The divided Germany after WW2
With the end of WW2, Germany was divided up into zones of occupation by the Allied powers of America, Britain, France and Russia. The central division between 'East and West' was in the city of Berlin.
The early barricade between East and West Berlin
Berlin at the end of the war was a badly damaged city, acting as a conduit of displaced persons who had been caught up in the Third Reich's war machine. With the Soviets controlling the Eastern German territory, Germans in that zone felt like prisoners.
The ravaged city
The conditions in the divided city were not good in the immediate years after WW2 and as such it started a drain of people towards the Western sector, where conditions were better.
The Berlin Airlift of 1948-9
In 1948 as relations between the West and the Soviets deteriorated, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered the blockade of West Berlin, which although under Allied occupation was some way behind the Allied lines.
The response was to fly in supplies to the Berlin people. Stalin likely thought this would not be successful, but the campaign was. When the media got hold of a story of a US Aircrew who dropped confectionary on handkerchief parachutes as they approached Templehof airport, the Soviets had lost the upper hand.
The zone was opened up to road traffic again in 1949, this marked the Soviet's loss of the Cold War. The public relations effort of the candy airmen had been instrumental. It was quite ironic that many of the pilots who flew in supplies to save the people of Berlin had only a few years earlier flown in to bomb the city during WW2.
The famous escaping DDR soldier
The people in the East German sector became involved in a protest in 1953 which led to the Soviets putting tanks on the streets, the East Germans wanted as part of their aims the reunification of the German nation, even though the Soviet leader Stalin died in this year, things did not change with regard to joining the nation back together.
Buildings close to the wire border offered routes of escape
So, with the border in Berlin being more forcefully guarded by the Eastern Bloc forces, other means of escape to the Western sector had to be found. Buildings close to the border offered some opportunities until they were bricked up, tunnels were dug and often found.
In 1962 a wall was built to divide the city of Berlin
In 1962, a wall was built to divide the city by means of a more permanent and divisive barrier than had been the case before. The vastly different lower standard of living and the oppressive control experience of the East German sector led people to seek a better life in the West.
With the wall there was little room for escape
From my friends in the former East Germany, they have told me about the nature of how their lives and as a people they were controlled and kept back, by the Soviet machine. This is a matter of record you can find anywhere on paper and personally from people who lived in the era. Some of the German people in control in the Eastern sector became in many cases quite fanatical about the communist state, which is very surprising.
Dresden, post war,
many examples of damaged buildings still existed into the 1960's and beyond
After many years, the people of the divided Germany had had enough of Soviet control. Previous uprisings in Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 had been crushed by Soviet military intervention against the civilians who wanted change.
All that remains of the old division -
Some small sections of wall remain as memorials
In 1989 the Soviet Union started a process of disintegration and the reunification of Germany did occur as a result of the civilian population taking matters into their own hands, literally and pulling down the wall.
The East German control, under the spotlight of the world media did not fire a shot, as might have occurred in previous decades.
Modern flats in West Berlin
Rather than any problems a unified Germany was feared to present, the reverse has happened, the nation has grown in prosperity, it hasn't started any aggressive actions against any other nations and the people of the Eastern sector have been released from the doomed political Communist system.
The Berlin wall only showed how much of a failure the political policies used to shackle the East German sector really were. The sector was held back and made dependent on their Soviet masters for many things. Ultimately this policy of total control failed, but the price of this experiment was great.
There may have been near full employment in the communist territories but it was largely state funded and jobs created for the sake of work not necessarily to advance the country.
The wall in Berlin divided the city but in the end it was emblematic as a symbol of failure that the people had to be restrained behind it, rather than be given freedom to move as they desired.
The European Communist ideology has shown itself to be a failure that hobbles people and ultimately the country it presides over. Probably why most countries in the formerly occupied region have thrown off this mindset and embraced free market economies.
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