Berlin Wall Facts & Worksheets

• They went for neither and chose to supply all of Berlin using the airlift method. So over the next 321 days, starting on 24 June 1948, the Allies airlifted supplies into Berlin using 275,000 flights to deliver 4,000 tonnes of supplies each day.
• Stalin underestimated the resources of the Allies and believed that an airlift was impossible. They set up three air corridors in Berlin but did not shoot any planes down in the time period, fearing that it would lead to another war. Despite Stalin’s blockade, many West Berliners attempted to leave the western side of Berlin. The city council and many students and teachers from Berlin University in the East established a new Free University in the West. As a result, Stalin lifted the blockade on 12 May 1949.
• Within a few weeks, West Germany and Communist East Germany both became independent nations. West Germany declared itself the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), with Bonn as its capital. Meanwhile, the USSR established a separate country named the German Democratic Republic (GDR), with East Berlin as its new capital.
• As opposed to East Germany, West Germany evolved into a social market economy and democratic parliamentary administration, typical of a Western capitalist nation. In 1953, a growing number of GDR inhabitants fled to West Germany out of concern for additional Sovietisation.
• The majority of Eastern Bloc republics, including East Germany, adopted the Soviet strategy of limiting emigration in order to manage national movement at the beginning of the 1950s. As a result, a barbed-wire barrier was erected, and the inner German border between the two German states was closed. Berlin developed into a hotbed of friction between the US and the USSR as well as a draw for East Germans wishing to flee the GDR.
• The Soviets gave East Germany control over civilian movement in Berlin in 1955, transferring authority to a dictatorship that the West did not recognise. After a considerable number of East Germans defected (known as the Republikflucht), the new East German state constitutionally barred almost all travel to the West in 1956. The 3.5 million East Germans who departed by 1961 accounted for around 20% of all East Germans, and the Berlin sector boundary became a ‘loophole’ through which members of the Eastern Bloc could still flee.
• The number of East German intelligentsia among the refugees increased significantly by 50% as a result of the ‘brain drain’ that young, educated emigration to East Germany caused. Merely 61% of the populace was of working age in 1960, with a disproportionate number of professionals in this category. West Germany owed $17 billion in compensation, but the direct cost of East Germany’s labour losses was estimated to be $7 billion to $9 billion.
• The division of Germany into East and West had profound economic impacts, with East Germany suffering from a significant loss of skilled professionals and a subsequent decrease in its economic productivity and development. The Berlin Wall symbolised the physical and ideological division between East and West Germany during the Cold War.

Construction in 1961

• A number of East Germans sought to escape poverty-stricken East Germany (GDR). They wanted to flee to West Germany, as it was described as being prosperous due to Western control. In response to the migration to West Germany, on 13 August 1961, Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union, ordered the construction of a barbed wire fence along the border of East and West Berlin. This fence was just the beginning, as it eventually evolved into the parallel walls and extensive fortifications that became known as the Berlin Wall.
• The East German government feared the appeal of the economic miracle of the West and that its citizens would attempt to move. Both communism and capitalist spies from the East alarmed West Germans at the same time. In 1961, Khrushchev publicly announced that Berlin was part of East Germany. He also warned the West German government against taking military action. In response to the threat, the West German government decided to also build a wall that they called an ‘anti-fascist protective wall’.
• The USSR ordered the placement of fences, trenches and watchtowers along the wall. Guards were authorised to shoot anyone attempting to cross it. The barrier consisted of two 4-metre-tall walls spanning 155 kilometres in length. The ‘death strip’, a mine corridor with sand or gravel covering it, stood between these two walls and helped guards spot trespassers and maintain clear firefields. Along with barbed wire, dogs on long leashes, mesh fencing, signal fencing, anti-vehicle trenches, watchtowers and bunkers manned by hundreds of Soviet guards supplemented the wall.
• There were nine border crossings where West Berliners, West Germans, Western foreigners, Allied soldiers and GDR nationals could enter East Berlin as long as they had the required authorisation. Checkpoint Charlie is the most well-known crossing, and it was only open to foreigners and Allied soldiers. Other crossings allowed movement with a permit between West Germans and West Berlin, as well as between West Berliners and East Germans.
• New crossings were created for rubbish transfer and access to West Berlin’s exclaves after agreements in 1972. There were ferry and train lines that led to West Berlin. The wall divided Berlin’s public transportation systems, with three western lines passing through East Berlin. During the 1980s, visitors from other countries, including West Germans, could enter East Germany without a visa if they applied several weeks in advance at an East German embassy. However, officials in East Germany had the right to deny entry permits for any reason.