The Fall of the Berlin Wall occurred on the 9th of November 1989 and led to the movement of hundreds of thousands of people between East Germany and West Germany as the Cold War came to an end. In less than a year the fall of the wall led to the unification of Germany on the 3rd of October 1990 and the free passage of people across Central Europe ever since. There simply was no reason to maintain it when the Iron Curtain had collapsed and people were streaming into West Germany and Austria from countries such as Hungary within the Soviet bloc. In a wider sense the history of the Berlin Wall was associated with mass migration between East and West Germany from the late 1940s through to the end of the 1980s. The wall had been built in 1961 to stop the massive number of people who were escaping from East Germany by crossing from East Berlin to West Berlin and it had been broadly effective. However, the purpose it had been built for came to an end as the Cold War wound down at the end of the 1980s and so the wall was spontaneously dismantled on the 9th of November 1989.[1]
Fall of the Berlin Wall chronology of eventsFall of the Berlin Wall chronology of events
As World War II came to an end in the spring and early summer of 1945 the major Allied powers found themselves in control of different parts of Germany. The Soviet Union had captured Berlin and with it much of eastern Germany. While the Western Allies, led by the United States, Britain and France, had captured the north, south and west of the country. In the aftermath of the war these were turned into occupied zones. The Soviets were also in the process of establishing communist governments in each of the countries in Eastern and Central Europe which they had occupied, notably Poland, Hungary, Romania and Czechoslovakia. In 1949 the position of Germany was largely resolved when the Soviet occupied region in the east was declared to be German Democratic Republic, better known as East Germany, and the western occupied zones were established as the Federal Republic of Germany, better known as West Germany.[2]
The position of the city of Berlin was unusual. Although the Soviets had occupied it in 1945, they allowed the Western Allies to claim the western half of the city. From 1949 onwards, while the border between West Germany and East Germany was well guarded, it was relatively easy for people who wanted to escape the repressive communist regime in East Germany to do so by crossing from East Berlin into West Berlin. As a result of this, approximately three and a half million East Germans had fled to the West in the late 1940s and 1950s, many of them younger, better-educated Germans. To stop this enormous labor and brain-drain, the government of East Germany decided in 1961 to commence the building of a huge wall around West Berlin, one which was heavily guarded and would serve to prevent people from escaping to the West by entering West Berlin. The wall was highly successful and the movement of people between the two countries slowed enormously.[3]
The Berlin Wall continued to function until 1989. The second half of the 1980s had witnessed a growing liberalization of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev. One element of this was the Pan-European Picnic on the 19th of August 1989, a demonstration at the Austro-Hungarian border which called for the opening of the border there.[4] This was achieved and in the weeks that followed an enormous exodus of people began from Hungary into Austria. Many of these people were East Germans who were allowed to freely travel into communist Hungary and then continued their passage into Austria and the democratic west of Europe. Consequently, the Berlin Wall now became superfluous and on the 9th of November 1989 Berliners began spontaneously dismantling it. The government of East Germany did not stop them from doing so and opened the gates between the two parts of the city. Over the next year and a half steps were taken to unify Germany into one nation once again and the Cold War came to an end.[5]
Migration associated with the Berlin WallMigration associated with the Berlin Wall
The extent of the migration associated with the fall of the Berlin Wall depends on what parameters one uses. For instance, on the first day that the border between Hungary and Austria was fully opened, there were 30,000 people escaped from East Germany into Austria. Tens of thousands more followed in the weeks that followed. This was a pent up demand to escape to the west. On the morning when the border was first officially opened on the 11th of September 1989 border guards noted the preponderance of East German cars passing between Hungary and Austria, so there was a clear view that most of those passing between the two countries had been Germans.[6] Of course, the fall of the wall itself in Berlin several weeks later led to a fresh exodus, but the details of this are hard to identify with precision, for the simple reason that with the gradual unification of Germany in the months that followed, some of those who passed from East Germany to West Germany in the early winter of 1989 simply returned to their home places within a few months.[7]
Demographic impact of the fall of the Berlin WallDemographic impact of the fall of the Berlin Wall
The overall demographic impact of the fall of the Berlin Wall was relatively limited in many ways, for the simple reason that the reunification of Germany in the months that followed saw many people simply return to where they had been living before fleeing from Hungary to Austria. A far more important demographic development was the flight of three and a half million Germans from the east of the country to the west in the 1950s prior to the construction of the Berlin Wall, on top of millions more who had fled between the end of the war in 1945 and the creation of West and East Germany in 1949. This changed the demography of West and East Germany and alleviated much of the labor shortage which West Germany was encountering in the aftermath of the Second World War.[8]
Explore more about the Fall of the Berlin WallExplore more about the Fall of the Berlin Wall
- Marking the 30th Anniversary of the Berlin Wall's Fall. National Archives
- The Fall of the Berlin Wall: 25 Years On. European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
- The Fall of the Berlin Wall in Photos: An Accident of History That Changed The World. New York Times
References
- ↑ Berlin Wall. History Channel
- ↑ Why the Berlin Wall rose—and how it fell. National Geographic
- ↑ The Berlin Crisis, 1958–1961. Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute. United States Department of State
- ↑ How a pan-European picnic brought down the iron curtain. The Guardian
- ↑ Fall of Berlin Wall: How 1989 reshaped the modern world. BBC News
- ↑ Snipping away at the Iron Curtain: when Hungary opened its Austrian border - archive, 1989. The Guardian
- ↑ 'The Gates in the Wall Stand Open Wide.' What Happened the Day the Berlin Wall Fell. Time
- ↑ VIII Immigration into West Germany Historical Perspectives and Policy Implications. International Monetary Fund