Germany After The World War Ii And The Construction Of The Berlin Wall
By the end of world war II Germany was divided into four zones by the allied powers, it was occupied by the Soviet Union, the United States, France or the Great Britain.Berlin, its capital city was sliced into two.This event was agreed upon the post dam conference.After the war, the relationship between the three allied powers namely; the United States, Great Britain and France was in conflict with the Soviet.
Their cooperation in the war turned into competition and rivalry.This resulted into the division of Germany; the east and the west, democracy and communism.The three zones occupied by the three allies combined and formed West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany.
This event leads to the construction of the Berlin Wall.In the year 1950, many people living in East Germany wanted to get out.They can no longer accept the repressive living conditions in the east; they packed up their bags and headed to West Berlin, hundreds of thousand of them made it across the border.
By the early 60's East Germany was rapidly loosing its population and labor force.With 2.5 million population lost in 1961, East Germany needed to stop the migration to the west.With the support of the Soviet Union, East Germany had been several times attempts to take over West Berlin.Finally East Germany decided to build a wall to prevent the people from crossing the border
The Berlin wall goes up.In the past midnight on the night of August 12-13, 1961, the Berlin wall was erected quickly.East Berliners can no longer pass through the borders.No longer could the approximately 60,000 commuters could pass and head to West Berlin and no longer could families, friends, and lovers could cross the borders and meet each other.The Berlin wall started as a barbed- wire fence with concrete post, after few days the first fence was placed and quickly replaced with a sturdier, there are more structure was made out of concrete blocks and topped with barbed wires.
This was the first and second version of the wall; it was being replaced with the third version made of a concrete wall, supported by steel girders.The fourth version was constructed from 1975 to 1980.It consisted of concrete slabs reaching nearly 12-feet (3.6) and wide (1.2 m) and it has a smooth pipe running across the top to hinder people from scaling the wall.As communism weakens in some parts of Europe in 1988 new exodus were opened to the East.
In the evening of November 1989 government official Gunter Schakowsky stated that permanent relocation can be done between East Germany and West Germany.Very quickly The Berlin wall was inundated with people from east and west, some of them begins to chip the Berlin Wall with hammers and chisels, there were huge celebration among people, hugging, kissing, cheering and crying, and the Berlin wall was eventually chipped away into pieces.These pieces have become collectibles; some are stored in homes and museums.On October 3, the East and the West Germany reunified again into single German state.