History would not be the same without the Berlin Wall. Not since the dividing lines of the apartheid state of South Africa have we had such a clear defining mark as the Berlin Wall, which divided East and West in what was then known as the cold war. Was the Berlin Wall part of what war? But we can look into detail at the historical context.
The Cold War
The Cold War in which the Berlin Wall was a part required that we first understand the war as a whole. And the Cold War was the period after World War II when Soviet Union and USA were in intense geopolitical tension against each other and it kept on for about 45 years, i.e. 1947 to 1991. Direct military confrontation between the two superpowers was never seen, but the tensions of that period created the world as we know it.
The Division of Germany
After World War II, Germany was divided into four zones controlled by the victorious Allies: (Soviet Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) The two later portions the western portion corresponding to the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the eastern portion (the later Soviet Union controlled German Democratic Republic (East Germany)). The division was also a microcosm for the larger Cold War separation of the democratic Western Bloc and the communist Eastern Bloc.
Berlin Wall Construction
In the late 1950s and early 1960s a great number of East Germans fled Berlin to West Germany, in search of political freedom and economic opportunities. About this time, the government of East Germany was frustrated by mass exodus and decided to take drastic measures. Instead, they built a physical barrier, which became later known as the Berlin Wall, on August 13 1961 to prevent similar migration. This was a political and economical move taken by the regime after the communist lost the political and economical challenges in order to stop draining the skilled workers.
Escalation of the Cold War
This construction between Eastern Bloc and Western Bloc tensions heightened. It showed Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe and separate democratic West powers. It became a Cold War symbol, and it was of the struggle between communism and capitalism.
The Fall of the Berlin Wall
That stark-looking divided city and wider conflict had a reminder for almost three decades in the form of the Berlin Wall still standing. Yet in 1989 the political landscape was starting to change. But in East Germany, citizens had peacefully taken to the streets, demanding freedom of movement and political change, where they eventually forced the government to entice them with the promise of the ability to travel freely into the West. The Cold War was to be symbolically patched up on November 9, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall was breached.
In Conclusion
The Berlin Wall had nothing to do with conventional war. It wasn’t an emblematic structure erected during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, but that is what it became. The construction showed the fractures in the political, economic and ideological sphere in the era. At times it’s as if we blink, and suddenly, the Berlin Wall has come down; Germany has reunited; the Cold War is heading to its final conclusion.
