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The Berlin Wall near the time of it's final demise. #DemiseOfWAll

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A picture during the Cold War that expresses the Public's desire for freedom. #FreedomFromWall

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A perfect picture showing the governments pressure to sedate the publics desire for freedom from the wall that casted so many hardships for familys, jobs, etc. #NoWall #NoHate

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Interesting facts about the intensity of the barrier between the two sides of the country. #FACTSaboutBerlinWall

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The wall being taken down by an enpowered citizen #TakedownThatWall

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The main points about why the Berlin Wall was built and how it affected citizens during the Cold War #AffectsOfWall

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Why Was A Wall Built Around West Berlin?

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1961-1969 Timeline of the Berlin Wall and how it really was never wanted by the public #RiseAndFall

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THE CONNECTION TO AMERICA AND THE BERLIN WALL AND WHY IT MATTERS

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THE CONNECTION TO AMERICA AND THE BERLIN WALL AND WHY IT MATTERS

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The ties between America and Berlin during the time that the Berlin Wall was placed truly affected the Cold War and affected citizens all over the globe. #AmericaAndBerlin

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In post- World War II Germany, the Berlin Wall was erected on August 16, 1961, along the demarcation between the eastern sector of Berlin controlled by the Soviet Union, and the western sectors occupied by the United States, France, and Great Britain. East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a Communist state that existed from 1949 to 1990 in the former Soviet occupation zone of Germany.

The Soviet sector was by far the largest and covered most of east Berlin, including Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg, Mitte, Prenzlauer Berg, Kreuzberg, and Lichtenberg. Its twofold purpose was to prevent well-educated East Germans from leaving East Germany - a "brain drain" - and to impede approximately 80 spy centers and organizations from interfering with the Russian sector.

The threat of a second Great Depression loomed large in Europe, and Germany was one of the hardest-hit areas. Most German cities had been all but obliterated, and transportation systems lay in ruins. Routinely, refugees fled from East to West in search of a society sound enough for them to work for the barest daily essentials.

In a rare move, the Allied victors decided to allay an economic crisis by helping to rebuild the most-devastated areas as quickly as possible. That effort was called the Marshall Plan, in honor of George C. Marshall, then U.S. Secretary of State, who first called for Allied participation in the restoration of Europe. The success of that strategy earned Marshall a Nobel Peace Prize.

The " Berlin Crisis" involved a controversy so bitter and so sustained that at its height, world leaders feared that a misstep could trigger a nuclear war. The crisis unfolded through a war of words, diplomatic negotiations, superpower summits, and military posturing and preparations, - thus the term " Cold War" - as East and West disputed over Berlin`s future.

For presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, U.S. credibility was at stake: A failure in Berlin could disrupt NATO and weaken American influence in West Germany, the key to the balance of power in Europe. The Berlin Wall was the flashpoint of the Berlin Crisis. The Berlin Crisis was a flashpoint of the Cold War.
The Iron Curtain descends
Berlin was considered to be the key to the balance of power in post- World War II Europe. The postwar, sequestered Soviet Union, was nevertheless active beyond its borders. Events around the world, many seemingly unrelated, represented battlefronts in the Cold War.

Some battlefronts were hidden from public view for decades. Other battlefronts, like the Berlin Crisis, were highly public. The Berlin Crisis started with the 1948 Berlin blockade ordered by Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, which led to the Berlin Airlift by the Western Allies.

Cold War tensions continued to smolder for four decades after the World War II defeat of Germany. The construction and destruction of the Berlin Wall stand as milestones of the Cold War era.

In July 1958, the East German Fifth Congress ordered a wholesale collectivization of agriculture and a sharp rise in industrial output. That was part of a seven-year economic plan to bring per capita consumption in the GDR up to the level of West Germany.

The plan also repressed private trade and created supply gaps behind the Iron Curtain, which became increasingly severe and oppressive. Dissatisfaction by an increasing number of people in the GDR caused them to seek refuge in the West - a major loophole in the GDR scheme of things.

