Opaque Lucidity

Today in History August 15, 2005

The Berlin Wall is built, 1961

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TRANSCRIPT:

Today in 1961, the East German government began construction of the Berlin Wall. The Wall would become a physical manifestation of the Iron Curtain, the term first used by Winston Churchill to describe the physical and political boundaries which separated the Eastern Bloc from the Western democracies.

After the Second World War...

Germany was divided into four zones of occupation. The three zones in the western half of the country were controlled by the United States, the UK and France. The eastern half of the country was controlled by the Soviet Union. Since Berlin was in the eastern half of the nation, the city itself was divided into four zones.

Until 1961, it was fairly easy for citizens of East Berlin and other parts of the East Germany to cross over into West Berlin. As a result, more that 2.5 million East Germans crossed into West Germany, mostly by going from East to West Berlin. East Germany was losing her best and brightest to the promise of the freedom and opportunity outside the sphere of Soviet domination.

The building of the Wall actually began on the evening of August 12 when East German soldiers began stringing barbed wire through the heart of the Berlin. The next morning, East Germany began closing the access points into and out of the eastern half of the city. On the 15th, the barbed wire began to be slowly replaced by tall concrete barriers. One of the most famous pictures from that period is of Conrad Schumann, a 19-year old East German soldier who leapt across the barbed wire barrier with his rifle slung over his shoulder. The Berlin Wall would eventually become over 100 miles long and would not only cut the city in half, but would surround almost all of West Berlin.

Twenty-eight years later, with East Germany crumbling from within, the communists announced an easing of border enforcement between the two halves of the city. So many East Berliners sought access to the West that the border guards just opened the gates and let people out. On November 9, 1989, with the world watching, citizens of the both East and West Berlin took sledgehammers and began dismantling the Wall. Germany became a unified nation in 1990 and parts of the Wall, once a symbol of communist tyranny, have found their way to the four corners of the globe.