The Berlin Wall was a 96 mile wall that was erected on August 13, 1961, and stood as a concrete barrier until November 10, 1989. The wall was built by the German Democratic Republic and was meant to separate West Berlin from Eastern Germany.
After World War II, Germany was divided into four sectors. The United States, Great Britain, France, and the Former Soviet Union each controlled a sector. The sectors controlled by the United States, Great Britain, and France joined to form The Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany. The sector controlled by the Former Soviet Union became The General Democratic Republic of East Germany and was a communist state. The division of the two sectors was coined the “Iron Curtain” by Winston Churchill.
The capital of Germany, Berlin, was similarly subdivided into four sectors. The United States, Great Britain, and France joined their sectors to form West Berlin. The sector held by the Former Soviet Union, East Berlin, became the capital of East...
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Suggested Readings
Buckley, W. (2004). The fall of the Berlin wall. Hoboken: Wiley.
Funder, A. (2004). Stasiland: Stories from behind the Berlin wall. London: Granta.
Rottman, G. (2008). The Berlin wall and the inner-German border 1961–1989. New York: Osprey.
Taylor, F. (2008). The Berlin wall: A world divided, 1961–1989. New York: Harper Perennial.
Wyden, P. (1991). The wall: The inside story of divided Berlin. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Suggested Resources
Berlin.de. Retrieved April 29, 2011, from http://www.berlin.de/mauer/index.en.html
Times Online. Retrieved April 29, 2011, from http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/system/topicRoot/The_Berlin_Wall/
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Johnson, B.L. (2012). Berlin Wall. In: Loue, S., Sajatovic, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Immigrant Health. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5659-0_75
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