РефератыИностранный языкBeBerlin Wall Essay Research Paper With the

Berlin Wall Essay Research Paper With the

Berlin Wall Essay, Research Paper


With the aim of preventing East Germans


from seeking asylum in the West, the East German government in 1961 began


constructing a system of concrete and barbed-wire barriers between East


and West Berlin. This Berlin Wall endured for nearly thirty years,


a symbol not only of the division of Germany but of the larger conflict


between the Communist and non-Communist worlds. The Wall ceased to


be a barrier when East Germany ended restrictions on emigration in November


1989. The Wall was largely dismantled in the year preceding the reunification


of Germany.


The victorious Allies agreed to give most


of Eastern Germany to Poland and the USSR, and then divide the rest into


four zones of occupation. However, they could not agree of whether


or how to reunite the four zones. “As Cold War tensions grew, stimulated


in part by the German situation itself, the temporary dividing line between


the Soviet zone in the East and the British, French, and U.S. zones in


the West hardened into a permanent boundary. In 1949, shortly after


the Western powers permitted their zones to unite and restore parliamentary


democracy in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Russians installed a


puppet regime of German Communists in the East, creating the German Democratic


Re-public.”(Niewyk, 1995) According to Galante (1965, p.vii) “a city


is the people who live in it. Berlin is 3,350,000 people in twenty


boroughs. A rich city of factories, an airy city of farms and parks


and woods and lakes?On Sunday, August 13, 1961 Herr Walter Ulbricht stopped


that. He built the Wall.”


One reason for the building of the Wall


was due to the more than fifty-two thousand East Berliners who crossed


the border everyday to work in West Berlin. These people were referred


to as the “grenzgaenger or border crossers.” “East Berliners said


the grenzgaenger were parasite who should stay and work on the East side


of the boundary, for the benefit of Communism and the prosperity of the


German Democratic Republic.”(Galante, p.3) Gelb (1986, p.3) states,


“Berlin was where the Cold War began with a Soviet blockade, where Soviet


and American tanks faced each other virtually snout-to-snout for the first


time, and where the grisly game of nuclear brinkmanship was introduced.”


The Wall was constructed of concrete and


steel and barbed wire. It was 28 miles long, if straightened it would


measure 103 miles long, dividing on of the greatest cities in the world.


On side was painted white and one side was covered with graffiti.


“But there is more to the Wall than just this wall. Behind it, one


hundred yards deeper into Communist territory, is another concrete barrier


almost as formidable. The leveled area between the two is a desolate,


dangerous no-man’s-land, patrolled by kalashnikov-toting guards, dotted


with free-fire machine-gun emplacements, and sown in places with landmines.


It is punctuated with 285 elevated watchtowers, more suited to prison camps


than city centers, and by a series of dog runs where ferocious, long leashed


Alsatians effectively run free. It is not a safe place to be.”(Gelb,


p.4) Approximately 5000 people managed to escape to the West, 80


died trying. There is no known record of anyone trying to escape


in the other direction. “The poor quality and construction is a result


both of the speed with which the first sections were erected and the fact


that no foundation was prepared.”(Galante, p.8) On August 13, 1961,


East German troops began stretching coils of barbed wire across the border


checkpoints between East and West Berlin, inhibiting free transit between


the two sectors as guaranteed under the Four-Power Pact that governed the


city. Within days the wire was replaced by 28 miles of compressed


rubble, “and now the historic Berlin Wall became a hideous symbol of the


economic and political schism in Germany.”(Cate, preface)


For 28 years the Berlin Wall kept people


in, and kept people out. It separated friend and family. It


divided a nat

ion, a continent, a world. The story of seventeen-year-old


Ursula Heinemann who “still had not recovered from the shock of being separated


from her mother. Although she was certain that she had done the right


thing in escaping to the West, she was nagged by a sense of guilt.”(Cate,(1978),


p.3) Many people saw the Wall as “grim and forbidding, the Wall snakes


the city of Berlin like the backdrop to a nightmare.”(Gelb, p.3)


After the Wall came down, East German teachers had to plan new curricula


more in line with the schools in the West. “For now, the opportunities


were less notable than the problems. Thousands of East German emigrants


were already sleeping in West German army barracks, nursing homes, high-school


gymnasiums, and even converted cargo containers.”(Anderson,(1989), p.33)


The first cracks came in May, when the


Hungarian government opened its border with Austria. East German


officials were furious because this meant that East German refugees now


had a new route to freedom. Up to 2 million of East Germany’s 16.5


million were ready to flee if the chance was offered. As reform spread


across Eastern Europe, the Stalinist regime of Erich Honecker refused to


budge. In January, Honecker said the Wall would stand for a hundred


years. When Soviet leader Gorbachev visited East Berlin he tried


to convince Honecker to accept liberalization, Honecker still stood strong


to his beliefs. Demonstrations erupted throughout Germany, with thousands


taking to the streets demanding a share of Gorbachev’s restructuring, and


the right to travel. Violent police attacks on demonstrators only


fueled the people’s anger and brought hundreds of thousands more into the


streets. Czechoslovakia opened its border for East Germans traveling


to the West, and 30,000 refugees emigrated in 48 hours. On November


7, the entire East German cabinet resigned, on the 8th, the Communist Party


Politburo and Central Committee resigned. And on the 9th the Wall


came down at the stoke of midnight. When the news of the Wall reached


the West German parliament, “the legislators spontaneously burst into patriotic


song.”(Bornstein,(1990),p.23) “Exhausted by weeks of political stress


in which decades-old policies were reversed daily, overwhelmed by the mobs


demanding immediate exit, and noticing Western television crews waiting


on the other side, the commanding officers gave way to the masses and opened


all the gates.”(Borneman,(1991), p.2)


“Economic union has powerful implications


both inside and outside Germany. Rebuilding the East German derelict


economy will tie up perhaps $650 billion West German capitol, raising interest


rates and very possibly fueling inflation throughout European Community.”(Garrard,(1990),


p.23) On Sunday, 18 March 1990, East Germans held the first free


election on their territory since 1933-”the first fully free election in


Eastern Europe since the Second World War.”(Borneman, p.229)


The wall opened because its reason


for existence had disappeared. The East German regime erected it


in 1961 to stem the flow of refugees to the West. In a paradox of


history, the same government was forced to open the Wall in a desperate,


last-ditch effort to stop an even more massive wave of deflections in 1989.


References


Borneman, John (1991). After


the Wall. U.S.: Basic Books, Inc.


Cate, Curtis (1978). The


Ides of August. New York: M. Evans & Company, Inc.


Galante, Pierre (1965). The


Berlin Wall. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc.


Gelb, Norman (1986). The


Berlin Wall. New York: Times Books.


Bornstein, Jerry (1990).


The Wall Came Tumbling Down.


New York: Outlet Book


Company, Inc.


Heaps, W.A. (1964). The Wall


of Shame. New York: Meredith Press.


Niewyk, D.L. (1995). Groliers


Multimedia Encyclopedia.


Garrard, Margaret (1989).


Facing Up to the German Question Newsweek, pp. 51-52


Anderson, Harry (1989). A


Mixed Blessing for Bonn Newsweek, pp. 33-34

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