Berlin: The Ultimate Cold War Symbol

Barbara KrasnerHIST 5650-80 Nuclear America

Professor MacLeodAugust 6, 2014

Berlin—The Ultimate Cold War Symbol

The watershed event was the opening of the Berlin Wall in November

[1989], which not only undid the division of Europe, the most obvious

manifestation of the Cold War, but also resurrected the German question

—the issue that had triggered the Cold War in the first place.1

Nazi Germany’s capital city symbolized, as H.W. Brands

attests in the above epigram, the Cold War. At several points

along the Cold War timeline, Berlin played an integral role

between East and West. This paper examines historiography created

by historians, media correspondents, and oral histories at major

milestones along the chronology: (1) the initial division by four

occupying powers in 1945; (2) the Soviet blockade and Western

1 H.W. Brands, The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 209.

Krasner, Berlin: The Ultimate Cold War Symbol, 2

airlift in 1948; (3) the East German uprising in 1953; (4) the

Berlin “crisis” of 1958-1961; (5) the erection of the Berlin Wall

separating the Eastern and Western sectors in 1961; and (6) the

dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The events themselves

span the duration of the Cold War itself.

To look at Berlin also entails an examination of Germany,

which at the end of World War II, remained an unresolved issue.

It is important to take a holistic view, and not just the

American perspective or even Western perspective. Additionally,

it is likewise important to view historical debates in an

overarching Cold War context.

International scholars came together to produce The Cambridge

History of the Cold War, a set of three volumes, edited by Melvyn P.

Leffler and Odd Arne Westad. Their approach to the subject of

Berlin is clinical. However, an article by University of Bonn

historian Hans-Peter Schwartz, “The Division of Germany, 1945-

1949,” argues that in 1945 Germany was an American problem,

according to U.S. Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau.

Schwartz enumerates several measures to castrate the country

after its unconditional surrender and refers to the division of


Germany as “a unique historical experiment” that was doomed to

fail.2 Among the reasons for the failure, Schwartz lists

ideological incompatibility and the interdependence of the

Germany economy with other western economies. Schwartz agrees

with other historians when he writes, “…the Soviet Union…had to

work out policies to thwart the attractiveness of Western

pluralism and freedom.”3 Schwartz, though, references the

division of Germany to wartime planning, specifically Britain’s

proposed assignment of an occupation zone to the Soviet Union

that represented 40 percent of Germany measured by 1937 borders.

Stalin accepted the proposal, as did Britain and the United

States.

George F. Kennan cautioned in 1945: “Better dismembered

Germany in which the West, at least, can act as a buffer to the

forces of totalitarianism than a united Germany which again

brings these forces to the North Sea.”4 Like other historians,

Schwartz discusses the division of Berlin as “one of the most

crucial decisions, shaping more than forty years of the Cold War 2 Hans-Peter Schwartz, “The Division of Germany, 1945-1949,” in Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Volume 1: Origins (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 134.3 Ibid., 135.4 Quoted in Schwartz, 141.


in Europe.”5 He notes that Eisenhower and U.S. Military Governor

Lucius Clay did not negotiate airtight agreements about access

routes to the western sector of Berlin. Clay also agreed to the

Soviet proposal that Western powers take responsibility in their

respective sectors to provide food and fuel to the Germans.

Campbell Craig and Fredrik Logevall in America’s Cold War: The

Politics of Insecurity present Berlin in their book’s overarching

context. Soviets began to interfere with western transports in

Berlin and two mini-blockades of West Berlin were enacted in the

spring of 1948. Secretly, however, western currency was being

floated throughout western Germany and in June 1948, throughout

western Berlin.6 But western currency could not be used if there

were no goods to buy. Stalin enacted a physical blockade of

Berlin to prevent all traffic from the west to enter. With

Berliners already facing catastrophic food shortages and

starvation, he hoped they would side with the Soviets and

American economic aid would become meaningless.

5 Ibid., 139.6 Campbell Craig and Fredrik Logevall, America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity (Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), 94.


Craig and Logevall’s discussion of Berlin begins with the

stockade, and like Brands, they relate the results of the

blockade—the sealing off between East and West—as “the greatest

symbol of the Cold War in Europe.”7 Even without the wall, the

division represented the gap between the capitalist and

communistic ideologies. Craig and Logevall address the physical

stockade and the Western response through airlift of critical

supplies. Stalin’s intent was to drive West Berliners to the East

in desperation. They write there was an average of one plane

landing every 62 seconds.8 Through the airlift, Americans and

British demonstrated they were willing to risk war to hold on to

West Berlin.

