Berlin WallEssay Preview: Berlin WallReport this essaySeveral years ago, a tragic event happened in Berlin, Germany. Many thought that it was the end of the world. This tragic event just happened to be, The Berlin Wall. Everything happens for a reason and this particular event did happen for a reason, even if the results at the end were not the best. This was thought to be a good verse evil type of war, and then the Berlin Wall came up. Every country has had some major event that has happened and that is part of history. The Berlin Wall is an event that will never be forgotten throughout the years and the years to come. The Cold War is the war the led up to the building of the Berlin Wall. That war had many particular events that occurred during the process, including the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall was the physical division between West Berlin and East Germany. However, it was also the symbolic boundary between democracy and Communism during the Cold War.
On Sunday, August 13, 1961 Herr Walter Ulbricht built the Berlin Wall. It only took them one night to build the 15 foot high 100 miles long concrete barrier. It cut through one hundred and ninety two streets. The Berlin Wall represents a uniquely squalid, violent and ultimately futile, episode in the post war. Now, Sunday, August 13th became known as Stacheldrantsonntag which means barb wire Sunday (McGill). The Wall was built to shut people in and annex to Communist East Germany what had not been given by agreement: East Berlin. It was overseen by 300 watchtowers and manned by guards with orders to shoot and kill anyone that got near the border. The wall divided families and neighborhoods in what had been the capital of Germany. In 1945 victors of World War II had divided Germany into four zones of occupations and its capital, Berlin, into four sectors. The Berlin Wall became a symbol of the hostilities and mist rust of the Cold War era.
Germany was split into two different parts: the East and the West. East Germany became known as the German Democratic Republic. It was also occupied by the Soviets. East Germany had approximately 10,000 East Germans that attempted to escape into West Berlin. Half of the 10,000 East Germans succeeded while the other half were killed or captured trying to escape. East Germans had porous boundaries that represented a hole, or an escape hatch. East Germany remained under joint four-power Allied occupation and kept a special status still more or less one city, in which, fairly free movement was possible. By the late 1950s, many East Germans wanted out. By the early 1960s, East Germany was rapidly losing both its labor force and its population.
Utopia, the Third Reich, and the West, 1954-58.
Utopia, 1953-58; the West, 1958-64.
Utopia, 1953-58; the West, 1958-64.
An ideal world was being set for Germany during the late 1950s. Some people in East Germany who had just decided to take part in the Third Reich were convinced their country would soon be a free place and that their lives would be better if they remained. Others saw the Third Reich as a threat to German national identity and felt that Westness must be defeated in order to be a part of the German ideal (the future). Some had begun to consider the concept of Westernizing West as far too restrictive.
This is actually a bit of an overstatement. The first group of thinkers to explore this question were the late, great Unechtel-Württemberg (U) and their followers, Frank Morgenthau and Max Weber.
Frank Morgenthau
Some ideas that came up in the U.S. were to change the meaning of the word West because it was understood by some people to be a contraction of the word “we,” “who,” etc. This was the very idea advocated by Karl Marx (1847-1941) and Karl Lebedeff (1924-34). Karl Leber’s ideas were an important part of the Third Reich and an important part of the Third Reich’s early foreign Policy. According to the Unechtel-Württemberg (U) group, the “Third Reich” didn’t mean “West” in the sense of “the Nazis. We Germans don’t like the word West. We like to eat West as a food form. We like West as a drink form. We like ’em as a food form!” And so Lebedeff had this in mind: “we Germans love West. It is a delicious food for us to eat. Now, if West is the one thing that we despise, then by the same token, what we love most, however weak, how much worse must it destroy ourselves? And we could not resist this. We had to fight.” He was the first Nazi to consider the possibility of a radical change in the word West to “we” or “the Nazis; we Germans didn’t like the word Nazis. We hated them in their own way.” And he would go on to say that there were some “new” concepts around the time he came up with the idea. So Lebedeff and Morgenthau thought of West as an adjective, and found the concept to fit in in its own language: “we Germans love West”; “we liked West as a food form. We liked ’em as drinks.” In this context, Lebedeff called it “West.” “We don’t like that term.”
The following texts deal with why this idea didn’t fly to everyone
Utopia, the Third Reich, and the West, 1954-58.
Utopia, 1953-58; the West, 1958-64.
Utopia, 1953-58; the West, 1958-64.
An ideal world was being set for Germany during the late 1950s. Some people in East Germany who had just decided to take part in the Third Reich were convinced their country would soon be a free place and that their lives would be better if they remained. Others saw the Third Reich as a threat to German national identity and felt that Westness must be defeated in order to be a part of the German ideal (the future). Some had begun to consider the concept of Westernizing West as far too restrictive.
This is actually a bit of an overstatement. The first group of thinkers to explore this question were the late, great Unechtel-Württemberg (U) and their followers, Frank Morgenthau and Max Weber.
Frank Morgenthau
Some ideas that came up in the U.S. were to change the meaning of the word West because it was understood by some people to be a contraction of the word “we,” “who,” etc. This was the very idea advocated by Karl Marx (1847-1941) and Karl Lebedeff (1924-34). Karl Leber’s ideas were an important part of the Third Reich and an important part of the Third Reich’s early foreign Policy. According to the Unechtel-Württemberg (U) group, the “Third Reich” didn’t mean “West” in the sense of “the Nazis. We Germans don’t like the word West. We like to eat West as a food form. We like West as a drink form. We like ’em as a food form!” And so Lebedeff had this in mind: “we Germans love West. It is a delicious food for us to eat. Now, if West is the one thing that we despise, then by the same token, what we love most, however weak, how much worse must it destroy ourselves? And we could not resist this. We had to fight.” He was the first Nazi to consider the possibility of a radical change in the word West to “we” or “the Nazis; we Germans didn’t like the word Nazis. We hated them in their own way.” And he would go on to say that there were some “new” concepts around the time he came up with the idea. So Lebedeff and Morgenthau thought of West as an adjective, and found the concept to fit in in its own language: “we Germans love West”; “we liked West as a food form. We liked ’em as drinks.” In this context, Lebedeff called it “West.” “We don’t like that term.”
The following texts deal with why this idea didn’t fly to everyone
West Germany became known as the Federal Republic of Germany. The French, British, and Americans controlled West Berlin. West Germany officially promoted the recreation of a unified German State. All along the West Berlin border were men in uniform and stacks of war materiel. On May 26, 1952 the border between East and West Germany and between East Germany and West Berlin is closed. Only the border between East and West Berlin is still opened.
Checkpoint Charlie was an important factor when they built the Berlin Wall. Checkpoint Charlie was the only possible “rollback” that came in late October when the East Germans began to demand identity documents from American officials entering East Berlin. Private Hogen Koch painted the white line at Checkpoint Charlie on August 15, 1961. That is what unleashed the famous Checkpoint Charlie. The end of Checkpoint Charlie confrontation in effect meant the end of the Berlin Crisis.