Berlin Blockade/ Airlift: The Events Leading up to the Building of The Wall
The Berlin Airlift was the unofficial first event of the Cold War. The main reason that Berlin even needed supplies brought in by plane was because On April 9, 1948, Stalin decided that he was going to kick the Americans out of East Germany and not let anything pass through the Soviet controlled area, including all of the supply vehicles going to West Berlin. Being surrounded by Soviet land, West Berlin was in trouble. The Soviets thought that they had won because they blocked off all land connections but they were in for a surprise with the emergence of the Berlin Airlift. Although the Berlin airlift only went on for a single year it still had a great part in the survival of most of the people in West Berlin. It was the symbolic first shot fired, the first battle of the Cold War. When planes first started bringing rounds of supplies, the demand was so great it was overwhelming. Most of the time there still wasn't enough for the Berliners so they had to do whatever necessary for food and a warm place to stay. Thirteen years after the Berlin Airlift the wall went up showing that things were definitely not getting better during the Cold War. The Airlift officially ended on Sept. 30, 1949, but it didn't mean that help stopped coming. New bigger airplanes were sent carrying more supplies and that made for fewer trips out.
Why was the wall built?
At the end of the Second World War, Germany was separated into four parts: American, British, French in the West and the Soviets in the East. The city of Berlin sitting in the middle of East Germany was also split in two. At that time the Berliners were allowed to pass across the borders, there being no wall, but as the time passed too many people would cross over to the West trying to escape communism, leading the Soviet Union to build a wall restricting the crossing of the border splitting the city. This wall spread throughout Europe figuratively. It became known as the “iron curtain", as Winston Churchill called it in his speech in Fulton, Missouri. Nothing symbolized Churchill's "iron curtain" metaphor more than the Communists' erection of the Berlin Wall in August 1961.
The Building of the Wall
The building of the Berlin wall was the biggest symbol of the Cold War, showing the world the real idea of how different and separate the communists were from everyone else and how greedy they became with power and wanting to control their people. The building of the wall was a huge tragedy for many thousands of Berliners. People were separated from their family members, some were unable to go to work or get back home because of blocked routes. It was also hard for people to get everyday items like fresh fruit and clothes. Most everyone protested the building of the wall because of this.
The wall itself was 96 miles around, about 12 feet in height, with 302 watch towers, meaning one watch tower for every third mile, and to add to all that the Soviets every couple years would upgrade the wall to make it more sturdy to stop people from crossing it, or just improve it because of damage from the weather. But, the wall was not always this sturdily built. At the beginning of the building of the wall, the wall only consisted of barricades made of paving stones and barbed wire. The Soviets upgraded the wall and made it "permanent" when they realized too many people were still able to cross. They also created what they called a "death strip" that stretched 100 yards past the wall so the escapees had nowhere to hide and were easily shot down.
You can tell that the picture above is of the West side because of their freedom of expression. Protesters would show their disdain through their art painted on the wall. A popular phrase painted on the wall of the East Side was, "No more wars. No more walls. A united world." Even though they could express their hate of the wall there was no going over it. Around 200 people died trying to cross over. The few people that did make it across used techniques such as digging tunnels under the wall through cemeteries or finding unique ways of hiding in cars. This went on for nearly three decades (29 years).
Fall of the Wall: Remember, Remember the 9th of November...
The Berlin Wall was torn down at 7 p.m. on the 9th of November, 1989. When the Berlin Wall fell it not only physically was brought down, but all around the globe intangible walls of communism were coming down much to the relief of people everywhere. The wall had been the symbol of the Cold War, so when that symbol of oppression and a failed way of governing was gone it sent a shock wave of relief to everyone. As you can see in the picture above, the East and West Germans were coming together at the top of the wall at the Brandenburg Gate to celebrate their long awaited unity. In the other picture you can clearly see the difference in the two sides with the East Berlin soldiers on one side and the carefree Berliners on the other.
Gunter Schabowski, the East German Minister of Propaganda, had the task of announcing when the new regulations were to take effect, allowing people to cross the borders. When he made the announcement he was not instructed as to exactly what the timing was to be, so he read it as, "effective immediately" over the TV and radios. That was the main start to the huge crowds trying to cross that day. The first to escape were the East German tourists in Hungary who escaped to Austria. All kinds of protest demonstrations were breaking out in East Germany and the protests reached a peak that November day when over a million people gathered at Alexanderplatz in East Berlin, coming to a peak when people started climbing over the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. At the same time there was a vast number of refugees leaving East Berlin through Czechoslovakia.
With the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, came the end of numbing oppression. His idea of Glasnost introduced the idea of an open society. Plus, Perestroika held out the promise of a better life achieved through democracy and a free economy. On July 1, 1990, a union was formed between East and West Berlin, along with the dropping of all restrictions having to do with travel for the East German citizens. Then on October 3, 1990, the Berlin wall was officially torn down.