Erick Fimbo
Jan Gane
English 1050-028
November 15, 2013
The Fall of the Berlin Wall
For twenty-eight years, the Berlin Wall separated friends, families, and a nation. Between 1961 and 1989, the Wall was one of the most striking and distinctive features of Berlin. The Berlin Wall was a border security installation built by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) on August 12, 1961. The Wall was to protect the GDR from aggressive acts by the west. In reality, the Wall functioned as a barrier to stem the huge migration of skilled laborers to West Berlin and the entire Western Germany. During the standing of this Wall, the people from East and West Berlin had no interaction with each other, and this brought pains and poverties in both sides of country because they depend on each other’s activities in order to survive. On the night of November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall, the most potent symbol of the Cold War division of Europe, eventually came down, and the fall of this wall was the peak point of the revolutionary changes within the country of Germany and those were involved. According to Ted Kelly article, “Politics, People and the Berlin Crisis: June-August, 1961”. After World War II in 1945, the Allies, who won the war, divided the country of Germany into four sections, each under the control of an ally. The countries who made up the Ally control were the United States, Great Britain, France, and Russia. The United States, British, and French sectors combined to form a democratic state known as The Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), and also known as West Germany. The Soviet Sector became a communist state known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR) on October 7, 1949, and also known as East Germany (2). Kelly went on to mention that the people of East Germany became dissatisfied with the economic and political conditions of the German Democratic Republic. Private trade was banned, so was the ownership of private land. People were forced to work on collective state owned farms. Kelly said, “In the span of sixteen years, from the conclusion of World War II to 1961, a total of four million refugees fled the German Democratic Republican for the West” (1). This obviously became a huge problem and upset the East German government and the Soviet countries. With so many East Germany’s citizens leaving this part of the country and moving to the West in the very short time, it forced the leaders of both sides of the country to seek the main cause of such issue.
According to John Keller, “many GDR citizens decamped because they either feared for their lives or despised the brutal repression which their experienced under the despotic rule of Walter Ulbricht” (qtd. in Kelly 1). Keller then states that during Ulbricht’s dynasty, “sixteen million citizens of East Germany were denied the rights, integral to any democratic republic such as West Germany, of free elections and free speech” (1). For some East Germans, political pressure was only a secondary reason for wanting to leave the Soviets zone (GDR). According to Kelly, “in the Spring of 1960” the GDR government had taken over the farms that were owned by the citizens and they “converted them into agricultural production cooperation” and GDR government made the owners “to work as wage laborers (1). Kelly also indicated that “the lack of thorough and unbiased educational opportunities for their children had clinched it” (1). The bad treatments from the east government regarding education systems, work opportunities, health care, and living conditions were the main reasons that brought frustration to the citizens and caused them to headed west where better life and people rights were significantly valued.
In the beginning of June 1961, Kelly states that “Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev presented his requests for the future of East Germany and West Berlin to President Kennedy” (2). Kelly then said, Khrushchev “demanded a meeting between the four occupying powers convene in order to sign a peace treaty with East and West Germany which would defuse tensions between these two countries, and between the superpowers” (2). According to Kelly, President John F. Kennedy being a new leader of one of the superpowers countries “eager to prove” how powerful he is to the Americans and the Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev as “a strong, steadfast leader who would stand firm for Allied interests in Berlin,” President Kennedy refused to come to an agreement with Khrushchev’s conditions (2). Kelly added that “Kennedy’s Bullheadedness spurred on angry threats from Khrushchev who exclaimed that United States was crazy if it wanted to chance a war with the Soviet Union over Berlin” (2). The deal of going to the war with East Germany in which nuclear bombs were the focused of the war “worried Kennedy” concerning the innocent citizens of both countries. Therefore, the President admitted that “it would be a grave moral lapse to risk the lives of millions of Americans simply to preserve Allied access rights in West Berlin” (2). Kelly confirmed that later on United States understood the severe of the circumstances and it was better for it to “take a softer stance” and considered the “weight of Soviet threats” (2).
According to Kelly, the constant migration of thousands East Berliners to West Berlin became a huge problem to the Soviet government. There were significant shortage of skilled laborers and citizens in order to keep the economics running (4). He also pointed out that when United States failed to come to an agreement with the Soviet Union, this also brought another frustration to the Soviet government (4). Khrushchev reasserted his rights to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany noting that “the Western Allies, at the end of World War II, had concluded peace treaties with all other Axis countries, yet had failed to do so with Germany” (3). Unfortunately this had led to a disaster within Germany as a whole, according to Kelly’s report.
