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—— ON THIS DAY ——
AUGUST 13, 1961
Berlin, Germany
65 years ago
The Berlin Wall, the barrier East Germany began erecting on August 13, 1961, to seal off West Berlin, which became the defining symbol of the Cold War division of Europe.
In the early hours of Sunday, August 13, 1961, while most of Berlin slept, East German soldiers, police, and workers began sealing off the border between East and West Berlin. They strung barbed wire, tore up roads, and blocked rail lines, cutting the city in two overnight. Berliners awoke to find the boundary between the Soviet-controlled east and the Western-controlled west suddenly and physically closed. Within days the barbed wire would begin to be replaced by concrete, and the Berlin Wall was born.
The Wall was built to solve an embarrassing and destabilizing problem for East Germany. Since the end of the Second World War, millions of East Germans, many of them young and skilled, had fled to the West through the open border in Berlin, draining the country of its workforce and exposing the failure of its system. Only weeks earlier, the East German leader had publicly declared that no one intended to build a wall. He was not telling the truth.
—— MARQUEE EVENT ——
Checkpoint Charlie, the best-known crossing point between East and West Berlin, where American and Soviet tanks once faced off and which became a symbol of the divided city.
The human cost was immediate and cruel. Families, friends, and coworkers who happened to live on opposite sides of the line were separated without warning, some for decades. People who worked in one half of the city and lived in the other were cut off from their jobs. Over the years the barrier grew into an elaborate system of walls, watchtowers, minefields, and a guarded strip known as the death strip, patrolled by guards with orders to shoot those who tried to cross.
Despite the danger, people attempted to escape throughout the Wall's existence, tunneling beneath it, flying over it, and running the gauntlet of its defenses. Many succeeded; many were caught, and roughly one hundred forty people or more died trying to cross. The Wall became the physical embodiment of what Winston Churchill had called the Iron Curtain, the starkest possible image of a continent and an ideology divided.
For twenty-eight years the Berlin Wall stood as the defining symbol of the Cold War. It became a stage for confrontation, including a tense standoff of American and Soviet tanks at Checkpoint Charlie, and for defiance, including Ronald Reagan's demand that the Soviet leader tear it down. When it finally fell on the night of November 9, 1989, as the Eastern bloc collapsed, crowds swarmed it with hammers and picks, and the image of Berliners dancing atop the Wall announced the end of the divided Europe it had come to represent.
—— WHY THIS MATTERS ——
The Wall became the defining physical symbol of the Cold War. No image captured the division of the world into East and West more starkly than a city cut in two by concrete and barbed wire. For a generation, the Berlin Wall was the Iron Curtain made visible.
It inflicted a lasting human cost on ordinary people. Families and friends were separated overnight, some for decades, and roughly one hundred forty people died trying to cross. The Wall turned an abstract ideological conflict into a daily reality of loss for the people of Berlin.
Its fall marked the end of the divided Europe. When the Wall came down in 1989, it signaled the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the end of the Cold War order. The barrier that had symbolized division became, in its destruction, the symbol of reunification and the end of an era.
—— THE TAKEAWAY ——
In the early hours of August 13, 1961, East Germany sealed off West Berlin with barbed wire, cutting a city in two overnight to stop its people from fleeing. The Berlin Wall stood for twenty-eight years as the great symbol of the Cold War, until crowds tore it down in 1989 and the divided Europe it embodied came to an end.
—— QUOTE OF THE DAY ——
“No one has any intention of building a wall.”
— East German leader Walter Ulbricht, two months before the Wall went up, June 1961
—— OUR QUIZ OF THE DAY ——
How much do you know about the building of the Berlin Wall, the flight it was meant to stop, the lives it divided, and the day it finally fell?
