The Berlin Wall

• Yalta Conference


  1945
• Germany and its capital Berlin were both divided into four zones of occupation at the Yalta Conference
• Berlin lay well inside the Soviet zone of occupation and was a source of tension throughout the Cold War
• Berlin Blockade crisis


  1948
• The East German government, led by Walter Ulbricht, was pressurising Khrushchev to support them in weakening the power of the Western Allies in West Berlin
• Khrushchev had suggested signing a peace treaty with East Germany, without the involvement of the Western Allies, which would put East Berlin under the jurisdiction of the East German government, rather than it being a Soviet zone of occupation
• Soviet authorities in East Germany sealed off East Berlin by constructing a huge barbed wire barrier


  13 August 1961
• The Berlin Wall was soon replaced by a concrete wall, complete with lookout towers and armed guards who had orders to shoot anyone trying to cross into the Western sector
• Alarmed by the building of the Berlin Wall, President Kennedy sent his Vice-President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and US General, Lucius D Clay to Berlin
• Once the Wall had been constructed, the US decided to test how far they could push the USSR. Foreigners were still allowed to cross the Wall, and the US regularly sent troops and diplomats into the Soviet sector through Checkpoint Charlie, one of the guarded crossing points between East and West.
• Red Army tanks pulled up to Checkpoint Charlie and refused to allow Americans to pass into the Eastern sector


  27 October 1961
• All day long the two sides, with tanks and soldiers at the ready, faced each other in a tense stand-off. The nail-biting crisis lasted for 18 hours until a diplomatic agreement was reached and both sides began to slowly back down.
• The US would not take military action against the Soviet Union in its own geographical and political sphere of influence, and risk open conflict between the two nuclear superpowers
• There was no attempt at roll back in Berlin, and the East was allowed to remain cut off and isolated from the West