Stalin then had two choices: Shoot down the U.S. and British

planes or let it continue. Choosing the former would no doubt

lead to military action. Stalin offered supplies to any West

Berliner who registered with communist authorities. Only 20,000

people accepted his offer.9

7 Ibid., 93.8 Ibid, 95.9 Ibid., 95.


The blockade and the airlift were among the contributing

factors to the formalization of two new Germanys and the division

of the capital city into East and West, as Craig and Logevall are

quick to point out. This placed a capitalist foothold in the form

of West Berlin deep within the Soviet sphere.

Schwartz notes the long-time historical debate over American

policy and the Allied Control Council to manage Germany. He also

states the “undisputable”10 fact that Clay willingly acquiesced

to Soviet demand. Still, America vetoed Soviet proposals to

create a centralized Germany.

At first glance, this appears to clear up an inconsistency

raised by Michael Cox and Caroline Kennedy-Pipe in their article,

“The Tragedy of American Diplomacy: Rethinking the Marshall

Plan.” While Cox and Kennedy-Pipe state the U.S.S.R. wanted a

united, demilitarized, and democratic Germany11, Craig and

Logevall assert that for Stalin, “no outcome could be worse than

an independent, unified, capitalist Germany that was completely

10 Schwartz, 142.11 Michael Cox and Caroline Kennedy Pipe, “The Tragedy of American Diplomacy: Rethinking the Marshall Plan,” Journal of Cold War Studies 27, no.1 (Winter 2005), 126.


beyond his control.”12 The contentious issue between the two

viewpoints was “unified.”

Schwartz clarifies and notes that Stalin’s stance was not

consistent. Rather, the Soviet leader vacillated between three

conflicting options: (1) a united pro-Soviet Germany, which he

wanted to control; (2) a demilitarized and neutral Germany that

would serve as a buffer between the Soviet and Western spheres of

influence; and (3) a client state in the Soviet zone of

occupation. Schwartz writes, “From the spring of 1945 until the

end of his life in March 1953, he [Stalin] remained committed to

preserving German unity—of course, on conditions favorable to the

Soviet Union.”13 Stalin manipulated the party system and created

a base for communist power in the Soviet sector of Berlin. To

Schwartz, the blockade was the Soviet Union’s worst mistake and a

desperate gamble.14

The Soviets and the French, perhaps, had more at stake than

other nations; France directly bordered Germany and the U.S.S.R.

indirectly bordered it through its sphere of influence. The

12 Craig and Logevall, 93.13 Schwartz, 146.14 Ibid., 148.


French, brought into the mix by the British, had its own agenda.

They came into the Allied Control Council ready to agree to

Soviet proposals. Paris wanted to cede eastern Germany to Poland,

internationalize the industrial Ruhr, install the Saar and

western Rhineland regions into autonomous states, and dismember

the rest of Germany to loosely connected states, much like its

status before Germany’s 1871 unification. In the end, however,

the French sided with the British and a united Germany was no

longer an issue.

Schwartz raises a plethora of questions that remained

unresolved even after two years of occupation, not the least of

which included: the determination of Germany’s borders, whether

it be centralized or federal, whether it should be allowed to

serve as a bridge between East and West, what should the duration

of the occupation be, and what controls should be put in place.

Between the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and the Moscow

Conference, some answers provided much-needed clarification. The

western zones would be combined to form the Federal Republic of

Germany with Clay as its founding father. The eastern zone became

the German Democratic Republic. The western sectors of Berlin


served both as a reminder to the West that it was vulnerable to

Soviet pressure and as a reminder to the East that it was

vulnerable to capitalism.

Schwartz also raises a frequently-asked question among

historians then and now: Who was to blame for the partition?15

The tone of the question already implies the division was not an

optimal solution. Schwartz contends that no definitive

conclusions have been reached in the historiography by

traditionalists or revisionists.

