The Berlin Wall Biggest Symbol of

Ideological Divide

INTRODUCTION
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic
Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin
from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin.
The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls
,which circumscribed a wide area that contained anti-vehicle trenches,
"fakir beds" and other defenses.
The Berlin Wall was both the physical division between West Berlin and
East Germany from 1961 to 1989 and the symbolic boundary between
democracy and Communism during the Cold War.
The Berlin Wall was erected in the dead of night and for 28 years kept
East Germans from fleeing to the West.

Its destruction, which was nearly as instantaneous as its creation, was

celebrated around the world.

WHY IT WAS BUILT?

After the 2nd world war, Germany was seperated into
an eastern (GDR) and a western (BRD) country, which
also included a separation of Berlin according to the
divisions (West Berlin as british, french and american
East Berlin as the russian sector).
So the socialistic regime in the east wanted to
protect its national border from the capitalistic
influence from West Berlin by building this Wall as an
anti-fascistic barricade.

DIVISON
At the end of World War II, the Allied powers divided conquered Germany
into four zones, each occupied by either the United States, Great Britain,
France, or the Soviet Union .
The same was done with Germany's capital city, Berlin.
As the relationship between the Soviet Union and the other three Allied
powers quickly disintegrated, the cooperative atmosphere of the
occupation of Germany turned competitive and aggressive.
In 1949, this new organization of Germany became official when the
three zones occupied by the United States, Great Britain, and France
combined to form West Germany.
The zone occupied by the Soviet Union quickly followed by forming East
Germany.
This same division into West and East occurred in Berlin.

SIZE OF THE WALL

The Berlin Wall stretched over a hundred miles. It ran not only through the center of
Berlin, but also wrapped around West Berlin, entirely cutting West Berlin off from the
rest of East Germany.
The wall itself went through four major transformations during its 28-year history.
The Berlin Wall started out as a barbed-wire fence with concrete posts, but just a few
days after the first fence was placed, it was quickly replaced with a sturdier, more
permanent structure made out of concrete blocks, topped with barbed wire.
The first two versions of the wall were replaced by the hird version of the Berlin Wall in
1965.
This version consisted of a concrete wall, supported by steel girders.
The fourth version of the Berlin Wall, constructed from 1975 to 1980, was the most
complicated and thorough.
It consisted of concrete slabs reaching nearly 12-feet high (3.6 m) and 4-feet wide (1.2
m), plus it had a smooth pipe running across the top to hinder people from scaling the
Wall.

THE FALLL
The fall of the Berlin Wall happened nearly as suddenly as its rise.

There had been signs that the Communist bloc was weakening, but the East German Communist
leaders insisted that East Germany just needed a moderate change rather than a drastic revolution.
East German citizens did not agree.

As Communism began to falter in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia in 1988 and 1989, new
exodus points were opened to East Germans who wanted to flee to the West.

Then suddenly, on the evening of November 9, 1989, an announcement made by East German
government official Gnter Schabowski stated, "Permanent relocations can be done through all
border checkpoints between the GDR (East Germany) into the FRG (West Germany) or West Berlin.

People were in shock. Were the borders really open? East Germans tentatively approached the
border and indeed found that the border guards were letting people cross.

Very quickly, the Berlin Wall was inundated with people from both sides. Some began chipping at
the Berlin Wall with hammers and chisels.

The Berlin Wall was eventually chipped away, into smaller pieces .
After the Berlin Wall came down, East and West Germany reunified into a single German state on
October 3, 1990.

REFERENCES
http://history1900s.about.com/od/coldwa1/a/berlinwall_2.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall#The_Fall
http://www.pointsandtravel.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/P1090811.jpghttp://
jdayhistory.weebly.com/uploads/8/9/5/0/8950306/7866369_orig.jpg
http://mytravelphotos.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Berlin-Wall-Pictures-1-3.jpg
http://berlintravel.wordpress.com/2008/11/14/the-berlin-wall-a-summary/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Berlin
http://
www.lacasapark.com/la/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/berlin-wall-1024x798.jpg

THANK
YOU