division of east and west berlin
After World War II was the Cold War in the late 1940s, when Germany was caught up in a conflict between communism and capitalism so it divided into West Germany (the “Federal Republic of Germany”) and East Germany (the “German Democratic Republic”). West Germany was large and prosperous, while East Germany was much small and struggling. The “Iron Curtain,” a defended border, divided Germany. However, Berlin was still a city of relatively free movement that East Germans would use to escape to West Germany to search for political freedom and higher quality of life. Since the Communist were losing young, skilled workers that would benefit their economy, they decided to seal East Berlin off from West Berlin, so no one else could escape. Sunday, August 13, 1961 is known as “barbed wire Sunday,” when they created a barbed wire border that soon developed into a tall, hundred-mile long cement wall that was heavily guarded and booby-trapped and enclosed West Berlin. There was outrage in West Germany, and the protests in the East were suppressed by the secret Communist police, the Stasi.