However, the concrete Wall that was built in the heart of Berlin and divided this town from 1961 to 1989 was a true Wall.. Built by East Germany, GDR also known simply as the East, it was a potent symbol as well as a concrete physical divide which epitomised the Cold War. This article aims to understand and explain in a historical perspective of the events that led to construction of the Berlin Wall: the political backdrop that created the conditions for this division of the city and in some sense the world and the series of events that resulted in the wall finally going up.

The Historical Context

To explain the background to the Berlin Wall, we have to turn the clock back to the end of the Second World War. By the end of World War II in 1945, the capital city of Berlin was split among four powers; Soviet, American, British and French occupation powers. From 1945, the Western Allied powers aimed at reconstructing a democratic Germany but the Soviet Union had a different plan.

Subsection: Soviet Concerns and Tensions

Subsection: Soviet Concerns and Tensions

The Soviet Union had a great concern in the future aggression of Germany since it suffered a lot in the course of the war. It viewed a clearly unified Germany as possible threat to its national security and dominance in this part of Europe. This led to an increase in the soviet union rivalry with the western allies and the division of Germany into East Germany in 1949 and west Germany. East Germany became socialist under Soviet influence and West Germany partnered with the western world economy.

The Political Motivations

The Berlin Wall was definite political statement as well as a longing to stop people in the Eastern Bloc countries from emigrating to the West. By this period the GDR was in a critical economic status and was experiencing human desertion. These were the reasons alongside the need to obtain political stability and regime control in order to build the wall.

Subsection: Economic Challenges

Subsection: Economic Challenges

East Germany could not lure investors or build up its economy to parity with that of West Germany and hence people flocked to the west in search of a better standard of living. The GDR had issues with retaining needed personnel through primary education and continued to lose skilled laborers and professionals that strangled its economic growth. Thus when the East German authorities put up the Berlin Wall, the intention was to prevent the continually loss of its people orSERVER its workforce.

Subsection: Efficiency of political control and political stability

Subsection: Political Stability and Control

There was also need for a political stability which led to the construction of the Berlin Wall. The GDR was plagued with opposition and dissent within its government; the ruling Socialist Unity Party. The authorities in East Germany wanted to avoid such a situation and attempted to retain control over the generally disquieted populace by enclosing them from any contact with the western culture.

The Culmination of Events

The creation of the Berlin Wall did not occur at one instance. It was due to having a sequence of occurrences and growing enmity between the East and the West.

Subsection: Escalating Tensions

Subsection: Escalating Tensions

Scalar expressions of East Germans – people, for a couple of decades commencing from the half of the fifties till early sixties – staking their lives to cross the border and get to West Berlin. This is why the brain drain of that scale and the possibility of skilled workforce leaving for the West was an anathema to the GDR authorities. Three years later, on the night of August 12, 1961, to stop this trend the GDR started to build the Berlin Wall. First of all it only consisted of barbed wire but it was gradually replaced by concrete and steel constructions and barriers that developed into the wall now.

Subsection: The Fall of the Berlin Wall

Subsection: The Fall of the Berlin Wall

For nearly thirty years the wall stood in Berlin which separated east from west. But in the last years of the eighties, embers of change started rising in Eastern Europe. Pressures for similar reforms as experienced in Hungary and Poland as well as pressure for democracy propelled East Germany into a political crisis. On the eighth of November in 1989 east Germany made an announcement that people would be free to travel, it was this which saw people rushing to the side of the wall, and hence tore it down.

In Conclusion

As much as it was a physical infrastructure built by the East Germany on August 13th 1961, the Berlin Wall evolved from the historic, political and politico-strategized realization of the Cold War. Thus it could be authorities of the Soviet Union built the wall due to security issues and need in political stability. The preposterous economic crises which surrounded the GDR and the urgent need to retain the young and the dominated also gave the construction of the wall a further boost. Inflation, spiraling political tensions and a stampede of East Germans culminated into concrete partition of the city. Nevertheless, towards the end of the cold war in November 1989, Berlin Wall came crashing down and reunited a divided Germany.