The Berlin Wall: A Short Story

Berlin Wall Short Story

The Berlin Wall was a barrier that divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on August 13th 1961, the Wall completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin until government officials opened it in November 1989. The end of World War II triggered the start of the Cold War. The victors of WWII, The United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union divided Germany and Berlin into four. The United States, Great Britain, and France were all capitalist and democratic, and the Soviet Union was communist. The United States, Great Britain, and France all were part of the same “team.” The Soviet Union, however, wanted nothing to
The first defector to escape across the Berlin Wall was 19-year-old East German border guard Corporal Conrad Schumann, who was immortalized on film as he leapt over a 3-foot-high roll of barbed wire just two days after East Germany sealed the border. As the Berlin Wall grew more elaborate, so did escape plans. Fugitives hid in secret compartments of cars driven by visiting West Berliners, dug secret tunnels and crawled through sewers. The three Bethke brothers pulled off the most spectacular escapes. Eldest brother Ingo escaped by floating on an inflatable mattress across the Elbe River in 1975, and eight years later brother Holger soared over the wall on a steel cable he fired with a bow and arrow to a rooftop
In 1989 the pair flew a plane over the wall and back to pick up youngest brother Egbert. Prussian King Frederick William II commissioned the iconic triumphal arch straddling East and West Berlin that served as the iconic backdrop for famous presidential speeches by Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. When completed in 1791, the Brandenburg Gate was incorporated into the city’s original Customs Wall, which ringed the city beginning in the Official figures show that at least 136 people died trying to cross the border. People attempting to get from East to West were regarded as traitors and guards were instructed to shoot at them if they attempted to cross, although not to kill them. The west side of the Berlin wall was covered in graffiti. The East side was not. West Berliners used the Berlin Wall as an ideal way of getting rid of rubbish. If they had anything that needed throwing away, they threw it over the wall. After all, it wasn't as if they would be made to go over it to fetch it back. Even though there being a wall separating East from West, there were a number of checkpoints that allowed passage to and from the two sides. The most famous of these was Checkpoint Charlie, a checkpoint separating the