Between 1961 and 1989 there was a wall between East and West Berlin.
On August 13th 1961 it was built and on the 9th of November 1989 it fell.
Why was it there? Who built it? I'll explain that in this video.
Fantiastic intro-music
At the end of the Second World War the Allied Powers broke up Germany.
In the beginning there were four parts. In the northwest Great Britain governed.
In the southwest, France. In the south east, the USA.
The northeast part was governed by the Soviet Union.
In 1949 Great Britain, France, and the USA formed the Federal Republic of Germany together.
In the eastern part the German Democratic Republic was formed.
Berlin, however, was in the eastern part and was also broken up by the allied powers.
Between 1945 and 1949 there were four parts,
but when the GDR and FRG were formed the four parts became just two.
Berlin was still located in the east and between 1949 and 1959 that was ok.
It wasn't perfect, but it worked.
Between 1959 and 1961 the tensions between the western powers and the east block countries grew.
Lots of people wanted out of East Germany and went through Berlin in order to flee.
In order to prevent this, the soviets sent soldiers and police to the boarder.
It didn't take long until they had also built a wall there.
The entire city was separated. One could no longer simply drive between East and West Berlin.
Although the West Berlin S-Bahn and U-Bahn lines went partly under East Berlin,
the trains no longer stopped in East Berlin. They stops where the trains were supposed to stop were called "Ghost Train Stations".
Entrances to homes were walled shut in order to use apartments and houses as part of the wall.
The people who lived there could only get into their house or apartment if they went in through the back door.
Because of escape attempts, they soon walled in the windows, too.
The wall wasn't just built between East and West Berlin.
There was also a wall between East and West Germany.
If you wanted to flee out of East Berlin, you could be shot.
The number of victims of the Berlin Wall is disputed,
because the GDR and the Soviet Union covered up the violence at the wall. (I miss spoke the German, but the text was right. I forgot to move my verb to the end.)
What we can say for sure is that a lot of people died at the Berlin Wall.
Some were shot. Others jumped out of windows.
If you were arrested while trying to escape, you could get up to 8 years in jail.
If you offered help for others who tried to escape, you could get a life sentence in jail.
In 1989 Germany wanted to say in a press conference that the people in the GDR could travel between the GDR and FRG without restriction.
What they meant with that is that the people could get a visa if they wanted to travel out of the GDR,
but they said in the press conference that they could get these visas on short notice.
The people in the GDR thought that they could travel unrestricted between the GRD and FRG.
The press reported that the borders were open.
The government and the soldiers had no choice but to get out the way.
In a short while the Berlin Wall was open.
It took almost a year before the two Germanys were officially reunited,
but the 9th of November 1989 was the day on which the Berlin Wall fell.
If you want to see more videos about the Berlin Wall, I made a playlist for that .
There are videos in German and English. The links for that are in the description.
That is all for today. Thanks for watching. Until next time. Bye.