The Berlin Wall

Improved Essays
After World War II, Germany was divided into four parts: the West was controlled by the US, Great Britain and France, and the East was under the control of the USSR. These four countries were allies during World War II and fought against the fascist countries of Japan, Germany and Italy. When the war ended and Germany was divided into four parts, the USSR and the US started the political, economical and military “race” known as the Cold War from 1945 to 1989. The division of Europe from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Balkan Peninsula in the South is famously called the Iron Curtain, and it exemplifies the political differences between France, Great Britain and the US had with the USSR before the Berlin Wall was raised; although the territory …show more content…
Thousand of East Berliners who were dissatisfied with the Eastern Communist Government found hope and had been moving into the Western Democratic government for a better life. Even though the official purpose of the raising wall was to keep western “fascists” separated from the East in order to prevent them from influencing the communist state the USSR had formed. It raised at a time of growing tension between East and West because of the desire of the Allies and the USSR had of Europe’s control. The building of the Berlin Wall directly affected the lives of millions of people in Europe and especially in Berlin, because of the division it created from Eastern communists and Western democrats. The Berlin Wall was built to divide Eastern and Western Germany because of the political differences between the USSR and the …show more content…
The search for restructuring and openness in the Soviet Union came from its new elected leader: Mikhail Gorbachev, who The previous tensions from the Cold War between the democratic West and the communist East were lowered after the USSR showed its weakness by not being able to keep control in Berlin. After the wall was tore down, East and West relaxed their military and political competition. The radical change in East Europe came with Mikhail Gorbachev, who had different political ideals from the previous Soviet Leaders. Many of the policies that helped relax political tensions between East and West were announced by Gorbachev after he took power in 1985; he surprised the world when he presented one of his new political ideals: Soviet troops were not going to intervene in Eastern European

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