Another question arises in analyzing this period: Where were

the Germans in all of this? Through unconditional surrender,

Schwartz responds that the “Germans had no real choice of their

own.”16 He notes an October 1947 survey in which West Germans

placed 63 percent trust in the United States to treat them

fairly, 45 percent in Great Britain, four percent in France, and

zero in the Soviet Union. Schwartz attributes this anti-Soviet

sentiment to Red Army atrocities in its occupation of East

Germany and Berlin. The country’s division was not deemed to be a

permanent installation. As Schwartz states, “For the moment,

15 Ibid., 137 and 151.16 Ibid., 149.


Germany was divided. But how and when the division could be

overcome became of the main issues of the Cold War in Germany.”17

In soup-to-nuts Cold War treatments, like that of Craig and

Logevall, the fate of the Berliners in their immediate, postwar

day-to-day existence is hardly noted beyond the mention of fuel

and food shortages. In vivid footage, however, PBS’ “People’s

Century, Part 3: Brave New World,” shows life among the rubble in

Berlin, further detailed through interviews with people who

experienced it. The filmed narrative begins to fill the gap for

that much-needed German perspective.

The historiography then jumps ahead to 1953 with slight

mention of an East German uprising. Craig and Logevall do not

address it, but Csaba Békés, director of the Cold War History

Research Centre in Budapest, and well-respected BBC correspondent

Elisabeth Barker do in their articles. Following Stalin’s death,

East Germany leaders no longer wanted to follow Moscow

instructions. Protests over economic conditions erupted into

anti-Communist demonstrations, quieted by Soviet tanks. Békés

estimates that about half a million people participated in 560

17 Ibid., 151.


East German cities.18 Barker merely mentions it in passing on her

way to discussing the larger events of 1958-1962 in “The Berlin

Crisis, 1958-1962.”

Barker categorizes the chronological events that comprise

the Berlin crisis: (1) November 1958 to March 1959; (2) summer of

1959 and attempts to negotiate a Berlin agreement; (3) September

1959 to May 1960, which began with early Eisenhower and

Khrushchev talks and ended with the Francis Gary Powers U2

incident; (4) a brief lull period from May 1960 to June 1961; and

(5) the June 1961 Kennedy/Khrushchev meeting in Vienna and

Khrushchev’s new threat concerning Berlin. In August 1961, the

Berlin Wall went up.

In the initial phase, Western forces still occupied West

Berlin, what Craig and Logevall call the “abnormal situation in

the city” and a “practical nightmare” for Soviet leader

Khrushchev.19 Barker calls the western presence an “anachronism”

in Khrushchev’s eyes and the final obstacle in consolidating the

Soviet bloc. She also speculates that the East German government—

18 Csaba Békés, “East Central Europe, 1953-1956,” in Leffler and Westad, Volume 1, 336.19 Craig and Logevall, 183.


struggling with economic problems and seemingly unable to stem

the flow of refugees streaming to the West—may have wanted to

increase prestige and authority.20 Thousands of East Germans and

other East Europeans defected easily. Berlin “was the very symbol

of America’s commitment to European defense”21 and Eisenhower had

to agree it was an abnormal situation.

For Barker, Khrushchev’s November 10, 1958 speech “started

the whole crisis.”22

The imperialists have turned the German question into an abiding source of international tension. The ruling circles of Western Germany are doing everything to whip up military passions against the German Democratic Republic, against the Polish People’s Republic, against all the socialist countries…We want to warn the leaders of the Federal Republic of Germany:The road followed by Western Germany today is a road dangerous to peace in Europe and fatal to Western Germany herself. Indeed, can realistically minded politicians today hope for the success of a new “march to the East”?...To march against the East would mean marching to death for Western Germany.23

20 Elisabeth Barker, “The Berlin Crisis, 1958-1962,” International Affairs 39, no. 1(January 1963), 60.21 Craig and Logevall, 184.22 Barker, 60.23 Nikita S. Khrushchev, “Speech by Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev at a Soviet-Polish Meeting in Moscow, November 1958.” Web. Accessed 3 August 2014. http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=3089

http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=3089


Khrushchev accused the West of violating the Potsdam

Agreement of 1945. But the speech, while certainly incendiary,

was not the sole spark. Barker also credits the November 7, 1958

“dangerous”24 note from the Soviets to the Western powers stating

that Berlin agreements were considered null and void. The note

called for the cessation of West Berlin occupation and proposed

its demilitarization. It set a six-month time limit for

implementation. In response, the Western powers met and agreed to

hold firm; keeping the commitment became a matter of integrity.

