Berlin Wall
                     BERLIN WALL
Introduction
 During the 1950s, the City of Berlin was still divided 
into a Western zone, consisting of the American, 
British and French sectors, and a Soviet zone. Berlin 
constituted a thermometer during every international 
crisis, registering the degree of seriousness of the 
crisis.
Source: www.cvce.eu
Beginning
 On August 13, 1961, the Communist government of 
the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East 
Germany) began to build a barbed wire and concrete 
“Antifascistischer Schutzwall,” or “antifascist 
bulwark,” between East and West Berlin. 
Source: www.history.com
Official purpose 
 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.
Source: www.history.com
The Berlin Wall
 The Berlin Wall stood until November 9, 1989, when 
the head of the East German Communist Party 
announced that citizens of the GDR could cross the 
border whenever they pleased. That night, ecstatic 
crowds swarmed the wall.
Source: www.history.com
The Partitioning 
of Berlin
 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”.
Source: www.history.com
Blockade and Crisis
 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. 
Source: www.history.com
Building the Wall
 Before the wall was built, Berliners on both sides of 
the city could move around fairly freely: They crossed 
the East-West border to work, to shop, to go to the 
theater and the movies. 
 Except under special circumstances, travelers from 
East and West Berlin were rarely allowed across the 
border.
Source: www.history.com
The Berlin Wall: 
1961-1989
 The construction of the Berlin Wall did stop the flood 
of refugees from East to West, and it did defuse the 
crisis over Berlin. 
 Almost two years after the Berlin Wall was erected, 
John F. Kennedy delivered one of the most famous 
addresses of his presidency to a crowd of more than 
120,000 gathered outside West Berlin’s city hall, just 
steps from the Brandenburg Gate.
Source: www.history.com
The Fall of the Wall
 On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw 
across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East 
Berlin’s Communist Party announced a change in his 
city’s relations with the West. 
Source: www.history.com
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