ‘death strip’ while helpless onlookers on both sides watched impotently. Siegfried Noffke, who had been separated from his wife and daughter by the wall, dug a tunnel underneath it, only to be captured and machine-gunned by Stasi agents.

The Berlin Wall became a stark and foreboding symbol of the Cold War. In the West, its presence was exploited as propaganda: the Berlin Wall was evidence that East Germany was a failing state, that thousands of its people did not want to live under communism. US secretary of state Dean Rusk called the Wall “a monument to communist failure” while West German mayor Willy Brandt called it “the wall of shame”. In Washington, there was considerable debate about how the US should respond to the erection of the Berlin Wall. Ever the realist, President Kennedy knew that threats or shows of aggression might provoke confrontation or war. He instead focused his attention on West Berlin, hailing it as a small but determined bastion of freedom, locked inside an imprisoned state. Kennedy visited West Berlin in June 1963 and was greeted by ecstatic crowds, which cheered wildly and showered his motorcade with flowers and confetti. In the Rudolph Wilde Platz (later renamed the John F. Kennedy Platz), the US president told a rapt audience:

“There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. ‘Lass sie nach Berlin kommen’: let them come to Berlin… Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all men are not free… All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words: ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ (I am a citizen of Berlin).”

The Berlin Wall stood in place for almost 30 years. It remained the most tangible evidence of the Cold War and Iron Curtain separating the Soviet bloc from the West. Western leaders often referred to it as a symbol of Soviet repression. US president Ronald Reagan visited West Berlin in June 1987 and urged his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev , to “ tear down this wall “. It was the people of Berlin themselves who tore it down , during a public demonstration in November 1989.

1. The Berlin Wall was erected by the East German government in 1961. It was constructed to halt the exodus of people, particularly skilled workers, from communist East Berlin.

2. Construction of the Berlin Wall began before dawn on August 13th 1961. Borders were initially closed with fences and barbed wire, then later fortified with large concrete walls

3. The West condemned the Berlin Wall and exploited it as anti-communist propaganda. The wall was evidence, they said, that Soviet communism was failing and East Germany was now a prison state.

4. Over time, the Berlin Wall was heavily fortified, booby-trapped and policed by armed guards. Despite this, many Berliners tried to cross it, and around 230 were killed in the process.

5. The Berlin Wall would stand for almost three decades as a tangible sign of the Iron Curtain and the divisions between the Soviet bloc and the democratic West. The political changes of the late 1980s, the weakening of the East German government and a popular uprising led to the Berlin Wall being torn down in November 1989.

Walter Ulbricht and Nikita Khrushchev discuss closing the Berlin border (August 1961) The Allies protest the closure of borders in Berlin and the Soviets respond (August 1961) Walter Ulbricht to Nikita Khrushchev on outcomes of erecting the Berlin Wall (September 1961) John F. Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech (June 1963) The United States and the Soviet Union exchange diplomatic cables on the Berlin Wall (August 1963) Ronald Reagan: “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” (June 1987) A radio address by Ronald Reagan on the Berlin Wall (August 1987)

Content on this page is © Alpha History 2018. This content may not be republished or distributed without permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use . This page was written by Jennifer Llewellyn, Jim Southey and Steve Thompson. To reference this page, use the following citation: J. Llewellyn et al, “The Berlin Wall”, Alpha History, accessed [today’s date], https://alphahistory.com/coldwar/berlin-wall/.

The Berlin Wall Essay examples

The Berlin Wall 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 among the Soviet Union on one side and Western Europe and the United States on the other. Once World War II was over, these Allies no longer had a common purpose to hold them together. Their differences became less hidden and more irreconcilable. The Western Allies quickly realized they couldn't "kick a dog when its already down", and that Germany was in desperate need of help." Therefore, the Allies' aim was to rebuild Germany's economy. The Soviet Union disagreed with this plan immensely, and instead they became busy with setting up Communist …show more content…

