Jean-Daniel Kretzen

Jean-Daniel Kretzen What brought about the destruction of the Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall was not just a physical division between West Berlin and East Berlin, but also the boundary line between Communism and Democracy. After World War II, Germany, as well as Berlin, was divided into four sectors. The United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union each got a sector to control. Great Britain and France soon gave over their sectors to the Americans to command, and the Soviets were faced with a large united front against them. This effectively divided Berlin into the West, controlled by America against the East, controlled by the Soviet Union, as well as Democracy versus Communism. This hostile environment soon escalated as the Cold War started, and the atmosphere in Berlin quickly turned hostile. Because of dissatisfaction with the economy in East Berlin (there was a forced collectivism of agriculture, a suppression of trade and Communism was being rammed down the people’s throats), the people from East Berlin started fleeing into West Berlin. From January 1961 to the beginning of August of the same year, over 160,000 people fled into West Berlin. Most of Jean-Daniel Kretzen these people were qualified teachers, businessmen, professors, and many other trained professionals, the economy in East Berlin started to suffer from the lack of these skilled people. The Soviet government decided something had to be done. East Berlin eventually lost over 2.5 million people to West Berlin. The Soviets decided they had to do something about this mass exodus from their sector. The obvious problem was the easy access the people had to West Berlin. At first, they threatened nuclear war with America if they did not stop the people from crossing over into West Berlin. The Americans decided to call the bluff and did nothing to stop people from crossing over the border. The Soviets had to come up with a different plan, and so the seeds of the Berlin Wall were planted. It was just after midnight on the 12th to 13th of August, 1961, when trucks filled with construction workers and soldiers rode through the streets of East Berlin. While most of the people were sleeping, they tore up the street, dug holes for construction posts, and spun barbed wire between the poles. This wall stretched for a hundred miles, wrapping around West Berlin and cutting of East Berlin from the rest of Germany. The telephone wires were also cut. When the people woke up the next morning, they were shocked to find the wall stretching out into the distance, cutting them off from the rest of Berlin. The Jean-Daniel Kretzen people could no longer cross over for their jobs, or to go see family. If you were on the wrong side of the fence, it was just too bad for you. A few days after its construction, the Berlin Wall was rebuilt into a more solid structure made out of concrete blocks and topped with barbed wire. In 1965 this construction was replaced with another one, the new wall consisting of concrete blocks with steel girders. The fourth construction took from 1975 to 1980 to finish, and it was made up of concrete slabs reaching nearly 3.6 meters high and was 1.2 meters wide. It also had a smooth pipe on the top to discourage people from trying to scale it. The wall had a devastating effect on the moral of the people in Berlin. People could no longer just cross over the border to go to a friend’s house, or just go visit family. People could no longer get to their jobs or go watch the theatre or a soccer match. There are also many cases where people’s children were at a friend’s house and could not go back home because of the wall. Jean-Daniel Kretzen There were also many escape attempts. It is speculated that almost 5,000 people escaped from East Berlin into West Berlin. For the first wall, most people just tried to throw a rope over and then just climb. Other people tried to ram a truck into the wall and then make a run for it. The crazier people tried to jump from apartment buildings lining the wall onto the other side. As the Walls got bigger and better, some people started tunneling in under the walls. One group even saved scraps of cloth and built a hot air balloon and flew over the wall with it. Not all of these escapes were successful. The East Berlin guards had permission to shoot anybody close to the Wall without proper identification, and an estimated 100 to 200 people died trying to cross over. The most infamous of these escape attempts happened on August 17, 1962. Two 18-year old boys ran at the wall from the East Berlin side and tried to scale it. The first one made it over, but the second one, Peter Fetcher, was shot at. The guard missed, and Peter made it to the top. But as he reached the top he ran out of energy, and fell back into the East Berlin side. The world was shocked by the fact that the guards did not shoot him. Peter lay there in agony for over an hour, slowly bleeding to death. When he died, the guards took his body away. This young man was the 50th person to die at the Berlin Wall. Jean-Daniel Kretzen With the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, people started trying harder to get over the Berlin Wall. Then suddenly, on the evening of November 9, 1989, an East German official, named Gunter Schabowski, announced that permanent relocation were now available to the people. At first, people thought it was a trap, but as they got to the border, the border guards did indeed let them come through. The people joyously reunited with their families, and some even started chipping away at the Wall with hammers and chisels. These people were nicknamed the wall woodpeckers. The official demolition of the Berlin Wall only started on the 13th of June, 1990. By this time, a big part of the Wall had already been chipped away, and the people more or less moved freely over the border. After the destruction of the Wall, Germany again became a unified country on October 3, 1990