In his book, Germany, the Wall and Berlin, John Keller addressed how the Wall finally came to existence:
On the night of 12/13 August 1961, 16-million Germans in the Soviet Zone and in East Berlin vanished completely behind the Iron Curtain and were cast into the blackest tyranny. As East Germans military vehicles rolled into East Berlin, the city’s population was fast asleep, anticipating the worst but not expecting alarm clocks to stir them from dreams into a very real and decided nightmare. It was on this night that the construction of the Berlin Wall began. (qtd. in Kelly 6)
According to Kelly, “on the morning of August 13th, the vast majority of Berliners were utterly shocked by the appearance of the barrier” and they could not believe that the Soviet Communist had closed the border (6). In the article, “The Wall, 1958-1963”, the article states that throughout the standing of the Wall just close to three decades, there were violent acts and major conflicts between the guards and East and West Berliners. Plethora of citizens of both sides of the city was either injured badly or was killed in the result of trying to cross the barrier (7). In the meanwhile, the article states that the leaders of both Soviet Union and The Allies could not seem to come with an agreement that would satisfy both sides (7). It became clear that the unification of both Berlins would not be anytime soon when President Kennedy gave a speech, spoken only about defending West Berlin not the whole city (6). According to the article, Kennedy said, “I can hold the Western alliance together to defend West Berlin, but I cannot act to keep East Berlin open” (The Wall, 1958-1963 6). The article concludes that both sides realized that the situation had got of hand. Therefore, “Both sides had decided that the dispute over Berlin was an issue of principle at the heart of their Cold War stance, and this threatened the world with nuclear holocaust” (9). In the article, “Berlin: legacies of division and problems of unification” Christof Ellger stated that “Checkpoint Charley was the main crossing point used for the American sector of West Berlin to East Berlin” (2). Ellger addressed that near Checkpoint Charley “on August 17, 1962, a man by the name of Peter Fechter”, one of the many civilians who got killed for the search of better life on the other side, was shot and killed because he tried to climb over the wall. He was left to bleed to death by the border patrol (3). According to Ellger, because of this “incident riots broke out in West Berlin”, the residents of West Berlin began to hate the Americans for failing to help Fechter as he died. This caused President John F, Kennedy to visit Berlin to convince East Germany and the “USSR (Soviet Union) to tear down the wall” (4). Ellger also mentions that the end of the German Democratic Republic was beginning when Hungary, also a communist state, “opened its doors to the West”. This allowed East Germans to move about between Hungary and East Germany because migration between communist states was unrestricted. “From Hungary, the East Germans would then go to West Germany” (4).
According to Serge Schmemann article, “A Fateful Day, and the East Tasted Freedom”, In the year 1989, there were dramatic events such as “a massive flight of inhabitants of the GDR through Hungary heading West Berlin”, and this did not set well with both the Soviets and the Allies. Schmemann states that after weeks of discussion about a new travel law, the leaders of East Berlin decided the Wall must come down in order to cease the Cold War (3). On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall, the visible symbol of the Cold War division of Europe, finally vanished. That moment alone, it changed everything around the world, especially in the country of Germany. According to Schmemann, “There was nothing through most of that gray, chilly Thursday to suggest that it would come to symbolize one of the great transitions of the 20th century, the triumphant end of a failed system” (1). Schmemann continues on to say that “It was so fine a moment, and one that two decades later occupies so sacred a place in the history of a tragic century, that it takes an effort today to recall how spontaneous and unexpected the breach really was” (3). He then concludes that the fall of the Wall was a great victory for the world as a whole, but even greater victory for the country of Germany “in the sense that…freedoms and prosperity became so incomparably more attractive than the Big Brother and drabness of the Soviet bloc that Communist leaders simply could no longer sustain or enforce the myth of socialist superiority” (3).
According to Alison Smale article, “Chasing the Story on a Night That Changed All”, as a reporter, Smale finds herself in the mist of East Germans during a televised news conference when a Communist party leader, Gunter Schabowski announced the open of the Wall for all (1). Smale states that within minutes, “I was racing with a colleague and the East German state news agency’s speedily produced report on the news conference to a subway station in the city center” (1). Smale then mentions that she and a colleague quickly spread the word of the beginning of the unification between East and West Berlin. Some people “were ecstatic, others skeptical”, asking to see the evidence because they did not believed this moment would ever come (1). Smale then concludes that hundreds of East Berliners who had “enough faith” rushed straight to the wall to witness history with their eyes and “see if they could cross this forbidding structure” (1). According to Smale, friends and strangers hugged and screamed for the moment that they would never ever forget. Bars were open, serving free beer and Champagne celebrating the freedom, and some individuals “Recalling the spontaneous joy of unexpected liberation” (3).
According to Schmemann article, after the unification of Germany, it was the symbol of the collapse of Communist rule. Schmemann states that “The wall burst open simply because there was nothing left to prop it up” (4). Gunter Schabowski, a Communist party leader, during a news conference he responded to a question by saying that “the Wall finally came down for the same reason it had gone up 28 years earlier-to dissuade East Germans from fleeing to freedom” (4). Schmemann concludes that “To have been at these places, to have been at the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, is to have known a moment when all the calculations of power and politics are overwhelmed by a single-minded quest” (5).

Works Cited
Ellger, Christof. “Berlin: legacies of division and problems of unification.” The Geographical journal. 158.1 (1992): 40-46. Print.
Kelly, Ted. “Politics, People and the Berlin Crisis: June-August, 1961.” History.UCSB.edu. University of California at Santa Barbara, March 1999. Web. October 30, 2013.
Schmemann, Serge. “A Fateful Day, and the East tasted Freedom.” Nytimes.com. New York lTimes, November 2009. Web. October 23, 2013.
Smale, Alison. “Chasing the story on a Night That Changed All.” Nytimes.com. New York Times, November 2009. Web. October 23, 2013.
“Wall, 1958-1963.” Stmartin.edu. Saint Martin University, January 2001. Web. October 30, 2013.