Families were separated, for the Wall had run through parks, public areas, and even buildings. The Wall did not hold them back from freedom. According to reports, official figures show that more than 400 people died trying to flee. Human-rights activists say that the true figure could be closer to 800. Many of these escape attempts were dramatic. People leapt form windows, tunneled and crept through sewers, rammed through the gates in steel-plated trucks, crawled through mud, and swam the icy waters of the city's rivers and canals. Even though the Wall created international crises, divided families, and spawned villains and gangsters, it also produced its heroes. Brave men and women who lived in the shadow of the Wall found ways to elude Communism. Escape soon became harder. The barbed wire was replaced with concrete slabs. Waterways were blocked by underground fences. Windows along the borders had bricks instead of glass. Getting across became increasingly difficult, and it required ingenuity as well as determination. In the first year alone, 14 attempts were made to breach the wall through driving into it.

Berlin Wall Dbq

Due to the Berlin wall families were divided, and no physical connection was able to be made from each side. Jobs from the East and West side of Berlin were cut off. The reason given to the East Berliners for putting the wall up was too, put off aggression from the West, even though the wall pointed inward to East German territory. During the wall's 30 year history, unstable and varying reports claim that either 192 or 239 people were killed trying to cross the wall. Interestingly enough, through the wall's 30 year history there were roughly 5000 successful escapes into West Berlin.

The Cold War was the name given to the relationship between the U.S.S.R. and U.S.A. after the end of World War II. Germany was the representation of the war, and therefore, it became the most disputed country. The Berlin Wall was built in 1961 during the Cold War. During late 1950s and early 1960s, the socialist government decided to build a fence across the city border and restrict access to the Western area. Over time, this fence became a brick wall, completely cutting off access to the west, leaving family and friends separated for almost 30 years. The Berlin Wall marked the different ideologies between the different systems of governments, how they functioned, and the meaning to the people.

The conflicts that would lead to the construction of the Berlin Wall started in World War II. When the war began the (communist) Soviet Union was allied with (Nazi) Germany, against the allied countries of France, Britain, and the United States. Although Germany had a treaty with the Soviet Union, Hitler still invaded the Soviets, breaking their treaty. This caused the Soviet Union to join the Ally countries.

When the wall was put up one thing lead to many other things. If a mother had gone to say the west side of berlin for a couple of days while her family was in east berlin where they live during the time period that the wall had been put up, the mother would have to maybe wait some time before she could go back to east berlin with her family. When the wall was put up many scenarios just like this had happened and many families actually were split apart. Families being split up could lead to the other family members trying to get into the side they are on which was now considered illegal and if they had been caught trying to cross the wall they could have been shot on site. People trying to cross from east to the west was very common as it was believed that west was the more favourable side. By 1961 around 3 million east Berliners had gone over to live in the west this impacted the people living in the east because many who had moved were skilled labourers such as doctors this meant that there were only limited doctors for the

What Is Theodore Roosevelt's Role In The Civil Rights Movement

The East German Government wanted to stop the incoming immigrants from crossing into Eastern Germany. The wall started as a thrown together as a block wall with barbed wire on the top. The temporary wall was replaced by a concert wall that was 4ft wide and 12 ft wall. Close to two hundred people lost their lives attempting to cross over. The wall was finally taken down in 1989.

We Didn't Start the Fire

The Berlin Wall had a major impact on humanity’s views on how society should be ruled. Berlin is the capital of Germany. After the ending of WWII, Berlin was split up into East Berlin, and West Berlin. East Berlin was communist, suffered from the repressions of the Communist Party. West Berlin had a better lifestyle, and had financial aid from the United States. From the years between nineteen forty-nine to nineteen sixty-one, approximately 2.5 million people from East Berlin escaped to West Berlin. This toll included skilled workers, professionals, and intellectuals. Because of the loss of these people, the economy in East Berlin was threatened. On August twelve-thirteen, nineteen sixty-one, the Berlin was built in order to stop the people of East Berlin from fleeing. The Berlin wall was a major point during the Cold War, and many opposed it. It gave another reason to detest communism.

