Berlin Wall

There were many events concerning the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall. In truth the wall in a since was there many years before it was truly built. A famous speech written in 1946 at the Westminster Collage in Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill stated; “An Iron Curtain has descended across the continent” referring the beginning the Berlin Wall, Churchill coined the term “Iron Curtain”. Many people assumed that Churchill was referring directly to the Berlin Wall, but in truth he was really talking about the general closing off of the soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe. Even though the wall was not built till 1961, Berlin was an enduring symbol of that “Iron Curtain.” To get an understanding for the reason it was constructed, all the headaches, heartaches it caused, and the joy over its falling helps people today to relate to its symbolic role as the “Iron Curtain”. The Berlin Wall was erected for the purpose: to keep East Berliners from escaping to West Berlin. After WWII, Berlin, the capital of Germany was a ruined city. The United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union, all victors of WWII, divided Germany and Berlin into Four Sections. Soon after this the relationships between the Soviet Union and the other three allied powers disintegrated. In 1949 Germany’s new organization became official; the first three zones combined to form West Germany which was called the federal Republic of Germany. The fourth zone by itself forming East Germany the Soviet Union established the German Democratic Republic. They claimed East Berlin the capital of the GDR. Most of the residents were not too happy with government, after about four years they began to up rise against them. In the late 1950 things had gotten so bad in East Berlin that many people wanted out, although many would pack their bags and leave several would be stopped along the way, but hundreds of thousands would make it across the borders to West Germany and would be housed in