Why was this city-dividing, family-separating symbol of Cold War oppression built?
From 1945 to 1989, Berlin was the hottest spot in the Cold War. At the end of World War II, a defeated Germany was carved up by the Allied powers as post-war reconstruction began. In the middle of this divided country lay a divided city. The capital Berlin was itself split by the Allies and as tensions between the capitalist West and communist East began to surface, the Berlin Wall rose creating a barrier separating the two sides.
The image of the wall and the two Berlins quickly captured the public imagination and the city fostered a reputation as a nest of spies – a reputation that was helped by novels such as John Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Len Deighton’s Funeral in Berlin and Adam Hall’s The Quiller Memorandum. But why was the wall built? And how did it become an enduring symbol of Cold War tensions?
DIVIDED ALLIES AND A DIVIDED GERMANY
On 7 May 1945, Germany surrendered to the Allied powers. Its capital, Berlin, lay in ruins with over 300,000 of its citizens dead among the rubble. Those who survived were now uncertain about their future. The Allied powers bickered openly about what to do with the once proud nation, fearful that a rearmed Germany could once again threaten the world.
A temporary solution, at least until the arrangement of more permanent peace treaties, was to divide the country into four occupied zones. The United States would obtain the south, France the southwest, Britain the northwest and the east would be given over to the Soviet Union. But what of Berlin? Located in the centre of the soon-to-be Soviet zone? The decision was made to similarly carve the city into four areas, each occupied by one of the main Allied powers. This too was intended to be only temporary, but difficulties arose when the relationship between the four Allies became strained – namely those between the United States and the Soviet Union.
US concerns about the spread of communism had been around since the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, when the first ‘Red Scare’ took place. By the end of WWII, the Soviet Union had expanded into other territories, and was continuing to do so, providing itself with a ‘buffer zone’. Communist control over Eastern Europe led Winston Churchill to use the phrase, ‘the Iron Curtain’, in his famous 5 March 1946 speech. Meanwhile, the United States was itself busy cementing its ‘special relationship’ with Britain and bringing other countries under its influence. This was helped by the 1948 Marshall Aid Plan which