The border to West Berlin lay open to East Germans, and hundreds left the country daily. Nearly all of them went by subway or S-Bahn (electric commuter train), undetected among the thousands of commuters who worked or shopped in the West. Regular spot checks by the police on anyone carrying a suitcase exerted little impact. Most people easily evaded them by making repeated journeys with a few belongings at a time.

At an international press conference on June 15, 1961, the leader of the east German Socialist Unity Part of Germany (SED) and president of the Privy Council, Walter Ulbricht, answered a journalist`s question: "I understand your question as follows: There are people in West Germany who want us to mobilize the construction workers of the GDR to build a wall. I am not aware of any such plans ... No one has the intention of constructing a wall." But the wall was exactly what he wanted from Khruschev.

The international political situation between NATO and Warsaw Pact nations continued to intensify. On November 27, 1958, the Soviets under Khrushchev delivered the Berlin Ultimatum in an attempt to stem the tide of refugees.

The ultimatum demanded that the western allies withdraw their troops from West Berlin and that it should become a "free city" within six months. The threat of a separate peace treaty between the Soviet Union and East Germany loomed on February 17, 1959. A meeting in Vienna between President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev on June 3 and 4, 1961, failed to end the impasse.

The ultimatum was a fiasco, and the situation was even worse than before. Continued tension during the six-month period had only increased the flow of refugees who feared that time was running short. When the ultimatum ran out, there was a brief respite. But as the effects of the "Seven-Year Plan" began to be felt, the flow of refugees rose again.
Construction of the Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was erected on August 13, 1961. Early on that Sunday morning the GDR began, under Secretary General Erich Honecker, to block off East Berlin and the GDR from West Berlin by means of barbed wire and antitank obstacles.

Streets were torn up, and barricades of paving stones were erected. Tanks gathered at crucial places. The subway and local railway services between East and West Berlin were interrupted. Inhabitants of East Berlin and the GDR were no longer allowed to enter West Berlin, amongst them 60,000 commuters who had worked in West Berlin. In the following days, construction brigades commenced to replace the provisional barriers with a solid wall.

Thousands of angry demonstrators quickly gathered on the West Berlin side of the divide. At one crossing point, protesters tried to trample down the barbed wire, only to be driven back by guards with bayonets.

The West German chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, appealed for calm, saying in a broadcast to the nation the following evening: "Now, as always, we are closely bound to the Germans of the Russian zone and East Berlin. "They are and remain our German brothers and sisters. The Federal Government remains firmly committed to the goal of German unity."

Outrage from the international community erupted at the abrupt decision to cut off one side of the city from the other. A Foreign Office spokesman in London said the restrictions were contrary to the four-power status of Berlin, and therefore illegal.

The American secretary of state, Dean Rusk, called it a "flagrant violation" of East-West agreements, and said there would be a vigorous protest to Russia. Yet, the reaction of the Allies was moderate, given that the three essentials of American policy regarding Berlin were not affected: the presence of allied troops, free access to Berlin, and the West Berliners` right of self-determination.

After August 23, 1961, citizens of West Berlin were no longer allowed to enter East Berlin. On September 20, the forced evacuation of houses situated immediately at the border to West Berlin began.

On August 17, 1962, Peter Fechter, an 18-year-old citizen of East Berlin, bled to death after he was shot down by a East Berlin border patrol in his attempt to escape over the wall. The last to die was Chris Gueffroy on June 2, 1989. Many attempted to escape over the 28 years of the wall`s existence.

First, there was a wall that comprised concrete segments with a height of about about 13 feet, usually with a concrete tube on top of it. Behind it on the east side lay an illuminated control area - also called the "death area." Refugees who had reached that area were shot without warning.

A trench that followed was intended to prevent vehicles from breaking through. Then there was a patrol track, a corridor with watchdogs, watchtowers and bunkers, and a second wall.

