Construction of the Berlin Wall
In the early hours of August 13, 1961, East German workers began erecting barbed wire barriers along the border between East and West Berlin, sealing off the last major gap through which East Germans could flee to the West. Within days the temporary barriers were replaced by a permanent concrete wall. The Wall was Khrushchev's solution to the most embarrassing problem facing East Germany: by 1961 nearly three million East Germans — disproportionately young, skilled, and educated — had emigrated westward through Berlin, draining the GDR of the human capital it needed to function. At the rate people were leaving, the East German state would eventually simply empty out. President Kennedy's response was privately relieved — the Wall, he noted, was 'a hell of a lot better than a war' — but publicly defiant. In June 1963 he visited Berlin and delivered his famous 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech before a crowd of hundreds of thousands, reaffirming American commitment to the city's freedom. The Berlin Wall became the most potent physical symbol of the Cold War divide: where the Iron Curtain was an abstraction, the Wall was concrete and barbed wire. It would stand for 28 years, killing approximately 140 people who attempted to cross it, until its fall on the night of November 9, 1989, became the defining image of communism's collapse.
- Year: 1961 CE
- Category: Political