The Berlin Wall: A Turning Point In World History

Berlin Wall). Crowds of East Germans crossed the wall and climbed over the wall. The two

The Berlin Wall Essay example

The German Communist Party began restricting East German's ability to travel to the West in 1949 (Levy 13). Germany's Eastern government installed barbed wire and minefields fields along the border of East and West Germany. However, Eastern Germans' still found a way to escape to the western side of Germany. The most popular way of escape was known as the five-cent subway ride to freedom. There was a subway system in Berlin that linked it's Eastern and Western sides together. For five cents, eastern Germans' would take the train from East Germany to West Germany. Then that person would slip through the border or take a plane or bus out. According to Debbie Levy, during the first six months of 1961, 160,000 Germans had escaped from the East to the West. From 1949 to 1961, more than three million Germans had escaped from the East to the West. This upset the Soviet Officials in charge of Germany very much. Half of the people escaping East Germany were under 25, and three-quarters were under 45. The people escaping included: 16,000 engineers, 5,000 doctors, dentists, and veterinaries, 1,000 university professors and lecturers, and 15,000 high school and elementary teachers. The

Why Is It Difficult To Build The Berlin Wall

Secondly, many security measures were put into place to stop people from crossing from one side of the wall to the other. For example, Berliner Mauer website states, “Floodlights hung high illuminated the strip of sand that was supposed to reveal the footprints of would-be

The Symbols Of The Berlin Wall

On the night of August 13, 1961, the Communist government of the German Democratic Republic and volunteer construction workers of East Germany began to seal all points of entrance into West Berlin with miles of barbed wire, concrete, and stationed soldiers. “Antifaschistischer Schutzwall”, as they called it, or the “anti-fascist bulwark.” The purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western fascists from entering the socialist state of East Germany, and to prevent Easterners from pouring out of the USSR-occupied zone. Throughout the 1950s and 60s, many refugees fled from the east to reunite with family in the west, and to escape the oppressive government that had developed in East Germany after Germany’s defeat in the second World War. Soon, the wall was extended to divide all of Germany, spanning over 96 miles across the nation, dividing the Communist East from the Western Federal Republic of Germany. The Berlin Wall stood for 28 years. Finally, on November 9, 1989, the head of the East German Communist Party announced that members of the GDR could cross the border as they pleased. Celebrating citizens of Germany brought hammers and pickaxes, and began to chip away at the cement that had divided friends and families for nearly three decades. To this day, what’s left of the Berlin Wall remains one of the most powerful symbols from the Cold War.

Berlin Wall Research Paper

The Berlin Wall was built in 1961 in the Cold War. It was used as a separation tool that divided Germany into a communist side and a democratic side. The West side was democratic and the East side was communist. These sides had different views and ideas of how Germany should be led and run. The Berlin Wall blocked people in the West side from going into the East side to go to work, shop, to see their family and vice versa. It was very difficult to try and cross over from the West side to the East side. The Berlin Wall had the physical wall that separated the two sides alone with soldiers stationed on each side of the wall, these soldiers were given orders to shoot anyone that attempted to cross the wall. Hundreds of people were killed trying to cross the wall. When it

Berlin Wall : The Cold War

The Berlin Wall was built in August 1961 during the Cold War. The Wall that separated East and West Berlin came to show the different ideologies between different systems of government, Communism and Democratic supported by the USSR and the USA.

Turning Point Of The Cold War

In 1961 there was a wall build with barbed wire to separate the east and the west in Berlin. This resulted in a riot from the citizens who proceeded to attack offices, military officials, and threw rocks at military vehicles like tanks and cargo trucks. The people of Berlin were outraged, people were forced away from their friends and family and were not allowed to cross the border of the wall because Khrushchev wanted to gain control of the entirety of Germany.

