Berlin Wall Research Paper

The incident I will be examining is the construction of the Berlin Wall. Over 55 years ago on August 12th, 1961, the Soviets began to seal off East Berlin from West Berlin. The Berlin Wall was built primarily in order to prevent people from leaving East Germany. The wall was completed within just a two week timeframe, was made of concrete and barbed wire, and was guarded by armed sentries. The Berlin Wall wasn’t the first time the Soviets had tried to remove the Allied influence in Berlin. In 1948 they had set up a blockade of West Berlin in an attempt to remove the Allies from the city. The Allies replied by supplying the city from the air with over 2.3 million tons of food, fuel, and other supplies. This response by the Allies led the …show more content…
The Soviets had to make an effort to stop the mass exodus that was taking place in Berlin. Between 1949 and 1961 over 2.7 million East Germans had left East Germany to escape to the other side, and many had chosen to leave through West Berlin. In addition to the many people attempting to emigrate from East Germany, tensions between the US and the Soviets were high and played a major role in the Soviet’s decision to construct the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall had achieved its objective of stemming the flow of emigrants while at the same time eliminating some amount of Western intelligence presence and bringing a relative amount of stability in East Germany in a particularly unstable period of time. The wall had solved the emigration problem swiftly, but at the same time had affected many parties a great …show more content…
The wall had put an end to classic intelligence activity inside of Berlin. The East Germans had essentially ended the usefulness of Berlin as a strategic base for intelligence. It also had come at a time when great advances were made in satellite technology and other technical means of collection, helping the West move on from Berlin a bit easier than the Soviets may have anticipated. It did not come without confrontation, however, when Soviet and US tanks were poised to confront each other on the days of October 27-29th. Tensions had hardly been higher until the tanks withdrew a few days later from checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. While the Berlin Wall was not technically that significant in regards to military intelligence, it did show the dangers of a strained US-Soviet

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