Introduction


Guards standing at the Berlin Wall (Photograph by C. Rimmer. Reproduced by permission of the Corbis Corporation).
The Berlin Wall—a complex system of walls, trenches, and watchtowers that ran around and through the city—was one of the chief images that came to symbolize the Cold War. After World War II, the city of Berlin was divided. West Berlin, which remained free as a part of West Germany, had a much stronger economy than East Berlin, which like the rest of East Germany had a Soviet-style, state-controlled economy. West Berlin’s prosperity attracted many East Germans to cross over to the other side of the city. This population drain infuriated the East German government. With the approval of Joseph Stalin and the Kremlin, the East German leaders decided to construct a wall to control traffic leaving East Berlin.

Essential Facts

  1. The Berlin Wall stood for 28 years. Its construction began in 1961, and it was eventually dismantled in 1989. The order for the building of the wall came because over two and a half million people escaped to West Berlin between 1949 and 1960.
  2. There were actually four generations of the Berlin Wall built between 1961 and 1980. The fourth-generation wall consisted of 12-foot-tall concrete segments and included vehicle trenches and 302 watchtowers.
  3. There were eight border crossings in the Wall. The most famous was “Checkpoint Charlie,” which was used by Allied personnel and non-Germans.
  4. Over 5,000 people successfully escaped from East to West Berlin during the lifetime of the Wall. Approximately 200 people were killed trying to escape, and another 200 were shot but not killed.
  5. Opposition to the existence of the Berlin Wall was declared by two U.S. presidents. When John F. Kennedy visited the Wall in 1963, he said that all men who loved freedom would be proud to proclaim “Ich bin ein Berliner [I am a Berliner].” In 1987, Ronald Reagan made a trip to Berlin and challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!”