History Of The Gentle Revolution

Soon the wall started being enforced with concrete, then there was two fences, then they added attack dogs and watch towers to keep people from escaping etc. People continued to risk their lives just to escape to their freedom but in November 9, 1989, the East German Communist Party announced that their citizens could cross the border whenever they wanted. That same night people stormed the wall and begun to hop and even break down the wall. Today very little of the wall remains and many collectors etc. have pieces of the wall that kept so many people from their

The Fall Of The Berlin Wall Essay

The Berlin Wall is a historical symbol of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall is a symbol of the end of the Cold War. And also, the Berlin Wall played a great role in the life of millions of people and defined the fate of German people, which put them apart by the Wall for a long period of time. Sixteen years after the end of World War II, the communist government of East Germany began building a wall on (August 13, 1961), that would divide the city of Berlin into East Berlin and West Berlin. The purpose was to keep fascists from entering East Germany, but mostly to keep West German citizens, primarily people of valuable professions such as doctors, teachers and engineers, from Changing side to the West. People of Berlin Called the wall Schandmaur, which actually means " The wall of shame". Over the years of the wall being constructed it took at least 3x times to rebuild it, but each time bigger than the last one.

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• Eastern Bloc

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How Reagan’s ‘Tear Down This Wall’ Speech Marked a Cold War Turning Point

By: Sarah Pruitt

Updated: August 6, 2024 | Original: May 1, 2018

On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood just 100 yards away from the concrete barrier dividing East and West Berlin and uttered some of the most unforgettable words of his presidency: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”

By the time Reagan traveled to Berlin, Germany, to commemorate the 750th anniversary of the city’s founding, the Berlin Wall had divided the city in half for nearly 26 years. Built, and officially closed on August 12, 1961, to prevent disaffected East Germans from fleeing the relative deprivations of life in their country for greater freedom and opportunity in the West, the wall was more than just a physical barrier. It also stood as a vivid symbol of the battle between communism and democracy that divided Berlin, Germany and the entire European continent during the Cold War .

Why Was the Berlin Wall Built?

The wall’s origins traced back to the years after World War II , when the Soviet Union and its Western allies carved Germany into two zones of influence that would become two separate countries, respectively: the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). Located deep within Soviet-controlled East Germany, the capital city of Berlin was also split in two. 

Over the next decade or so, some 2.5 million East Germans—including many skilled workers, intellectuals and professionals—used the capital as the primary route to flee the country, especially after the border between East and West Germany was officially sealed in 1952.

Seeking to stop this mass exodus, the East German government closed off passage between the two Berlins during the night of August 12, 1961. What began as a barbed wire fence, policed by armed guards, was soon fortified with concrete and guard towers, completely encircling West Berlin and separating Berliners on both sides from their families, jobs and the lives they had known before. Over the next 28 years, thousands of people would risk their lives to escape East Germany over the Berlin Wall, and some 140 were killed in the attempt .

Reagan’s 'Tear Down this Wall' Speech Initially Met Criticism

Despite its later fame, Reagan’s speech initially received relatively little media coverage, and few accolades, at the time. Western pundits viewed it as misguided idealism on Reagan’s part, while the Soviet news agency Tass called it “openly provocative” and “war-mongering.” And Gorbachev himself told an American audience years later : “[W]e really were not impressed. We knew that Mr. Reagan’s original profession was actor.” (Gorbachev added that Reagan had been “courageously cooperative,” and a great partner and president.)

According to the former Reagan speechwriter Peter Robinson, who drafted the speech, even Reagan’s advisers in the State Department and National Security Council strongly objected, claiming that such a direct challenge would damage the relationship with the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The two nations had been moving closer to peace and even disarmament, especially after a productive summit between Reagan and Gorbachev in Reykjavik in October 1986.

Despite this, the Berlin Wall—that heavily fortified symbol of Cold War divisions—seemed as solid as ever.

On June 12, 1987, standing on the West German side of the Berlin Wall, with the iconic Brandenburg Gate at his back, Reagan declared: “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate.” Reagan then waited for the applause to die down before continuing. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Reagan’s tactics were a departure from his three immediate predecessors, Presidents Richard Nixon , Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter , who all focused on a policy of détente with the Soviet Union, playing down Cold War tensions and trying to foster a peaceful coexistence between the two nations. Reagan dismissed détente as a “one-way street that the Soviet Union has used to pursue its own aims.”

When Did the Berlin Wall Fall?