But faced with the prospect of nuclear war, Eisenhower searched

for a way out of the ultimatum. Great Britain provided the

solution by reminding Eisenhower that all NATO members had to

agree to the use of nuclear weapons. Although he was willing to

hold four-way talks about Berlin, Khrushchev did not implement

his ultimatum. The Soviets withdrew their time limit on March 2,

1959.

Barker suggests that Khrushchev wanted to perpetuate Berlin

in crisis as a bargaining chip on bigger issues.25 Craig and

24 Barker, 63.25 Ibid., 62.


Logevall simply assert he wanted to force the issue.26 Here it is

useful to interject the Soviet perspective offered by Vladislav

Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, who call Khrushchev an

“angler.”27 Barker does not raise the consequence of nuclear war,

as Craig and Logevall do, if the Western powers didn’t adhere to

the time limit ultimatum, nor does she discuss the NATO loophole

Craig and Logevall discuss as Eisenhower’s ace-in-the-whole

resolution.

In the second phase, another foreign ministers conference

and further negotiations took place. What seems to be

indisputable among historians was that each power wanted to

strike at least a temporary agreement. The question, however,

remained the terms of that agreement and no closure was reached.

The third phase opened peacefully enough with talks between

Eisenhower and Khrushchev at Camp David. But the capture of an

American U2 has caused argument among historians relative to its

impact on these talks. It seems clear, however, that the U2

incident halted the talks. According to Barker, Khrushchev also 26 Craig and Logevall, 183.27 Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, “Khrushchev and Kennedy: The Taming of the Cold War” in Klaus Larres and Ann Lane (eds.), The Cold War. Blackwell Essential Readings in History (Oxford and Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers,2001), 113.


made it clear that he had no intention of setting a new time

limit on Berlin’s future.28

The fourth phase was ostensibly Khrushchev’s hiatus from the

issue, biding his time until Eisenhower left the presidential

office. The fifth phase highlighted the meeting of Kennedy and

Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961. Khrushchev outlined his

demands, which echoed those of 1959, and reintroduced the six-

month time limit. Here Craig and Logevall present a gritty

portrait: Khrushchev wanted to reopen the Berlin issue. While

Kennedy said it was not in the Soviet Union’s best interest for

America to “suffer the humiliation of abandoning Berlin,”29

Khrushchev held firm. According to Craig and Logevall, the

president confided to a columnist that Khrushchev “just ‘beat

hell out of me.’”30 Like Eisenhower, Kennedy had to respond, but

he had fewer options. He formed a Berlin steering group and he

consulted Eisenhower. The Kennedy solution, shared with Great

Britain and France, entailed release of Berlin from the four

occupying powers with the thought of eventual reunification.

28 Barker, 68.29 Craig and Logevall, 198.30 Ibid., 199.


Access, then, continued as a major issue. Khrushchev’s response

was for East German soldiers to prevent access to West Berlin

from the east while keeping roadways linking West Germany and

West Berlin open.

However prior to this, East German leader Walter Ulbricht

tried to force Khrushchev’s hand toward definitive action in East

Germany’s best interest. There was the joke that the only person

who would be left in the GDR would be Ulbricht himself.31 Zubok

and Pleshakov maintain that the idea of a wall, or something like

it was expected, but that the decision was spontaneously made.

The commander of the Soviet troops in Germany developed the

strategy, and Ulbricht “beamed with delight.”32

Within the next several weeks, East German soldiers erected

a wall of barbed wire and concrete cinder blocks to separate East

and West Berlin, dramatically depicted on film in the PBS

production of “People’s Century, Part 3: Brave New World”

episode. The purpose was to seal the border, stop the tidal wave

of refugees33, and fend off another uprising. Craig and Logevall 31 Zubok and Pleshakov quoting Oleg Troyanovsky, 111.32 Ibid., 114.33 Between 1945 and 1961, ca. two and a half million fled from East to West Berlin, reducing the GDR’s population by about 15 percent. Frederick Taylor, The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961-1989 (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), xviii.


state the wall “imprisoned West Berliners on a kind of Cold War

island.”34 To Zubok and Pleshakov, the wall represented an

ideological and propaganda defeat for Khrushchev, although they

state, “The disintegration of the GDR, economically and

politically, was stopped and reversed.”35 The two viewpoints do

not align.