The barrier cut through 192 streets (97 between East and West Berlin and 95 between West Berlin and East Germany), 32 railway lines, eight S-Bahns, and four underground train lines, three autobahns (freeways), and several rivers and lakes. On the waterways, the wall consisted of submerged railings under constant surveillance by patrol boat crews.

The total length of the Berlin Wall was 96 miles.

Twenty-seven miles went through the center of the city.

Twenty-three miles went through residential areas.

Sixty-six miles comprised a concrete barrier 13 feet high.

It also consisted of 302 watch towers and 20 bunkers.

More than 5,000 people successfully crossed the Berlin Wall to freedom.

About 3,200 people were arrested in the border area.

More than 160 people were killed in the death area, and another 120 people were injured.

Due to the danger of escape attempts over the wall, numerous tunnels were dug, allowing about 150 East Berliners to escape undetected. As time passed, the wall was gradually perfected and became more impassible.

After October 1964, it was gradually strengthened, doubled up and transformed into a "modern border," which assumed its final appearance from 1979 to 1980. The partition left West Berlin stranded in the midst of the Soviet zone, 110 miles from the border with the western zones. That unusual geopolitical situation became difficult to handle.

On June 26, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered a historic speech in Rudolph Wilde Square in Berlin. The square was packed with cheering West Berliners. It was a spectacle new to Kennedy - one to two million people assembled to greet him.

In the midst of the Cold War he declared, "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." President Kennedy, identifying with the citizens of Berlin in their quest for freedom and to be reunited with their families in East Berlin, said, "Ich bin ein Berliner." ("I am a Berliner").
The Iron Curtain begins to ascend
President Ronald Reagan delivered a speech at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin on June 12, 1987. His comments were to the people of West Berlin, but audible on the East side of the Berlin Wall. Part of Reagan`s intended audience was none other than Mikhail Gorbachev:

"There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. 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!

The Iron Curtain began to rise when the wall met its demise. Soon afterward, Gorbachev made his first official visit to West Germany in May 1989. While there, he announced that Moscow would no longer forcefully prevent democratic conversion of its outlying states.

Hungary opened its border with Austria on September 11, 1989. The opening of the borders between East and West Berlin, which also symbolized the end of the Cold War, began on June 13, 1990.
Reconstruction of Berlin
Since the Berlin Wall became obsolete with the 1989 opening of the borders between East and West Germany, Berliners have created massive reconstruction, mostly in what was East Berlin. The heart of the city, the Mitte district, was rebuilt, though remnants of the communist regime still remain.

The 19th-century Reichstag building, the new seat of the German parliament, gained a modern glass cupola to replace the original dome destroyed by fire when the Nazis came to power. A museum at the former site of Checkpoint Charlie, the famous border post in the American sector, memorializes the Berlin Wall.

The greatest reconstruction has been the reconnection of a people - reconstruction of strained relationships and cultures, not just in Germany, but across Eurasia.

The terms Perestroika and Glasnost, Russian for restructuring and openness respectively, were used to describe the set of reforms instituted by Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s. The terms also could be used to describe the end of the Cold War.

---- Selected Quotes ----
Quotes regarding Berlin Wall.
- - - Books You May Like Include: ----

The Candy Bombers by Andrei Cherny.
Published 60 years after the start of the Berlin Airlift, Andrei Cherny's book tells a remarkable story with profound implications for the world. In t...
One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Kennedy, and Castro, 1958-1964 by Aleksandr Fursenko.
The Berlin Wall has been rubble for a decade and the memories of the cold war are growing dim. And yet no one is ever likely to forget the Cuban Miss...

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In post- World War II Germany, the Berlin Wall was erected on August 16, 1961, along the demarcation between the eastern sector of Berlin controlled by the Soviet Union, and the western sectors occupied by the United States, France, and Great Britain.

