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Nov 7, 2019 · Argument. We Weren’t Ready for a World Without Walls. The fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years ago was a giddy moment, but the subsequent rush to tear down walls everywhere has yielded a global...
- The Berlin Wall: The Partitioning of Berlin
- The Berlin Wall: Blockade and Crisis
- The Berlin Wall: Building The Wall
- The Berlin Wall: 1961-1989
- The Berlin Wall: The Fall of The Wall
As World War II came to an end in 1945, a pair of Allied peace conferences at Yalta and Potsdam determined the fate of Germany’s territories. They split the defeated nation into four “allied occupation zones”: The eastern part of the country went to the Soviet Union, while the western part went to the United States, Great Britain and (eventually) F...
The existence of West Berlin, a conspicuously capitalist city deep within communist East Germany, “stuck like a bone in the Soviet throat,” as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev put it. The Russians began maneuvering to drive the United States, Britain and France out of the city for good. In 1948, a Soviet blockade of West Berlin aimed to starve the w...
That night, Premier Khrushchev gave the East German government permission to stop the flow of emigrants by closing its border for good. In just two weeks, the East German army, police force and volunteer construction workers had completed a makeshift barbed wire and concrete block wall–the Berlin Wall–that divided one side of the city from the othe...
The construction of the Berlin Wall did stop the flood of refugees from East to West, and it did defuse the crisis over Berlin. (Though he was not happy about it, President John F. Kennedy conceded that “a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.”) Almost two years after the Berlin Wall was erected, John F. Kennedy delivered one of the most famou...
On November 9, 1989, as the Cold Warbegan to thaw across Eastern Europe, an East German Communist Party spokesman announced a series of new policies regarding border crossings. When pressed on when the changes would take place, he said “As far as I know... effective immediately, without delay.” East Berliners flocked to border checkpoints, some cha...
Nov 8, 2019 · Advertisement. Opinion: The Berlin Wall fell and the U.S. learned the wrong lessons. It got us Donald Trump. The Berlin Wall in front of the Branderburg Gate on the night of Nov. 9, 1989.
Nov 8, 2019 · • 6 min read. For nearly 30 years, Berlin was divided not just by ideology, but by a concrete barrier that snaked through the city, serving as an ugly symbol of the Cold War. Erected in haste and...
Perhaps the most lasting, and problematic, legacy of the Berlin Wall is not physical at all, however. It is the so-called “Wall in the Head” that still separates former East Germans (“Ossis”) from West Germans (“Wessis”). The former East is still plagued by high unemployment and poverty today.
Feb 7, 2018 · It was among East Berliners that the seeds of the wall’s collapse were being sown. The wall falls. On Nov. 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall “fell,” as the East German government suddenly allowed its ...
Nov 8, 2019 · Today, the Berlin Wall is more commonly invoked in political debates as a symbol for the evil of all walls, the original ideology behind the Wall being completely forgotten or at least...
