East And West Germany

East and West Germany was a consequence of the Second World War was the division of Germany. The two German states of West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany) and East Germany (GDR) received two completely different political systems. After all, the East and West Germans were still able to travel across the border.

But in August 1961 something happened that would affect Europe for a long time to come: East German soldiers rolled out barbed wire and built a wall against West Berlin and then along the entire border with West Germany. The government locked up the East Germans their own country. East German families could no longer visit relatives and friends in West Germany. When people still tried to cross the wall, East German border soldiers shot to them to death.

The Berlin Wall, part of the so-called Iron Curtain, became the most tangible example of the frozen conflict between communist Eastern Europe and the democracies of the West.

Only in 1989, they opened to Berlin Wall. The development then quickly passed and in 1990 the GDR ceased to exist.

DDR Is Formed

In 1945, World War II ended and the German Nazi dictatorship was crushed. The victory states divided Germany into four occupation zones.

The opposition between the Western powers and the Soviet Union increased in the so-called Cold War, which became a war of intelligence, spy and propaganda between the two power blocks East and West. The contradictions also meant a struggle between two economic and ideological systems between the market economy and plan economy and between capitalism and communism.

In 1949, the American, British and French zones formed the Federal Republic of Germany and the West Germany. The eastern zone became after the Soviet model German Democratic Republic (GDR). The division of Germany was a fact. They established a heavily armed and guarded border between the two German states.

The Berlin Wall Is Being Built

In 1961, the DDR party leader Ulbricht defended the Berlin Wall as protection against “leeches from the West” that sucked to a “healthy body”, the working and peasant Republic of the GDR.

The GDR started to extensive welfare program: cheap food, free medical care, low rents, and preferential education systems. They built kindergardens and schools. Through cultural policy, the socialist ideology would permeate society; they subsidized literature, theater, opera, concerts, and youth festivals.

End of DDR

Demonstrations in the fall of 1989 showed that strong forces were in motion. Hundreds of thousands of GDR citizens flung with light in their hands and demanded human rights; freedom of opinion, freedom of expression and the right to travel abroad. On the evening of November 9, 1989, the unforeseen happened: The Berlin Wall was opened. News agencies worldwide proclaimed that the GDR opened its borders.

People cried with pleasure that after 40 years of dictatorship they could finally meet without obstructing walls and barbed wire fencing. They had armored vehicles and soldiers in alarm preparedness but they couldn’t provide silence to protests which is against powerful party fighters.