Berlin

=Berlin: Amani=

media type="youtube" key="s5JdY8ENfVg" height="349" width="425" This video is a short documentary about the history of the Berlin Wall.

The Berlin wall represented division; it all started after War World War II when the allies of American, France, Great Britian, and the Soviet Union were not getting along. As tensions increased between the SovietUnion and the other three nations the decision was made to divide Berlin into four sections among them. Eventually, in 1949, the whole country of Germany was divided into two sections. The Soviet Union established a communist state in East Germany while America, France, and Great Britian maintained a free state in West Germany.

Due to lack of development in East Germany, alot of East Germans massively fled to West Germany. Since Berlin was in East Germay it was easy for East Germans to flee to the section of Berlin held by West Germany and become free citizens. In order to prevent the emigration of East Germans ino West Germany; the communist East Germany decided to close the border between West Germany and East Berlin.

On August 31, 1961 the border between West Germany and East Berlin is closed a blockade known as the Berlin Wall. It took twenty-four hours to build and was a massive wall made of concrete slabs that was reinforced with concrete pipingto prevent poetential climbers from getting a hold of it. The wall stood twelve feet high and zigzagged its way around the island of West Berlin for twenty-nine years. The east side of the wall was flanked by a "death-strip" which was an area twenty to thirty meters wide with barbed wire, watch dogs, watch towers and flood lights. There was also another small wall that separated the no man's land from the East Berlin city area. In order to create this death-strip they tore down a row of houses on Baneur street which was an East German street and the East Germans were jumping out of their apartment windows into West Germany to flee to safety. Lastly, the death-stripwas raked daily so peoples' foot-prints were immediately obvious if they tried to escape.

The wall underwent several renovations while it stood and the last was in 1980 which bought the total number of watchtowers to 302. It included eight border crossings but they were intended for official traffic only. Seven boarder crossings were enabled for different categories of visitors. West Berliners, West Germans, foreigners, and diplomats were allowed to cross into East Germany, but only pensioners and those few with special permission were allowed to enter West Germany.

The East German Government resigned on November 4, 1989 and on this date thousands of East Germans past through and East and West Germans began tearing down the wall. The Berlin Wall was a symbol of the Cold War and at Chekpoint Charlie you can still purchase pieces of the wall and various other symbols of the Cold war.

media type="youtube" key="KvbsscBQVf4" height="349" width="425" align="left"

This is a video depicting the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Works Cited:
“TheBerlinWall Tour”.Berlinon Bike. 

Lorcher, Trent. “Facts About the Rise and Fall of TheBerlinWall”. Brighthub. Ed. Laurie Patsalides. 23 May 2011. 

The videos above were taken from youtube.

The first resource was used for a lot of the information above. It also features numerous pictures and is a great website to go to if you want to have an inside look at the Berlin Wall. The second resource contains a lot of facts. It gives great information about the history before and after theBerlinwall. Youtube was also an important resource. If you search the Berlin Wall you will find a lot interesting videos and documentaries.