This Week in History

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CWA # 1452, 23 August 2024
This Week in History
13 August 1961: East Germany begins the construction of the Berlin Wall

  Ronakk Tijoriwala

On 13 August 1961, the Communist Party of the German Democratic Republic, Eastern Germany announced building a 100-mile-long barbed wire wall dividing the city of Berlin into two factions. 

The post-war period 1945-1961 is reckoned as one of the most troubled eras in Germany’s history and signified radical transformation that led to the building of the Berlin Wall. The Wall construction not only affected the people of Berlin but even classified the whole of Germany and the entirety of the world into ‘the east’ and ‘the west`. It was in this period that the important foreign partnerships such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union intended at preserving peace and order in a world that was fast polarizing were initiated. 

Towards the Wall (1945- 1949)
Beginning of the division of Germany can be dated back to the end of the Second World War in the year 1945. The Allied force conferences at Yalta and Potsdam determined the fate of German territories. They split the defeated nation into four “allied occupation zones”: The eastern part of the country went to the Soviet Union, while the western part went to the United States, Great Britain and France. Berlin, the capital, was divided in the same way though it was located wholly in the Soviet sphere of influence. This division was considered as a temporary measure but for technological advancements in armaments, security issues with it and the ideological differences between the western allied and Soviets the division became more or less permanent. 

Western zones, the pursuers of the democratic paradigm, start reconstructing Germany into a capitalist democracy giving way to the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in 1949. On the other hand, the Soviet controlled zone was known as the German Democratic Republic or East Germany, which was a socialist country being a part of the Eastern Bloc. The division of Germany became the focus of Cold War rivalries and the city of Berlin, an ‘island’ of freedom surrounded by East Germany, particularly so.

The Construction and after
Tensions between East and West Germany rose during the course of the fifties. Socio-economically the two Germans were poles apart; the first(West) ranked economically far higher than second(East). The Marshall Plan, 1948 and the adoptions of free-market economy provided West Germany economic prosperity and increased standards of living and labelled as ‘Economic Miracle’. At the same time the citizens of East Germany waited in long lines to buy daily necessities, goods they could get in their centrally planned economy which was most unsatisfactory. 

Consequently, many millions of East Germans defected to West, a mass exodus, many of them crossing through Berlin. Emigration of educated people who were the pillars of each country’s economy was a major loss and embarrassment for the GDR and the Soviet Union. Thus, by the early 1960, on the orders of Nikita Khrushchev, the decision of constructing a permanent deterrent against further brain drain was taken.  East Germany had all but collapsed and that is why the Soviet leadership had to intervene. 

Since the night of August 13, 1961, East German soldiers began building a barrier that, with time, developed into the Berlin Wall. Families were separated in a single night; interconnected Berlin was split into two hostile communities. The Wall had evolved into the greatest symbol of the Cold War becoming the concrete version of the dividing Iron Curtain in Europe. 

The Berlin Wall affected the German people deeply it alienated families, and people got up one morning to find their relatives on another side of the wall among the enemy. Many citizens of East Germany tried to cross the wall and emigrate to the West; many perished in the process. The Wall for the people of East Berlin was an everyday living portrayal of the fact that they indeed lived in a country that deprived them of their freedoms as they democratically elected the GDR a socialist/communist regime. To the residents of West Berlin the concrete represented their freedom but they were always in a state of alert for the Soviets.

The Wall’s construction also ensured that Germany was divided into two different nations, and only in 1989, was the Wall broken down. All the while West Germany progressively grew strong, East Germany lived in relative poverty and isolation. Influence on mental state of East and West German separated by Wall was significant and caused hatred and animosity that can still be seen in the population after many years. 

The Berlin Wall and International alliances
The construction of the Berlin Wall added that there was a need to forge stronger leagues that could help prevent the spread of communism and protect the free world nations. NATO was formerly formed in 1949 to take control in the defence of Western Europe and also assumed the responsibility of defending West Germany. Thus, the Wall’s erection underlined the role of NATO as the bulwark against the Soviet aggression and the guardian of the western civilisation. 

Likewise, the forerunner of the European Union – the European Economic Community (EEC), established in 1957, became important for the development of economic cooperation and integration of the Western European countries. The division of Germany therefore gave further reasons for a union Europe to avoid further repetitions and to also equally wet the balance of power or the Eastern Bloc. 

The years between 1945 and 1961 may be considered as the key ones in the formation of the post-war Germany and the world. The formation of the Berlin Wall brought out the climax of the Cold war, bringing out the clear divisions between the East and the West. As is evident, the Wall influenced the lives of the German population in the ultimate way of re-establishing the division of East and West Germany for nearly three decades. Furthermore, the dynamics that culminated in the erection of the Berlin wall only proved that the ideas of cooperation in the form of NATO/ EU were crucial in ensuring world peace, security and cooperation in a world that was divided into two.

About the author
Ronakk Tijoriwala is a postgraduate student of Politics and International Relations at the Department of Social Sciences, Pandit Deendayal Energy University, Gujarat.


 

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