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In 1949, Germany split into two separate countries. One was the Federal Republic of Germany (FDR). The other was the German Democratic Republic (GDR). They were allied to different things: FDR was allied with Western democracies and GDR with the Soviet Union. In 1952, GDR closed its border to West Germany but allowed East Germans to escape through ...

The city of West Berlin was a capitalist city in the middle of East Germany. The Russians wanted to remove the western Allies from West Berlin, but they didn’t succeed because the Allies had airplanes that could fly supplies into West Berlin. The blockade lasted for about a year and more than 2.3 million people were helped by the airlift. Tensions ...

Premier Khrushchev let the East German government stop people from leaving. The people on one side of Berlin were cut off from those on the other side. In two weeks, they built a big wall that separated them. Before the wall was built, Berliners could go where they wanted. They crossed to and fro West Berlin and East Berlin. They could go by train ...

The Berlin Wall was 155 kilometers (96 miles) long and 4 meters (13 feet) tall. When people first tried to escape from East Berlin, they put up temporary fences in the area. When East Berlin was closed off, there were many fences. These fences were around the border area and allowed soldiers to see well and shoot into the area if necessary. More an...

After Mikhail Gorbachev became the General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985, people’s lives and political situations changed slowly. In 1988, Gorbachev said he would not use the Brezhnev Doctrine to limit the sovereignty of other countries. These changes on borders allowed the Eastern Bloc states to have their own policies. Hungary’s shift ...

The East Side Gallery is the longest section of the Berlin Wall still in existence. The wall came down and people from all over the world painted over it interesting mural paintings. Artists from 21 countries accepted the invitation to paint over the wall. In 1990, it became a memorial site, so it would not be sold or torn down. Some of the paintin...

Tränenpalastmeans “palace of tears” in German. People in Berlin felt sad when Germany was split. They created this museum of tears to show people what the division meant for many families. This museum has interviews with people who lived in Berlin at the time and had to cross the Wall. More than 570 original objects are recreating how the Wall sepa...