1. The documentary Brave New World discusses East German justification for the building of the Berlin Wall. Compare and contrast the description in the documentary to the primary document “1962 Brochure Defending the Berlin Wall.”

The brief understanding people could learn from the documentary is that the life in East Berlin was pretty hard. As in the early years, the east section of Berlin was under Stalin’s control. It turns out that currently East Berlin was governed under communist. The primary document “1962 Brochure Defending the Berlin Wall” is more like a self-defense from the German Democratic Republic. By answering ten questions, it gives us a view about how German Democratic Republic was seeing their action, which was built up the Berlin Wall.

After the Berlin Airlift, two different parties were formed. They were the German Federal Republic, represented the western allies, which was better known as the West Germany; and the German Democratic Republic, which was the response given by Soviet Union, better known as the East Germany. While the West Berlin always has better living condition and much more freedom, people from East Berlin were trying to escape all the time. These people, who escaped from East Berlin, were highly qualified workers which worth nothing to West Berlin but were very important to East Berlin. As this population flow happened all the time, German Democratic Republic decided to take an action. At the summer of 1961, German Democratic Republic decided to shut off the border between West and East Berlin. They were trying to prevent people escape from East Berlin to West Berlin. This action highly surprised people from West. They called the Berlin Wall as “The Wall of Shame”. People from the east side have different understanding. They saw the Berlin Wall as “The anti-fascist protection barrier”.

The escaping has never stopped. An interview given from Anita Möller, a lady lived in East Berlin, gives us a picture of how it looks like. As she described, the live in East Berlin was totally intolerable. “My life was so restricted. So much was forbidden” as she says. She with her family planned to escape. In their expression, it was an escape from hell to “Golden West”. After the Berlin Wall was established, Anita’s brother, who was already living in West Berlin, planned to get her out. In order to avoid the guards around the Berlin Wall, he dug a tunnel right under the wall. He finally made it.

The statement wrote in “1962 Brochure Defending the Berlin Wall” gives us a different view about Berlin Wall. In German Democratic Republic’s view, “the wall is the state frontier of the German Democratic Republic.” It claims that this frontier deserved more respect from others. It’s more like a threatening when it states “He who does not treat it with respect cannot complain if he comes to harm.” It also states that the Berlin Wall is not the real wall stands between West and East. The real wall “…was erected because of the fateful Bonn NATO policy.”

According to the Brochure, the West Berlin Senate and Bonn government should take the responsibility of the establishing of the Berlin Wall. It states that the German Democratic Republic has sent hundreds of proposals concerning about renunciation of atomic armament, but is comes out with no positive responses. In its sense, “The wall had to come because they were bringing about the danger of a conflict.”

When it comes to the question “Who is walled in?” it disagrees with the West Berlin Senate’s saying of “… we have walled ourselves in and are living in a concentration camp.” In its opinion, the gentlemen from West Berlin was so excited because “… their espionage centres, their revanchist radio stations, their fascist solders’ associations, their youth poisoners, and their currency racketeers have been walled in.”

In conclusion, the Berlin Wall is remaining as a very debatable argument. In one aspect, with the establishing of the wall, people who lived in the east side suffered from bad living condition. They even cannot meet with their families who lived in the other side. In another aspect, the Berlin Wall did not aggravate the severe situation at that time since it gave the authorities with different political background a cool off time to work out a more reasonable method to ease the intense relationship between West and East.