Building Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall was a barrier that surrounded West Berlin and prevented access to it from East Berlin and adjacent areas of East Germany. The Berlin Wall was built on the night between August 12 and 13th, 1961, as the result of a decree by the East German Volkskammer. However, the construction of the actual Berlin Wall did not begin until August 17. When the Berlin Wall was being built, it was a weekend where most Berliners slept while the East German government began to close the border. The East German troops began to tear up streets to install barbed wire fences through Berlin, which was the original Berlin Wall. It was constructed of cider blocks but was later replaced by a series of concrete walls that topped with the barbed wire and reinforced with guard dog patrols, 466 guards on duty with machine-guns in the watchtowers, and mines all over the place. The following days, construction brigades began to replace the barriers with a solid wall.

    The barrier also known as the Berlin Wall, was built at the line of segregation between the eastern sector of Berlin and the western sector because of economic and political purposes. A major reason why the wall was built was because between the years of 1949 to 1962, approximately 2.5 million East Germans consisting of skilled workers, professionals, and intellectuals that had fled from East Germany to West Germany. Because of this action, the loss threatened to destroy the economic capability of Eastern Germany which caused them to build the wall.
    Throughout the years from the time the wall was built, the security for the wall became more strict. When the wall was first built, the Germans and Soviet authorities would continue to allow a limited movement between the sectors in order to lead the Kennedy administration to think that the wall was a temporary establishment. By the time the West found out that the wall was a permanent barrier, it was too late to break it down. After August 23, 1961, citizens of western Berlin were no longer allowed to cross over into East Berlin. As this went on, there were forced evacuations of households, there were confirmed cases that over a hundred people were killed trying to climb or attempt to escape over the wall. The Berlin Wall was so bad that the German Democratic Republic (GDR) called the wall an "Anti-fascist protection wall".
    Through the courses of the years, the Berlin Wall has gone from only being 15 feet [5 m] high of concrete wall with barbed wire.   In 1975, the wall was rebuilt with new concrete segments. By the 1980s, the wall was electrified fences which extended 28 miles (45 km), dividing the city and extended 75 miles (120 km) further. This huge border broke through 192 streets, 97 leading to East Berlin, and 95 into the West. Between the years that this wall was being built and reinforced, there were 37,800 successful escapes through, over or under the wall.

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