O Berlin Wall this is how we know the wall that was built in 1961 and that separated West Berlin from East Berlin. This construction was one of the great symbols of Cold War for making evident the polarization that marked the world in the second half of the 20th century. The Berlin Wall was built by order of the rulers of East Germany and the Soviet Union.
Over its 28 years of existence, the wall has created a perimeter of isolation over the West German capital, preventing East Germans from entering that part of Berlin. The disintegration of the socialist bloc in the 1980s led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany.
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Why was the Berlin Wall built?
The Berlin Wall is a product of the Cold War and to understand why it was built, it is necessary to understand what happened to Germany after the Second World War. In May 1945, the Germans surrendered and the country was occupied by Allied troops. Thus, the German territory ended up being divided into fourzones: Soviet, American, French and British.
With the onset of the Cold War, the Soviets and the Americans began to dispute world hegemony and sought to strengthen their blocs of influence. This caused Germany to split into two nations, one aligned with the Soviets and the other aligned with the Americans. Thus, we had the formation of:
- German Democratic Republic (GDR): it was also called East Germany and an ally of the Soviet Union. Its capital was East Berlin.
- Federal Republic of Germany (RFA): it was also called West Germany and an ally of the United States. Its capital was West Berlin.
The division of Germany into two nations with different ideological orientations created a great rivalry between the two governments. Throughout the 1950s, a phenomenon began and began to affect East Germany: exoduspopulational. The population of that country began to flee from the GDR's lack of political openness and began to look for better opportunities in life.
This caused millions of East Germans to start moving to West Germany and the city that began to receive this large influx of citizens from the GDR was West Berlin, the capital of Federal Republic of Brazil The situation, of course, became a nuisance for the East German government.
The situation was made potentially harmful to the GDR by the large number of teachers, doctors and engineers leaving the country. The East German government's first action was to mobilize its secret police, a Stasi, to prevent people from leaving the country. This measure, however, failed.
So, in early 1961, the East German government decided to impose a physical barrier to isolate separate the two cities. This year, the governor of the GDR, Walter Ulbricht, requested permission from the Moscow government to build a wall on the perimeter of West Berlin, isolating it.
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Construction of the Berlin Wall
The GDR government asked for permission from the Soviet government in May 1961, and the following month Moscow waved a hand in favor of building the wall. This started a covert operation that became known as Operation Pink and who orchestrated the preparations for the construction of the Berlin Wall.
The secret status of the operation is due to the fact that the East German government wanted to avoid panic, as if any information was released without authorization, panic would spread and thousands, perhaps millions of people would try to flee to West Berlin suddenly. In addition, the East German government feared that Western nations would take action to prevent the construction of the Berlin Wall.
When the wall was built, the person responsible for coordinating the operation was Erich Honecker, ironically, the man who ruled East Germany when the crisis hit the GDR in the 1980s. Construction of the Berlin Wall began at dawn August 13, 1961, and the GDR and USSR mobilized soldiers and tanks to support the operation.
On the morning of August 13, when the population woke up to work, thousands of meters of barbed wire had already been used to isolate West Berlin. Over the following months and years, works were carried out that developed the structure of the wall. In addition to the very high wall, crossing points, security towers and armed soldiers were created to monitor it.
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Why was the Berlin Wall brought down?
![Stamp commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.[1]](/f/e0eafa3330302e27d5fa8a1c40b61922.jpg)
The fall of the Berlin Wall is directly related to the weakening of the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s. In that decade, East Germany was facing a crisiseconomical very strong, and the population's dissatisfaction with the bad economy was evidence of political dissatisfaction.
A series of popular demonstrations began to take place between 1988 and 1989, demanding the political opening of the GDR, as well as the opening of borders to the West. The dismantling of other governments with a socialist orientation ended up contributing to aggravate the political and social upheaval in East Germany.
The isolation of the socialist bloc officially began to crumble when the Hungary decreed the opening your border with the West in May 1989. The opening of the Hungarian borders opened a new possibility of escape and thus thousands of citizens of the East Germany headed for Hungary with the intention of crossing the Hungarian-Austrian border.
Protests continued to take place in cities, such as east berlin, Dresden and Leipzig and have become the biggest in East Germany since the 1950s. On November 9, 1989, the spokesman for the GDR government made an announcement in the wrong way. In this ocasion, Gunter Schabowski he claimed that the borders of East Germany would be opened immediately.
The spokesman's announcement sparked a movement of people heading for the crossings that gave access to West Berlin. As the announcement was made wrongly, border officials were not informed and began to bar people who wanted to go to the capital of the FRG.
The number of people was so large and the situation began to become so delicate that the East German authorities were forced to release people's passage. In the night of the 9th to the 10th of November, thousands of people gathered along the wall and began to prey on him. The wall separating the two sides of Berlin was now collapsing. The fall of the wall guaranteed the political conditions for Germany to be reunified, an event that officially took place in October 1990.
Image credit
[1] MM_photos /Shutterstock
