Division, Defiance and Defection the History of Berlin Wall

It was in November 1989 that the most notorious physical symbol of the Cold War was finally torn down. Now, three decades on, the Berlin Wall still looms large in the minds of those who lived during that era of fear and tension: a landmark of such mythic inevitability that it’s easy to forget it sprang up literally overnight, taking the West completely by surprise.
Understanding the Wall means understanding the bizarre geopolitical situation Berlin found itself in after World War Two. Germany as a whole had been carved up by the victorious Allies into a number of zones, controlled by the US, the UK, France and the Soviet Union. The former three zones eventually coalesced into the new nation of West Germany, while the Soviet-occupied zone became East Germany, aligned with the Communist Eastern Bloc.
Berlin became one of the most critical places on Earth. As the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev allegedly said, it was ‘the testicles of the West: every time I want to make the West scream, I squeeze on Berlin.’
Yet the situation was also a headache for the Soviets, as millions of East Germans defected by crossing the West/East Berlin border. It was a brain drain of some of the most skilled workers, professionals and intellectuals in East Germany, bleeding the new Communist nation dry of talent. The solution was simple and brutal: put up a new, physical border, no matter the human consequences.
In the early hours of 13 August 1961 – a date that would go down as ‘Barbed Wire Sunday’ – the first fences were put up without warning along the East Berlin border. Friends and family members who happened to be in opposite sides of the city found themselves suddenly divided. Concrete blocks were put into place in the ensuing days, establishing the border as a new, permanent fact of life. As one Western official later said, the very idea of such a thing was startling: ‘Our imagination didn’t stretch that far.’
The part of the Berlin Wall which divided the city would encompass over 27 miles, although the whole Wall was actually far longer than that, completely surrounding West Berlin to prevent people from entering from other points in East Germany. The mythology of the Wall, with its numerous escapes (and doomed escape attempts) began almost immediately. On 15 August, mere days after the first fences were hammered into place, a young East German border guard called Conrad Schumann decided to make a break for it. The photograph of Schumann leaping over barbed wire – dubbed the ‘leap into freedom’ – became one of the most iconic images of the Cold War.

By – Abhishek Singh
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