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East German government built the Berlin wall, dividing Berlin into two halves. They did this to stop the flow of Germans from East Germany to West Germany, because at this time Germany was divided into two separate countries. #YouthAndBerlinWall

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The Berlin Wall separated East and West Germany both physically and politically. The wall also didn't allow people to leave or come into East or West Germany. The wall also affected the...

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West Berlin was a geographical loophole through which thousands of East Germans fled to the democratic West. In response, the Communist East German authorities built a wall that totally encircled West Berlin. It was thrown up overnight, on 13 August 1961 #BerlinWall #WestAndEastSide

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THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE WEST AND EAST GERMANS

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THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE WEST AND EAST GERMANS

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The relationship of the east and west Germans during the time of the berlin wall and how it truly affected the tensions between them #WestVsEast

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The guard who opened the gate – and made history

Tony Paterson meets Harald Jager, the man who, amid fear and confusion, took the snap decision to open the Berlin Wall, triggering German reunification #FateofHate

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Tears still well up in Harald Jäger's eyes when he recalls how he famously gave the order to open the Berlin Wall.

But the tears the former Stasi lieutenant-colonel first shed on that November night 25 years ago came from feelings of humiliation and defeat rather than joy.

Mr Jäger, now 71, is renowned in Germany for being "the man who opened the Berlin Wall". On the night of 9 November a quarter of a century ago, he was the East German border guard officer in charge of the Bornholmer Strasse crossing point separating the communist East Berlin borough of Prenzlauer Berg from the West Berlin district of Wedding.

By 11.30 that night he and his colleagues were confronted by an angry and rapidly growing crowd of over 20,000 East Berliners chanting "Open the Gate". Amid complete confusion, without clear orders and fearing a stampede, bloodbath or both, he took the snap decision to breach the divide.

The career border guard had passionately believed in and even helped to build the Berlin Wall back in 1961. Now, unwittingly, he was ordering its destruction, triggering German reunification. He didn't know it then, but one of his next jobs would be running a newspaper kiosk just yards from where he now stood.

"After I gave the order, I and the other guards couldn't believe what we were seeing. We were shell shocked, we felt the world was collapsing around us" he told The Independent in the small communist-era flat he shares with his wife in the village of Werneuchen north of Berlin.

"We stood there and watched our citizens leaving en masse. These were our people. We cried. We felt betrayed by our superiors. It was the terrible realisation that not only the system and our leaders had failed. We had too," he added.

It wasn't until about half an hour later when the vast tide of East Berliners - cheering, clapping, hooting and weeping with emotion as they poured westward - reached full ebb, that the penny dropped for Mr Jäger and his colleagues. "The crowds won us over with their euphoria, we realised that they were overjoyed and our tears of frustration turned to those of joy," he said. "At that point one of the guards came up to me and said, Harald, I guess that was it with East Germany. It suddenly dawned on me that it was."

East Germany's end had been proclaimed, albeit in a garbled statement, by East Berlin politburo member Günter Schabowski some four hours earlier. Buckling under the pressure of a huge anti-communist demonstration in Berlin five days before and a mass exodus of East Germans across the now open Iron Curtain on Hungary's border with Austria, the regime knew that easing its ban on travel to the West was its only slim chance of survival.

Mr Jäger was in a Stasi canteen grabbing a bite to eat at the time. Sitting in front of the canteen TV set he watched in disbelief: Schabowski had first announced on state-run television that East Germans could now travel to the West providing they obtained the correct travel documents from the authorities. But then he suddenly declared that they could do so "immediately and without delay".

"I almost choked on the roll I was eating. I thought 'what is this nonsense all about?'" By the time he reached the Bornholmer Strasse guard post, small knots of inquisitive East Germans had started to gather outside. They were anxious to find out whether they could travel West. Mr Jäger telephoned his superior, Stasi Col Rudi Ziegenhorn, for advice but was bluntly instructed to send away anyone who did not have the right travel documents. "Why are you calling me about such nonsense?" Mr Jäger was asked.