On November 9, 1989, the Cold War officially began to thaw when Egon Krenz, the head of East Germany’s Communist Party , announce d that citizens could now cross into West Germany freely. That night, thousands of East and West Germans headed to the Berlin Wall to celebrate, many armed with hammers, chisels and other tools. Over the next few weeks, the wall would be nearly completely dismantled. After talks over the next year, East and West Germany officially reunited on October 3, 1990.

This was a result of many changes over the course of two years. Gorbachev’s reforms within the Soviet Union gave Eastern Bloc nations more freedom to determine their own government and access to the West. Protests within East Germany gained strength, and after Hungary and Czechoslovakia opened their borders, East Germans began defecting en masse.

The Lasting Legacy of Reagan’s Speech

The “Tear Down This Wall” speech didn’t mark the end of Reagan’s attempts to work with Gorbachev on improving relations between the two rival nations: He would join the Soviet leader in a series of summit meetings through the end of his presidency in early 1989, even signing a major arms control agreement, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

In the aftermath of the Berlin Wall’s fall, many began to reevaluate Reagan’s earlier speech, viewing it as a harbinger of the changes that were then taking place in Eastern Europe. In the United States, Reagan’s challenge to Gorbachev has been celebrated as a triumphant moment in his foreign policy, and as Time magazine later put it , “the four most famous words of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.”

In the end, Gorbachev’s reforms, and the resulting protest movements put pressure on the East German government to open barriers to the West.  Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for his work in ending the Cold War, including the fall of the Berlin Wall.

While Gorbachev's role in thawing the Cold War was clear, Reagan's words became memorable. As Douglas Brinkley, professor of history at Rice University, told CBS News in 2012, Reagan’s speech is “seen as a turning point in the Cold War” because it “bolstered the morale of the pro-democracy movement in East Germany.” Yet the greatest impact of the speech may have been the role it played in the creation of Reagan’s enduring legacy as president, and in solidifying his legendary status among his supporters as the “great communicator.”

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Berlin Wall Thesis

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Prologue Magazine

“Tear Down This Wall”

How top advisers opposed reagan's challenge to gorbachev—but lost.

Summer 2007, Vol. 39, No. 2

By Peter Robinson

© 2007 by Peter Robinson  

Ronald Reagan speaking at the Brandenburg Gate on June 12, 1987. (Ronald Reagan Library)

View in National Archives Catalog

     Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe. . . . Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar. . . . As long as this gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind. . . .     General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate.     Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate!     Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

In April 1987, when I was assigned to write the speech, the celebrations for the 750th anniversary of the founding of Berlin were already under way. Queen Elizabeth had already visited the city. Mikhail Gorbachev was due in a matter of days.

Although the President hadn't been planning to visit Berlin himself, he was going to be in Europe in early June, first visiting Rome, then spending several days in Venice for an economic summit. At the request of the West German government, his schedule was adjusted to permit him to stop in Berlin for a few hours on his way back to the United States from Italy.

I was told only that the President would be speaking at the Berlin Wall, that he was likely to draw an audience of about 10,000, and that, given the setting, he probably ought to talk about foreign policy.

Later that month I spent a day and a half in Berlin with the White House advance team—the logistical experts, Secret Service agents, and press officials who went to the site of every presidential visit to make arrangements. All that I had to do in Berlin was find material. When I met the ranking American diplomat in Berlin, I assumed he would give me some.

A stocky man with thick glasses, the diplomat projected an anxious, distracted air throughout our conversation, as if the very prospect of a visit from Ronald Reagan made him nervous. The diplomat gave me quite specific instructions. Almost all of it was in the negative. He was full of ideas about what the President shouldn't say. The most left-leaning of all West Germans, the diplomat informed me, West Berliners were intellectually and politically sophisticated. The President would therefore have to watch himself. No chest-thumping. No Soviet-bashing. And no inflammatory statements about the Berlin Wall. West Berliners, the diplomat explained, had long ago gotten used to the structure that encircled them.