More than just a sealed border, however, the wall had more

far-reaching consequences for Berliners: division of family, loss

of jobs, and loss of a way of life. While Craig and Logevall

gloss over the dramatic effect of this wall, and Barker refers to

the wall as an act of “human suffering,”36 the PBS series

“People’s Century,” especially “Part 3: Brave New World,” shows

it: the trauma of families split apart, the escape attempts—

sometimes successful—from East to West. The footage is made all

the more real through interviews with those who escaped

successfully.

According to Craig and Logevall, Kennedy was relieved that a

war was averted and was “content to accept the Berlin Wall.”37

34 Craig and Logevall, 200.35 Zubok and Pleshakov, 117.36 Barker, 69.37 Craig and Logevall, 200-201.


The solution may have stabilized the Berlin situation in

superpower eyes—“it was an expedient local solution to a volatile

geopolitical problem”38—but no German involvement, other than

through Soviet order, receives mention. This appears to be a

gaping hole in their discussion, but there are clues that the

East and possibly West German perspectives figured into their

analysis. They footnote, for instance, Hope Harrison’s Driving the

Soviets Up the Wall, a treatment about the tense Soviet-East German

relations based on the newly-available archival materials39. In

his Foreign Affairs review of the book, Robert Legvold notes the

importance of third party roles in shaping the Cold War. Harrison

was not alone in this perspective, Legvold concludes.

The wall now stood. Craig and Logevall insist the structure

did not stem the flow of refugees40, but the heavily patrolled

wall clearly did to some extent. However, as East Berliners and

East Germans risked their lives to escape to the West, Craig and

Logevall correctly point out: Millions of people in the Soviet

38 Ibid.39 Harrison’s work also figures into Zubok and Pleshakov.40 Craig and Logevall, 354.


bloc had lost faith in the Soviet system.41 Negotiations over

access did not proceed.

The fall of the Berlin Wall perhaps receives the bulk of

scholarly attention relative to its trigger events and

attribution of responsibility. John Mueller, for instance, argues

that the Soviet’s staunch support of Communist ideology

threatened the West and that formed the crux of the Cold War.

When Gorbachev backed away from that position, the Cold War

ended. Leading up to the penultimate event, James Mann, in his

New York Times op-ed, notes historical debate about President

Ronald Reagan and whether he was the one responsible for the end

of the Cold War. Michael Tomasky boldly suggests the man of the

hour was Hungarian foreign minister Gyula Horn, who allowed East

German refugees into Hungary. But who was responsible for the

dismantling of the Berlin Wall and was it the ultimate symbol of

the Cold War?

Mueller contends that many scholars and the press thought

the Cold War ended in the spring of 1989. The New York Times, for

41 Ibid.


instance, declared it over on April 2, before the wall fell.42

However, the same article, says Mueller, stated, “No one seems to

have a good answer about the division of Europe, always the

dangerous East-West question.”43

Mann credits Reagan’s direct pleas to Mikhail Gorbachev as

catalysts. Reagan’s first plea came through his June 12, 1987

speech in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate and the Wall. In

this speech, he implored, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”44

To respond to the debate whether the speech was the touchstone or

mere show, Mann believes neither of these possibilities is the

truth. Rather, he demonstrates the complexity of the issue which

cannot be merely taken at face value. He cites Reagan enthusiasts

with “the triumphal school of interpretation: the president

spoke, the Soviets quaked, the wall came down.”45 Mann references

the 1995 book, Germany United and Europe Transformed, penned by

National Security Council officials from the George H.W. Bush

administration, Condoleeza Rice and Philip Zelikow. He believes

42 John Mueller, “What Was the Cold War About? Evidence from Its Ending,” Political Science Quarterly 119, no. 4 (Winter 2004-05), 621.43 Ibid., 625.44 As quoted in James Mann, “Tear Down That Myth,” New York Times, June 10, 2007.Web. Accessed 30 July 2014.45 Ibid.


they minimized the significance of the speech. Several other

administration officials agreed with the Rice/Zelikow assessment

and Reagan’s own former Secretary of State never mentioned the

speech in his lengthy memoir. To Mann, however, the speech

dramatized a shift in Reagan’s thinking and indirectly referenced

the shift in the Soviet Union’s leadership through Gorbachev.

Reagan pleaded for Gorbachev to come to the gate, open the gate,

tear down the wall. As Mann demonstrates, Reagan’s calling

attention to the wall in his speeches was not new. He did it in

1982 and again in 1986. In June 1987, the noteworthy difference

was “not the idea that the wall should be torn down, but the

direct appeal to Mr. Gorbachev to do it.”46

Mann astutely observes the complexity, easily obscured by

the 1989 events and their rapid domino effect. Craig and Logevall

make no mention of Reagan’s speech. Instead they present the

context of upheavals throughout the Soviet bloc: Poland, the

Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania.

