Berlin Wall Analysis

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Pages: 8

The focus of the investigation is “To what extent did the Berlin Wall impact the lives of German citizens from 1961 to 1970?” and will be an analysis on how German citizens living on either East or West Berlin were ultimately affected when the barrier between them was created. The Berlin Wall created a literal divide between political ideologies but this investigation will be focused on the social aspect of the divide.
The very first source I will be analyzing is an article “Berlin, 1963: Voices From the Wall.” published by The Atlantic on November 5th in 2014. It is a secondary source with primary source material - quotes, interviews, and reflections from different people who were impacted by the Berlin Wall. The article itself was written
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The original telegram was translated by Daniel Ross, the original archive was the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation, in addition to the original publisher being the Cold War International History Project. The purpose of this telegram was to discuss the protest movements (in the East) and border control in Germany. Looking at this source more in-depth, Soviet Officials Miroshnichenko and Lunkov are telling Semenov what safety measures or rules to put in place to keep things convenient for citizens on the East and Westside. This is essential to the investigation of how German Citizens were affected by the Berlin Wall because it describes situations that the citizens have found themselves in, such as many workers had a difficult time with transportation because they live on one side and work on the other. This shows that citizens were affected and the Officials even provide possible solutions in the telegram. The limitation of this might be that it is from a Soviets Official’s point of view, so maybe they don’t quite understand the whole situation or to what extent it is affecting the …show more content…
In this telegram, the officials Miroshnichenko and Lunkov state the following, “At the present time, the metro, the city railroad and tramway in East and West Berlin are functioning in isolation, which has brought about dissatisfaction from the inhabitants of the GDR and East Berlin. Until June 17, the city railroad was used by 83,000 workers and employees residing in the territory of the GDR adjoining the Western Sectors of Berlin, yet working in East Berlin. Now they are using buses, steam-driven trains and other means of transportation to commute to work, for which, moreover, they have to make several transfers. For this commute, instead of taking 30-40 minutes as before, they now have to travel up to 2-3 hours one-way.” This statement supports the claim that the citizens were impacted by the separation of East and West Berlin. Commuting to and from work became a hassle for the workers, which led to protests movements in East Germany and enhanced border security. The separation in the two politically different regions of the same country easily became an inconvenience to citizens on either side of the wall. It nearly tripled the time it took to get to work and provide for themselves and their family, if it took people that much effort to get to work, one can only imagine the way