But by 8pm West German television was interpreting Schabowski's statement with the news headline: "East Germany opens its borders to the West." The gathering of East Germans at Bornholmer Strasse was fast becoming a crowd. Mr Jäger made more increasingly desperate phone calls to his superior. "I have no order from above for you," Ziegenhorn told him.

By 9pm the crowd had become so big that Mr Jäger was beginning to panic: "We have to do something," he shouted down the phone.

He was then ordered to defuse the situation by letting the noisiest East Germans leave the crossing point for West Berlin. The aim was to make it impossible for them to return by rendering their passports invalid with a special stamp. "I realised then that I was doing something which was illegal even in East Germany," he said. The tactic soon backfired. The crowd, seeing that the noisy were allowed West, started to get noisier.

The other guards, realising that East Germany's entire military and political apparatus appeared to have lost control, begged Mr Jäger to take action. All of them were armed with pistols and Kalashnikovs were on hand in the border post hut. But Mr Jäger feared a bloodbath even more than the possibility of a stampede which seemed imminent. Shortly after 11.30pm he gave the order "Open the barrier" and the human tide flowed west until dawn.

At the end of his shift, Mr Jäger called his sister: "It was me who opened the border last night," he told her. "You did well," was her reply. The rest is history.

But for Mr Jäger the experience was an ideological trauma. His father was one of East Germany's first border guards. After the Second World War, he was granted early release from a Soviet prisoner of war camp in Siberia because he had signed up for the job. His son grew up to be a communist and joined the border guards as his father had done.

In 1961, he policed the Berlin Wall as it was being built. "We all thought that unlike the West, which still had former Nazis in power, that we in the East were building the better Germany," he said.

He said he was overjoyed when the Berlin Wall went up because it "put an end to corruption and chaos" that was being caused by capitalist West Berlin. Of the scores shot dead at the Berlin Wall trying to escape, he says: "We always thought that any death at the Berlin Wall was one death too many, but we turned a blind eye to the fact that people were actually killed."

Even after the Wall fell, like millions of East Germans, Harald Jäger still hoped that East Germany would reform its system and continue to co-exist with West Germany. "We didn't believe in or even particularly want reunification," he recalls.

It came less than a year later and Mr Jäger, who had by then transferred to the East German army, lost his job. After a few years, he scraped together enough cash to buy a newspaper kiosk just a few hundred yards from his former Bornholmer Strasse crossing point. "Some of the customers used to shout 'don't buy your papers from this Stasi pig'," he recalls. "But most used to congratulate me for what I did," he says.

Harald Jäger is now retired. But only recently has he been reaping the benefits of the freedom of travel he secured for his fellow citizens 25 years ago. Last month, he was in Liverpool, where he told his story to a packed audience at the city's university. "I had a great time," he says. For tomorrow's anniversary he was interviewed by South Korean television. Mr Jäger is convinced that the North-South Korea divide will eventually go the same way as the Berlin Wall. "Sooner or later the Koreans - like the Germans - will find the way to each other," he said.

Reuse content

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Fall of the Berlin Wall: The guard who opened the gate - and made history

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Tears still well up in Harald Jäger's eyes when he recalls how he famously gave the order to open the Berlin Wall. But the tears the former Stasi lieutenant-colonel first shed on that November night 25 years ago came from feelings of humiliation and defeat rather than joy.

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The 200 word essay about the importance of the education of the Berlin wall for American Students

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Sarah Bustamante - US HISTORY FINAL P. 4

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Sarah Bustamante June 1, 2017 US HISTORY FINAL WORD COUNT: Over 260  Topic: The Berlin Wall   	The event I chose, The rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, affected American History in a MAJOR way. The rise of the Berlin Wall was majorly influenced by Communist control and of course, America is compl...