The Berlin Wall
On the nights of August 12-13, 1961, soldiers and construction workers began tearing up streets that entered into West Berlin, dug holes to put up concrete
posts, and strung barbed wire across the border between East and West Berlin. Telephone wires were cut.
The Berlin Wall was a barrier separating West Berlin from East Germany and East Berlin. Soviet-dominated Eastern Bloc stated it was erected to protect people from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the "will of the people". The Wall prevented emigration and defection.
The wall stretched over a hundred miles, running through Berlin. It cut West Berlin off from the rest of East Germany. The wall went through four major transformations, starting as barbed-wire with concrete posts, then a few days later was replaced with concrete blocks, topped with barbed wire.
A third versions was erected in 1965 with a steel girder concrete wall. The fourth, constructed 1975-1980, was the most
complicated. It had concrete slabs 12-feet high and 4-feet wide, with smooth pipe across the top to hinder people from scaling the Wall.
As Communism faltered in the 1980s, points opened to East Germans who wanted to flee west. November 9, 1989, an announcement made by a
government official stated permanent relocations can be done through all border checkpoints.
Germans approached anxiously. Soon the wall was covered with people from both sides. People chipped at the wall
with hammers and chisels. There was a huge celebration. The destruction of the wall was as instantaneous as it's creation.
East and West reunified into a single German state October 3, 1990.