The Berlin Wall was a physical barrier built 1961 ( Cold War ) between East and West Germany. The conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union was symbolized by it. But the Berlin Wall falling in 1989 was not a point of no return for the Cold War. We’ll discuss why.

The Cold War: A Brief Overview

The Cold War is the political and ideological war between the United States and the Soviet Union from the end of the World War II until early 1990. The base of this competition was strategic, in which proxy wars and arms races without direct military conflict between the two nations characterized it.

The Berlin Wall: Its significance

The East German government built the Berlin Wall to keep people from escaping to West Berlin by the influence of Western powers, such as the United States. The wall was a concrete segment wall on the one hand and barbed wire and watchtowers on the other hand. The purpose was to prevent a mass exodus of skilled professionals from the East and drain the socialist state economically.

Building of the wall only escalated the border conflict between the USA and the Soviet Union, which caused a stronger conflict during the Cold War. Families and friends were severed and East Germans trapped in their own country.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall — The Reasons

• Economic Pressures: The East German economy was failing, and people were suffering shortages in the most basic necessities. The discontentment continued with the economic struggles and buoyed the ideas of change.
• Social Unrest: The regime was getting more and more repressive and lifting peoples freedom more and more. More protests and demonstrations against the government began.
• Leadership Changes: Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and put into place a policy of reform, called glasnost (openness) and perestroika (distortions), in 1985. The reforms of this sort increased political transparency and economic freedom.
• External Influence: Gorbachev’s introduction of policies, however, had a huge effect on the Soviet Union’s satellite states, including East Germany. And the East German government was putting pressure from its people and from the international community to accommodate a little more freedom.
• The Berlin Wall’s Fall: Aftermath

And one special day was November 9, 1989—the day the Berlin Wall fell. Yet it did not immediately break down all of the tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union.

In the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, negotiations were going on to redrawing the geopolitical map. 1990 was the year of Germany’s reunification, so to speak, and the end of the Cold War was close behind.

In particular, the Role of the Soviet Union’s Collapse.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was of more than just theoretical importance to the end of the Cold War. Gorbachev’s reforms ultimately lead to political instability in this country as the Soviet economy was in decline. States in Eastern Europe began gaining independence marking the end of the Soviet influence in the guise of Soviet Union.

Implications for Global Politics

The end of the Cold War changed the politics of the world. Many Eastern European countries began moving to democracy and market economies and the United States became the sole superpower. This changed international relations and alliances and in fact changed geopolitical balance significantly.

Though the fall of the Berlin Wall was a major event, its importance is really in the change that it represented in the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, the transformation of Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War.

Conclusion

While the fall of the Berlin Wall was a significant date on the timeline of the Cold War, it wasn’t the only occasion that the conflict came to a close. All of which helped lead to the end of the Cold War, were economic pressures, social unrest, leadership changes, and external influences. The Berlin Wall falling was a signal of the changing tides and initiated an array of political and social changes which culminated in the dissolution of the Soviet Union and of the end of the Cold war era.