The Berlin Wall During World War II, The success of West Berlin, “stuck like a bone in the soviet throat” as the soviet leader Nikita Khrushev put it. So the Russians knew that the allies in the west had to go, so they began their attempt to drive the United States, Great Britain, And France out of the western nation for good. In 1948, a Soviet blockade on West Berlin tried to starve them out of the City. But instead of complying and retreating from there, the strong allies supplied there stations from the air, which became known as the Berlin Airlift. The Berlin Airlift lasted more than a year and delivered more than 2.3 million tons of food, fuel, and other goods to West Berlin.
poopThe capital of Germany, Berlin had a powerful political appeal as a target and objective in the final phases of the war in Europe. While it was certainly a major Germany city, it was in many ways throughout the war no longer the functioning capital, since Adolf Hitler spent most of his time at Berchtesgaden and at various field headquarters. The Supreme Allied Commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower, did not consider Berlin a key military objective and made the decision to allow the city to fall to the Soviet Red Army while the forces of the western Allies turned south into Bavaria. (Eisenhower's decision was also motivated by his understanding of the diplomatic situation; at the Yalta Conference, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt had promised Joseph Stalin that, all other things being equal, Berlin would be a Red Army objective.) Yet it is undeniably true that Berlin was a moral and symbolic prize of enormous importance, both to the Nazi regime and the victorious Allies.
The Soviets cut off the western side of Berlin and prevented the Americans, British and French from accessing the city. It made the dispute between them public and was the first military confrontation of the USSR towards America. The western part of Germany had to supply West Berlin from the air for around a year, causing Russia to eventually give up. This was a triumph for the USA and the rest of Western Europe as they managed to outwit the Soviets, and due to their peaceful defeat the USSR looked increasingly aggressive. However this made Stalin and the Soviet Union despise the capitalist Europe even more.
So it all goes back to helping not hurting the people of Germany. The Soviets have had many attempts to take practical control over the entire city of Berlin, but this only helped the British and United States make clever plans like the Marshall Plan and the decision of the Airlift. The Berlin Blockade lasted from June 24th, 1948 to May 12, 1949, but still long enough to have killed many starving civilians. The Marshall plan in my opinion helped the most because $13 billion in economic and technical assistance were given to help the recovery of the European countries that had joined in the Organization for European Economic Co-operation. After all this happened in result to the Berlin Blockade, the Soviets started limiting their efforts to take control because they knew that other dominate forces like the United States and the Soviet Union and its
It is estimated that between 50,000 and 140,000 people were killed in this campaign during the Russian Civil War. The Cheka was created by Vladimir Lenin to deal with threats to his new regime. It was led by Felix Dzerzhinsky and used to inflict the Red Terror, operating outside of the law and answering to no one. The Cheka was extremely important in allowing the Bolsheviks to establish their power and influence people’s view of their new government. It is speculated that the Bolsheviks would not have retained power for very long if it had not been for the workings of the Cheka during that time period as they
About 5,000 other made it, and a total of 246 died, trying to escape they're prison. The Berlin wall symbolized the last remaining communist oppression of Germany, however it also symbolized the physical division of democracy and communism, so once the wall came down, communism was over for Germany and the surrounding countries. The first step to the fall of the wall was the Sinatra Doctrine. Formerly, the Soviets had ruled over their Eastern Bloc allies closely, forcing them into lockstep with Soviet communist policy. The Doctrine allowed the Eastern Bloc governments to make their own decisions to a far greater extent.
Only those that went through the Berlin zoo crossing the bridge over the Havel Canal into Spandau succeeded in crossing through the Soviet lines. Very few of those that made it out of the city were able to surrender to Western Allies most being killed by the Soviet outer encirclement forces holding positions west of the city. At 0600 on 2 May General Weidling surrendered his staff in the Reichstag. Fighting continued sporadically throughout the day but all major combat had ceased. All buildings that contained defenders refusing to surrender were reduced to rubble by artillery bombardment.
Joseph Stalin truly strengthened this nation to become a widely known superpower, although he carried out mass genocide and created a murderous dictatorship. Historians have viewed him in many different ways, including a psychotic power-driven killer, a military and communist genius, and also the man who transformed the Soviet Union into an industrial colossus. Joseph Stalin should have never taken the role of the USSR’s leader. Instead, Trotsky should have been the one to take Lenin’s place, which would have saved the lives of millions. Joseph Stalin put forth many positive attributes to the USSR, however; the only reason this was possible was through his brutal intimidation tactics used on the nation’s
The berlin wall was a major thing that has happened in history after the second world war. Germany was split in half with four sectors controlled by the Soviet Union controlling the east and with France, United Kingdom, and United States controlling the west. Since Berlin was the capital of Germany before and it being in east Germany being controlled by the soviet It has separated in to the east and west between allied and soviet powers. Between 1949 and 1960 herds of people with more than two million fled from East Germany with most going to West Berlin to receive freedoms they did not have in East Berlin or East Germany . In response to this the Soviet Union had started to make a wall that was completed in 1961, which East Berlin saying it was a anti-fascist protection rampart or a prevention of fascism to rise again.
The Soviet Union was on one side of the Cold War and Western Europe and the United States were on the other. The destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which was the ultimate symbol of the Cold War, was a major turning point in the collapse of communism which led to the unification of East and West Germany. In 1949, the city of Berlin was divided into East Berlin and West Berlin. The city of Berlin was separated because of the Potsdam Agreement. This agreement put Germany formally under the administration of four wartime Allies.