BerlinWall; Sunday, 8 November 2009 / 9:48 pm
knocked down during the year 1989, & it's the 20th anni of the fall tmr.
9th nov, 1989.
Bill&Tom are also born in the year 1989, :o
The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a concrete barrier erected by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) (East Germany) that completely encircled the
city of West Berlin, separating it from East Germany, including East Berlin. The Wall included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, which circumscribed a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, "fakir beds" and other defenses.
The separate and much longer inner German Border (the IGB) demarcated the border between East and West Germany. Both borders came to symbolize the Iron Curtain between Western
Europe and the Eastern Bloc.
Prior to the Wall's erection, 3.5 million
East Germans had avoided Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions and escaped into West Germany, many over the border between East and West Berlin. During its existence from 1961 to 1989, the Wall stopped almost all such emigration and separated the GDR from West Berlin for more than a quarter of a century. After its erection, around 5,000 people attempted to escape over the wall, with estimates of the resulting death toll varying between around 100 and 200.
During a revolutionary wave sweeping across the Eastern Bloc, the East German government announced on November 9, 1989, after several weeks of civil unrest, that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans climbed onto and crossed the wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. Over the next few weeks, parts of the wall were chipped away by a euphoric public and by souvenir hunters; industrial equipment was later used to remove almost all of the rest. The fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for German reunification, which was formally concluded on October 3, 1990.
Post-war Germany
After the end of World War II
in Europe, what remained of Nazi Germany west of the Oder-Neisse line was divided into four occupation zones (per the Potsdam Agreement), each one controlled by one of the four occupying Allied powers: the Americans, British, French and the Soviet Union. The capital, Berlin, as the seat of the Allied
Control Council, was similarly subdivided into four sectors despite the city lying deep inside the Soviet zone. Within two years, divisions occurred between the Soviets and the other occupying powers, including the Soviets' refusal to agree to reconstruction plans making post-war Germany self-sufficient and a detailed accounting of the industrial plants, goods infrastructure already removed by the Soviets. Britain, France, the United States and the Benelux countries later met to combine the non-Soviet zones of the country into one zone
for reconstruction and approve the extension of the Marshall Plan for European reconstruction to Germany.
something liddat i think? :X
Ah-mazin, don't you think? :/
Labels: Niemand hat die Absicht eine Mauer zu errichten :o