President Kennedy visited The Berlin Wall in June of 1963 to challenge Soviet oppression and offer hope to people of the divided city. Public pressure forced Kennedy to protest the building of the wall. He believed that the Berlin Wall was necessary evil to stop communism.
Why was the Berlin Wall Built?
The 155 km long broken wall which cut through the middle of the city center surrounded West Berlin from August 13th 1961 to November 9th 1989. The Wall was designed to prevent people form escaping to the West from the Communist East Berlin.
Map and Location of the Wall
The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and the German Democratic Republic. On the night of August 12-13, 1961, East Germany soldiers laid down more than 30 miles of barbed wire barrier through the heart of Berlin.
Additions, changes to the Wall over time
The original wall was built of barbed wire and cinder blocks. It was replaced by a series of concrete walls topped with barbed wire. It was eventually guarded with watchtowers, guns, and mines.
Life in East Berlin because of the wall
The wall separated East Germans from friends, families, and jobs in West Germany, leaving them to face food shortages, government persecution, and severe punishment for escape attempts.
East Germans experienced repression; faced imprisonment for any number of crimes against the state, including attempting to flee to the West; and lived in the shadow of one of the most extensive surveillance apparatuses of the time.
Guarding the Wall
The Grenztruppen were the primary force guarding the Berlin Wall and the Inner German border, the GDR's international borders between West Berlin and West Germany respectively. Why the Berlin Wall rose—and how it fell
Erected in haste and torn down in protest, the Berlin Wall was almost 27 miles long and was protected with barbed wire, attack dogs, and 55,000 landmines.
Attempts to get to the other side
Between 1961 and 1989, thousands of East Germans made risky border crossings. Around 5,000 of them crossed over the Berlin Wall at great personal risk—and their attempts to do so ranged from sneaky to suicidal.
Layout, design elements, features of the Wall
The Wall cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany, including East Berlin. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area (later known as the "Death Strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, and other defenses.
Being built/first stages
The first concrete pilings went up on the Bernauer Strasse and at the Potsdamer Platz. Sullen East German workers, a few in tears, constructed the first segments of the Berlin Wall as East German troops stood guarding them with machine guns.
How it was built, how long it took, how much it cost
The first concrete pilings went up on the Bernauer Strasse and at the Potsdamer Platz. Sullen East German workers, a few in tears, constructed the first segments of the Berlin Wall as East German troops stood guarding them with machine guns. In just two weeks, the East German army, police force and volunteer construction workers had completed a makeshift barbed wire and concrete block wall–the Berlin Wall–that divided one side of the city from the other.
