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Why was a wall built around West Berlin?
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.
How did the wall affect people in West Berlin?
The Berlin wall divided families who found themselves unable to visit each other. Many East Berliners were cut off from their jobs. West Berliners demonstrated against the wall and their mayor Willy Brandt led the criticism against the United States who they felt had failed to respond.
Why was the decision made to build a wall separating East from West Berlin?
Berlin Wall: Photograph of the Berlin Wall taken from the West side. The Wall was built in 1961 to prevent East Germans from fleeing and stop an economically disastrous migration of workers. It was a symbol of the Cold War, and its fall in 1989 marked the approaching end of the war.
Did the Berlin Wall surround West Berlin?
The Berlin Wall was one wall. This 96-mile border encircled democratic, capitalist West Berlin, separating it from communist East Berlin and the surrounding East German countryside. Another barrier, with more than 1 million mines, was erected along the 850-mile border between East and West Germany.
What caused the Berlin Wall to be built?
As tensions grew after the four-power rule was decided at Potsdam, the ideological differences between them led to the construction of a barrier that separated families and friends, as the two sides became the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany.
What was significant about the Berlin Wall?
The wall separated East Berlin and West Berlin. It was built in order to prevent people from fleeing East Berlin. In many ways it was the perfect symbol of the “Iron Curtain” that separated the democratic western countries and the communist countries of Eastern Europe throughout the Cold War.
What happened when the Berlin Wall was built?
On the night of August 12-13, 1961, East German soldiers laid down more than 30 miles of barbed wire barrier through the heart of Berlin. East Berlin citizens were forbidden to pass into West Berlin, and the number of checkpoints in which Westerners could cross the border was drastically reduced.
Why did Berlin have a wall?
The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep so-called Western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West.
Why is the Berlin Wall important?
How did Berlin Wall fall?
It was on 9 November 1989, five days after half a million people gathered in East Berlin in a mass protest, that the Berlin Wall dividing communist East Germany from West Germany crumbled. East German leaders had tried to calm mounting protests by loosening the borders, making travel easier for East Germans.