After I left the diplomat, several members of the advance team and I were given a flight over the city in a U.S. Army helicopter. Although all that remains of the wall these days are paving stones that show where it stood, in 1987 the structure dominated Berlin. Erected in 1961 to stanch the flow of East Germans seeking to escape the Communist system by fleeing to West Berlin, the wall, a dozen feet tall, completely encircled West Berlin. From the air, the wall seemed to separate two different modes of existence.

On one side of the wall lay movement, color, modern architecture, crowded sidewalks, traffic. On the other lay a kind of void. Buildings still exhibited pockmarks from shelling during the war. Cars appeared few and decrepit, pedestrians badly dressed. When he hovered over Spandau Prison, the rambling brick structure in which Rudolf Hess was still being detained, soldiers at East German guard posts beyond the prison stared up at us through binoculars, rifles over their shoulders. The wall itself, which from West Berlin had seemed a simple concrete structure, was revealed from the air as an intricate complex, the East Berlin side lined with guard posts, dog runs, and row upon row of barbed wire. The pilot drew our attention to pits of raked gravel. If an East German guard ever let anybody slip past him to escape to West Berlin, the pilot told us, the guard would find himself forced to explain the footprints to his commanding officer.

A fragment of the Berlin Wall is displayed at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. ( Ronald Reagan Library )

That evening, I broke away from the advance team to join a dozen Berliners for dinner. Our hosts were Dieter and Ingeborg Elz, who had retired to Berlin after Dieter completed his career at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. Although we had never met, we had friends in common, and the Elzes had offered to put on this dinner party to give me a feel for their city. They had invited Berliners of different walks of life and political outlooks—businessmen, academics, students, homemakers.

We chatted for a while about the weather, German wine, and the cost of housing in Berlin. Then I related what the diplomat told me, explaining that after my flight over the city that afternoon I found it difficult to believe. "Is it true?" I asked. "Have you gotten used to the wall?"

The Elzes and their guests glanced at each other uneasily. I thought I had proven myself just the sort of brash, tactless American the diplomat was afraid the President might seem. Then one man raised an arm and pointed. "My sister lives twenty miles in that direction," he said. "I haven't seen her in more than two decades. Do you think I can get used to that?" Another man spoke. Each morning on his way to work, he explained, he walked past a guard tower. Each morning, a soldier gazed down at him through binoculars. "That soldier and I speak the same language. We share the same history. But one of us is a zookeeper and the other is an animal, and I am never certain which is which."

Our hostess broke in. A gracious woman, she had suddenly grown angry. Her face was red. She made a fist with one hand and pounded it into the palm of the other. "If this man Gorbachev is serious with his talk of glasnost and perestroika," she said, "he can prove it. He can get rid of this wall."

Back at the White House I told Tony Dolan, then director of presidential speechwriting, that I intended to adapt Ingeborg Elz's comment, making a call to tear down the Berlin Wall the central passage in the speech. Tony took me across the street from the Old Executive Office Building to the West Wing to sell the idea to the director of communications, Tom Griscom. "The two of you thought you'd have to work real hard to keep me from saying no," Griscom now says. "But when you told me about the trip, particularly this point of learning from some Germans just how much they hated the wall, I thought to myself, 'You know, calling for the wall to be torn down—it might just work.'"

When I sat down to write, I'd like to be able to say, I found myself so inspired that the words simply came to me. It didn't happen that way. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. I couldn't even get that right. In one draft I wrote, "Herr Gorbachev, bring down this wall," using "Herr" because I somehow thought that would please the President's German audience and "bring" because it was the only verb that came to mind. In the next draft I swapped "bring" for "take," writing, "Herr Gorbachev, take down this wall," as if that were some sort of improvement. By the end of the week I'd produced nothing but a first draft even I considered banal. I can still hear the clomp-clomp-clomp of Tony Dolan's cowboy boots as he walked down the hallway from his office to mine to toss that draft onto my desk.

"It's no good," Tony said.

"What's wrong with it?" I replied.

"I just told you. It's no good."

