Ice cold disasters that shook the planet
This June 1, 1961 photograph shows the Brandenburg Gate wired shut, but before building of the wall had commenced. The monumental city gate stood on the dividing line between East and West Berlin.
Pictured: conversing across a barricade, members of the East German police force try to explain the situation to a group of West Berliners after the closing of an East-West border point in Berlin.
At midnight on Sunday, August 13, the police and units of the East German security forces began to close the border. By the morning, the border with West Berlin was closed. Construction of the Berlin Wall began the same day.
Pictured: West Berlin police officers, pictured here on August 21, 1960, speak to motorists before they cross under the Brandenburg Gate into East Berlin. Approximately one year later, the landmark gate, which was to form part of the Berlin Wall, was closed by the East.
Pictured: members of East Germany's security forces begin barricading border points into West Berlin using concrete pillars.
This view across Bernauer Street in West Berlin shows closed shops on July 7, 1961. The buildings opposite are situated in East Berlin.
East German troops and workers had begun to tear up streets running alongside the border to make them impassable to most vehicles and to install barbed wire entanglements and fences along the 156 km (96 mi) around the three western sectors of the city as well as the 43 km (26 mi) that divided West and East Berlin.
Pictured: East German police checking drivers' documentation on the streets of Berlin early August 1961 after the East-West border was closed in preparation for the wall's construction.
The first concrete emplacements were erected on August 17. Initially, the wall was little more than a row of pillars supporting lengths of barbed wire.
Pictured: an elderly citizen walking towards West Berlin is turned back by a member of the Combat Group of the Working Class paramilitary organization.
Pictured: two senior members of the British Royal Military Police scan the Brandenburg Gate after it was closed by East German security forces as the wall begins to take shape.
"Attention! You are now leaving West Berlin," reads the sign. After the Second World War, Berlin was divided into four sectors: France controlled the north-western, England the western, and the US the south-western parts of the city, while the whole of the eastern part of Berlin was allocated to the Soviet Union.
This photograph, taken three days after the wall was erected, shows West Berlin police holding back huge crowds on the streets near the Soviet War memorial during demonstrations against the division of the city.
Pictured: members of the Combat Group of the Working Class, deployed to protect the border, stand ready at the Brandenburg Gate, protected by an armored scout vehicle of the border police.
Pictured: a child on roller skates scoots down Luckauer Straße in the Kreuzberg district of East Berlin. The street's proximity to the wall means windows in the basement of the house have been bricked up to avoid facilitating an escape attempt to the West.
The divided city seen from the air. On the right of the wall is East Berlin. On the left, West Berlin.
Pictured: a Volkspolizei patrol make its regular run along the East German side of the wall.
Synonymous with the city, the wall also cut straight through residential neighborhoods. Here, "No Man's Land"—the heavily mined terrain that separated the two walls—divides the village of Klein Glienicke.
Pictured: a man in West Berlin chats over the wall to his East Berlin neighbor shortly after the barrier's construction. The barricade was soon heightened and strengthened to prevent meetings like this.
Construction of the wall took place across the city in coordinated sequence, built by East German laborers supervised by armed police and units of the East German security forces.
Several thousand East German soldiers, policemen, militiamen, and workers turned what was originally a communist refugee wall built to stem the tide of emigrants seeking a better life in the West into a fortification designed to withstand a Western attack. The wall was strengthened in key areas of the city, including in this location near the Reichstag Building.
Pictured: the surface of the road in Potsdamer Platz has been hammered to pieces to provide a foundation for the wall. Even the tram lines weren't spared.
This poignant image captures the heartache and bewilderment felt by many on both sides of the wall as they tried to communicate with family and friends during the early days of the divide, when the barricade was not much more than tangled barbed wire fence.
The wall was lent added dimension and impregnability as its height increased to 3.5 m (11.5 ft). The barricade was reinforced by mesh fencing, signal fencing, anti-vehicle trenches, barbed wire, dogs on long lines, "beds of nails" (also known as "Stalin's Carpet") under balconies hanging over the "death strip," over 116 watchtowers, and 20 bunkers staffed with hundreds of armed soldiers.
Entire apartment buildings in East Berlin set facing the wall were bricked up and their residents relocated for fear of the buildings becoming used as clandestine bases for escape attempts. Tunneling especially was perceived as a threat.
The 18th-century neoclassical Brandenburg Gate, a Berlin landmark that survived the ravages of the Second World War, found itself at the very heart of a divided Berlin, and a carved up Germany. The Berlin Wall stood for 28 years before being torn down as communism across Europe crumbled.
Sources: (Britannica) (History)
See also: Cold War lifeline: how the Berlin airlift kept a city from starving
The wall seen from above clearly showing the so-called "death strip," planted with mines and lined with anti-tank obstacles.
Pictured: Two British military police men keep watch on the streets of Berlin after all East-West border points were closed.
Pictured: members of the East German paramilitary organization Combat Group of the Working Class guard the border crossing near the Brandenburg Gate.
Pictured: people living close to the newly created border are checked for their identification papers by Deutsche Volkspolizei before they can enter their apartments.
Built on the orders of East German communist politician Erich Honecker to stem the mass emigration of Germans from East Berlin to West Berlin, the Berlin Wall was a heavily guarded barrier that physically and ideologically divided the city from 1961 to 1989. In a wider context, the wall came to symbolize the "Iron Curtain" that separated Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. It was constructed in just two weeks, initially as a makeshift barbed wire and concrete block wall. But it was soon strengthened and reinforced to serve as a deadly obstacle to anyone seeking freedom in the West.
In this gallery, click through and be reminded of how quickly the Berlin Wall went up, and the way it cut an entire city in two.
Built on the orders of East German communist politician Erich Honecker to stem the mass emigration of Germans from East Berlin to West Berlin, the Berlin Wall was a heavily guarded barrier that physically and ideologically divided the city from 1961 to 1989. In a wider context, the wall came to symbolize the "Iron Curtain" that separated Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. It was constructed in just two weeks, initially as a makeshift barbed wire and concrete block wall. But it was soon strengthened and reinforced to serve as a deadly obstacle to anyone seeking freedom in the West.
In this gallery, click through and be reminded of how quickly the Berlin Wall went up, and the way it cut an entire city in two.
Incredible images of the building of the Berlin Wall
The deadly obstacle that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989
LIFESTYLE Cold war
Built on the orders of East German communist politician Erich Honecker to stem the mass emigration of Germans from East Berlin to West Berlin, the Berlin Wall was a heavily guarded barrier that physically and ideologically divided the city from 1961 to 1989. In a wider context, the wall came to symbolize the "Iron Curtain" that separated Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. It was constructed in just two weeks, initially as a makeshift barbed wire and concrete block wall. But it was soon strengthened and reinforced to serve as a deadly obstacle to anyone seeking freedom in the West.
In this gallery, click through and be reminded of how quickly the Berlin Wall went up, and the way it cut an entire city in two.