30 years ago, the Berlin Wall which divided east from west fell in a quite sudden turn
of events, eventually resulting in German reunification and signaling the end of the
Cold War, but how did the wall fall?
Furthermore, why was it built, and how did it become so synonymous with the Cold War
as a whole?
First some background, after World War II, Germany and Austria were partitioned amongst
the Allied Powers under provisional governments established to make sure there wouldn’t
be any of that Reich stuff again.
Austria was allowed to reunify under the promise that they never unite with Germany and also
promise to stay neutral between the interests of the Soviets and the other three, while
Germany‘s easternmost bits were ceded to Poland and Russia.
The rest of Germany was split between English, French, American, and Soviet jurisdiction
under a kind of temporary arrangement (oh and Saarland also got to do its own thing
for a few years).
But remember kids, there is nothing as permanent as a temporary solution.
These four powers didn‘t exactly get along after the fall of their common enemy, or well
really three of them didn‘t get along with the other, so when the US, UK, and France
made plans for Germany that conflicted with Russian plans, the USSR decided to keep its
slice as a puppet state of its own, creating the German Democratic Republic (East Germany),
contrasting with the Federal Republic of Germany (then known as West Germany).
Now as I‘m sure some people in the comments have already pointed out without waiting for
me to actually say it, Berlin also got this treatment, and so the western half of Berlin
became an island within the DDR.
Westerners could drive in but of course that was a bit easier said than done sometimes,
as was the case with Easterners, except they weren‘t supposed to be going to West Berlin.
You see, emigration wasn‘t exactly something that Eastern Bloc countries always approved
of, especially if you were a young professional educated in the East, but in Berlin it was
pretty easy to just walk across the border and go to the west from there, which over
3 million people[1] did in the first couple decades after the war.
Knowing this, the East German officials decided to build a wall around West Berlin to keep
the Easterners in the East.
[Almost everyone hated that] Now since West Berlin was actually an enclave
in the middle of the DDR, the wall didn‘t go through Berlin, but all the way around
the west, so there wasn‘t any “going around” the wall.
Also… it wasn‘t just a wall they put up and left there, it was actually two walls
sandwiching in a sandpit which was often nicknamed the Death Strip.
Why was it nicknamed the Death Strip?
Good question!
Well, it‘s really only to do with the electric fences, guard dogs, tank traps, constant illumination
at night, spike strips, and guard towers with guards who weren‘t just going to let you
go under the radar for 20 Marks.
Also, the smaller inner wall was itself guarded on the eastern side, so if you have a piece
of the wall that has graffiti on it, it was probably from the western side.
Actually all things considered it‘s probably just a random piece of concrete with green
paint on it being sold to clueless tourists for €8.
Seriously, don‘t buy too much of that stuff… buy KhAnubis merch instead!
Of course, plenty escape attempts were still made, from people swimming across the Spree
River, to hang gliding across, to inspiring stories for the one German car company that
can apparently get away with nostalgia.
Hundreds of people tried to escape[2], many of them successful, but many were either detained
or simply killed on the spot.
As such, the wall became a gruesome and poignant symbol of the brutality of the regime and
what lengths it would apparently go to to limit freedom of travel, and thus arguably
tarnished the reputation of the DDR.
The Brandenburg Gate became trapped between the walls, effectively becoming the gate that
no one could go through, and a few certain S- and U-Bahn stations either became border
stations or were closed completely, now no more than ghost stations.
By the latter half of the 1980‘s, Socialist regimes all across Central and Eastern Europe
started to strain at the advent of mass protests demanding for political and personal freedoms,
and many lightened the restrictions on travel, with Hungary even dismantling the electric
fence on the Austrian border.
As the DDR also became overwhelmed by protests and exit visa applications, the government
decided to also ease travel restrictions, as declared in a press statement by Günter
Schabowski.
However, when a reporter asked when the changes were due to take effect, Schabowski shrugged
and simply said “to the best of my knowledge, immediately”.
This drove huge crowds to the border, crowding the checkpoints until the confused guards
relented and let the crowds through.
Within a few hours people were starting to chip away at the wall, within a few days construction
crews were helping to dismantle the wall, and within a year Germany became one united
country again.
The DDR was effectively annexed into the Federal Republic of Germany, laws were altered, currency
was exchanged, and passports were replaced.
There was no more East or West, this country was now just “Germany”.
In the 30 years following the wall‘s fall, East and West Germany have united seamlessly,
but not necessarily evenly.
Formerly East German states still have much weaker economies than their western counterparts[3][4],
and the divide in Berlin can still be seen from space at night, each side using different
light bulbs.
Reunification also cost a lot of money for the West[5], several hundred billion euros
have been put into various projects to improve the ailing infrastructure of the East.
Throughout its existence, the DDR— while not by any means a poor country— still struggled
financially and was kept afloat by Moscow, as its planned economy never exactly took
off, especially after all those war reparations.
This meant that roads, railways, buildings, power plants, and many other things had to
be improved to the, shall we say, higher living standards of the West.
Although it was tough, these subsidies were said to have brought along Germany‘s second
financial boom.
Life expectancies even increased, but unemployment is still once again higher in the former eastern
states and many easterners have now flocked to the west.
There‘s no getting around it, German reunification was though, to blatantly understate it, but
it showed that even a presence that seemed as powerfully permanent as the Berlin Wall,
what literally divided a city and symbolically the world, could still be brought down.
Thanks as always for watching, and thank you all so much for bearing with me these last
few weeks.
If you haven’t already heard, I got my laptop stolen a few weeks ago in Vienna and I had
to wait three weeks for a new one, but now it’s all back to the every Sunday schedule
from here!
As always, be sure to like the video, support the channel on Patreon, and subscribe to learn
something new every Sunday.