The following week I produced an acceptable draft. It needed work—the section on arms reductions, for instance, still had to be fleshed out—but it set out the main elements of the address, including the challenge to tear down the wall. On Friday, May 15, the speeches for the President's trip to Rome, Venice, and Berlin, including my draft, were forwarded to the President, and on Monday, May 18, the speechwriters joined him in the Oval Office. My speech was the last we discussed. Tom Griscom asked the President for his comments on my draft. The President replied simply that he liked it.

White House speechwriters meet with President Reagan in the Oval Office on May 18, 1987. Peter Robinson is second from the left. (Ronald Reagan Library)

"Mr. President," I said, "I learned on the advance trip that your speech will be heard not only in West Berlin but throughout East Germany." Depending on weather conditions, I explained, radios would be able to pick up the speech as far east as Moscow itself. "Is there anything you'd like to say to people on the other side of the Berlin Wall?"

The President cocked his head and thought. "Well," he replied, "there's that passage about tearing down the wall. That wall has to come down. That's what I'd like to say to them."

I spent a couple of days attempting to improve the speech. I suppose I should admit that at one point I actually took "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" out, replacing it with the challenge, in German, to open the Brandenburg Gate, "Herr Gorbachev, machen Sie dieses Tor auf."

"What did you do that for?" Tony asked.

"You mean you don't get it?" I replied. "Since the audience will be German, the President should deliver his big line in German."

"Peter," Tony said, shaking his head, "when you're writing for the President of the United States, give him his big line in English." Tony put "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" right back in.

With three weeks to go before it was delivered, the speech was circulated to the State Department and the National Security Council. Both attempted to squelch it. The assistant secretary of state for Eastern European affairs challenged the speech by telephone. A senior member of the National Security Council staff protested the speech in memoranda. The ranking American diplomat in Berlin objected to the speech by cable. The draft was naïve. It would raise false hopes. It was clumsy. It was needlessly provocative. State and the NSC submitted their own alternate drafts—my journal records that there were no fewer than seven—including one written by the diplomat in Berlin. In each, the call to tear down the wall was missing.

Now in principle, State and the NSC had no objection to a call for the destruction of the wall. The draft the diplomat in Berlin submitted, for example, contained the line, "One day, this ugly wall will disappear." If the diplomat's line was acceptable, I wondered at first, what was wrong with mine? Then I looked at the diplomat's line once again. "One day?" One day the lion would lie down with the lamb, too, but you wouldn't want to hold your breath. "This ugly wall will disappear?" What did that mean? That the wall would just get up and slink off of its own accord? The wall would disappear only when the Soviets knocked it down or let somebody else knock it down for them, but "this ugly wall will disappear" ignored the question of human agency altogether. What State and the NSC were saying, in effect, was that the President could go ahead and issue a call for the destruction of the wall—but only if he employed language so vague and euphemistic that everybody could see right away he didn't mean it.

The week the President left for Europe, Tom Griscom began summoning me to his office each time State or the NSC submitted a new objection. Each time, Griscom had me tell him why I believed State and the NSC were wrong and the speech, as I'd written it, was right. When I reached Griscom's office on one occasion, I found Colin Powell, then deputy national security adviser, waiting for me. I was a 30-year-old who had never held a full-time job outside speechwriting. Powell was a decorated general. After listening to Powell recite all the arguments against the speech in his accustomed forceful manner, however, I heard myself reciting all the arguments in favor of the speech in an equally forceful manner. I could scarcely believe my own tone of voice. Powell looked a little taken aback himself.

A few days before the President was to leave for Europe, Tom Griscom received a call from the chief of staff, Howard Baker, asking Griscom to step down the hall to his office. "I walked in and it was Senator Baker [Baker had served in the Senate before becoming chief of staff] and the secretary of state—just the two of them." Secretary of State George Shultz now objected to the speech. "He said, 'I really think that line about tearing down the wall is going to be an affront to Mr. Gorbachev,'" Griscom recalls. "I told him the speech would put a marker out there. 'Mr. Secretary,' I said, 'The President has commented on this particular line and he's comfortable with it. And I can promise you that this line will reverberate.' The secretary of state clearly was not happy, but he accepted it. I think that closed the subject."