The East German upheaval, they contend, was the most dramatic

46 Ibid.


“velvet revolution.”47 A new governmental leader, Egon Krenz,

“apparently”48 granted permission to open the gates of the

Berlin Wall on the night of November 9.49 He put the proverbial

crack in the dike and the wall fell over the course of a few

weeks. Interestingly, Craig and Logevall provide an anecdote in

which historian John Lewis Gaddis entered his classroom on

November 10 and announced to his graduate students, “Well, the

Cold War ended yesterday.”50

Even after the wall fell, the New York Times, the Bush

administration, and Kennan himself believed it would take years

to work out German unification. Here, the PBS “People’s Century,

Part 25: 1989, People Power” segment shows us Eastern Europe’s

new reality: the lure of Western freedom (through music and blue

jeans), the risks taken to break free (the examples of East

Berlin, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Gdansk, Poland), the power

of “overcoming the monster” as one East German hospital worker,

47 Romania’s upheaval was bloody, brutal, and fatal for civilians and for dictator Ceausescu and his wife. PBS, “People’s Century, Part 25: People Power,” originally broadcast 1998 and 1999. Web. Accessed 3 August 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AQw9t0NUD448 Craig and Logevall, 341.49 One is eerily reminded that the November 9-10 dates of the fall of the Berlin Wall coincide with the 1938 Kristallnacht raids on German Jewish communities and Khrushchev’s catalytic November 10, 1958 speech.50 Quoted in Craig and Logevall, 341.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AQw9t0NUD4


previously imprisoned for distributing anticommunist literature,

took one step after another from East to West, and “We Shall

Overcome” translated and sung in Czech, epitomizing the

movement.51

German historian Helga Haftendorn poses the all-important

question:

…how was it possible that in 1989 the Wall that for twenty-eight years had separated the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) crumbled visibly, and that unification took place with the consent of all four powers…52

Haftendorn agrees with Tomasky, insofar as she notes East

German refugee flux into Hungary, Budapest in particular, as well

as Warsaw and Prague.

As Robert Legvold suggests, the third-party perspective is

integral to the historiography of the end of the Berlin Wall.

Without, for instance, both FRG and GDR views, the picture cannot

be complete. Through many months of discussions and negotiations

between the two Germanys and the four occupying powers (“2+4”),

51 PBS, “People’s Century, Part 25: 1989, People Power.” Web, originally broadcast 1998 and 1999. Accessed 3 August 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AQw9t0NUD452 Helga Haftendorn, “The Unification of Germany, 1985-1991” in Leffler and Westad, The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Volume III, 333.



foreign ministers signed the final settlement regarding Germany

on September 12, 1990; it went into effect on October 1. On

October 3, the German Democratic Republic ceased to exist as it

merged with the Federal Republic of Germany.

Of the origins of the Cold War, David Reynolds wrote, “For

the Soviet Union, any attempt to rehabilitate its mortal enemy,

Germany, without security and reparations was equally

intolerable. The struggle for mastery of Germany lay at the heart

of the grand alliance and also of the Cold War.”53 Even

Haftendorn agrees: “The Cold War and the division of Germany were

closely related; at the core of both was the question of which

power was to dominate the center of Europe: the Soviet Union or

the United States. The Berlin Wall was its starkest symbol.”54

Historians from various nations have debated and continue to

debate trigger events and their contributions and meaning.

However, it appears Berlin and the Berlin Wall, in particular,

did indeed symbolize the Cold War. Although the physical

manifestation of the divide did not appear until 1961, the wall

53 David Reynolds, “The European Dimension of the Cold War” in Melvyn P. Leffler and David S. Painter (eds.) Origins of the Cold War: An International History (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 136.54 Haftendorn, 333.


came to symbolize the Iron Curtain for the four occupying powers

and for the two Germanys. Without it, the Cold War ceased to

exist.


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HarperCollins, 2007.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2YukjGtT5o&list=PL2FBD4A01E75D885C&index=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2YukjGtT5o&list=PL2FBD4A01E75D885C&index=1

Date post:	26-Feb-2023
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Berlin: The Ultimate Cold War Symbol

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