When the traveling party reached Italy (I remained in Washington), the secretary of state objected to the speech once again, this time to deputy chief of staff Kenneth Duberstein. "Shultz thought the line was too tough on Gorbachev," Duberstein says. On June 5, Duberstein sat the President down in the garden of the estate in which he was staying, briefed him on the objections to the speech, then handed him a copy of the speech, asking him to reread the central passage.

Reagan asked Duberstein's advice. Duberstein replied that he thought the line about tearing down the wall sounded good. "But I told him, 'You're President, so you get to decide.' And then," Duberstein recalls, "he got that wonderful, knowing smile on his face, and he said, 'Let's leave it in.'"

A page from the speaking copy that Reagan used in Berlin, showing the tear down this wall line. (Ronald Reagan Library)

The day the President arrived in Berlin, State and NSC submitted yet another alternate draft. "They were still at it on the very morning of the speech," says Tony Dolan. "I'll never forget it." Yet in the limousine on the way to the Berlin Wall, the President told Duberstein he was determined to deliver the controversial line. Reagan smiled. "The boys at State are going to kill me," he said, "but it's the right thing to do."

Not long ago, Otto Bammel, a retired diplomat, told me what he had witnessed in November 1989, some two-and-a-half years after President Reagan delivered the Brandenburg Gate address. Representing the government of West Germany, Bammel was living with his wife and two sons, both of whom were in their early twenties, in an East Berlin home just a few hundred yards from the wall. During the evening of November 9, as the East German state council met in emergency session—a few days earlier there had been peaceful but massive demonstrations throughout East Berlin—Bammel and his oldest son, Karsten, watched television as an East German official held a press conference.

"It was so boring," Bammel said, "that I finally couldn't take any more. So I said, 'Karsten, you listen to the rest. I'm going into the kitchen for something to eat.' Ten minutes later Karsten came to me and said, 'The official just announced everyone can go through the wall! It's a decision made by the state council!' I didn't believe this could happen. It was an unbelievable event." Certain that his son had somehow misunderstood, Bammel took his wife to the home of a neighbor, where they were expected for dinner.

"When we got back at midnight we saw that our boys were still out," Bammel continued. "And we were surprised that there were so many cars driving within the city, but where the traffic goes and why it was, we did not know. We went to bed. When we got up at seven o'clock the next morning, we saw a piece of paper on our kitchen table from our youngest boy, Jens, telling us, 'I crossed the wall. I jumped over the wall at the Brandenburg Gate with my friends. I took my East Berlin friends with me.'

"I said to my wife, 'Something is wrong.' Without eating we took our bicycles and went to the border. And that was the first time we saw what happened in the night. There were people crossing the border on foot and in cars and on bicycles and motorbikes. It was just overwhelming. Nobody expected it. Nobody had the idea that it could happen. The joy about this event was just overwhelming all other thoughts. This was so joyful and so unbelievable."

There is a school of thought that Ronald Reagan only managed to look good because he had clever writers putting words in his mouth. But Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Bob Dole, and Bill Clinton all had clever writers.

Why was there only one Great Communicator?

Because Ronald Reagan's writers were never attempting to fabricate an image, just to produce work that measured up to the standard Reagan himself had already established. His policies were plain. He had been articulating them for decades—until he became President he wrote most of his material himself.

When I heard Frau Elz say that Gorbachev should get rid of the wall, I knew instantly that the President would have responded to her remark. And when the State Department and National Security Council tried to block my draft by submitting alternate drafts, they weakened their own case. Their speeches were drab. They were bureaucratic. They lacked conviction. The people who wrote them had not stolen, as I had, from Frau Elz—and from Ronald Reagan.

Peter Robinson, an author and former White House speechwriter, is a Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 1983 Robinson joined President Ronald Reagan's staff, serving almost five years as speechwriter and special assistant to the President, an experience he recounts in his 2003 book, How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life. Robinson provided the chief executive with more than 300 speeches, including the 1987 Berlin Wall address.

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