Fall Of The Berlin Wall Essay

The Berlin Wall falls – the symbolic end of communism in Europe

The reunification of Germany was the ultimate cause of collapse of the Soviet control over Eastern Europe. Prior to 1990, the Berlin Wall created the divide between the East Bloc and the West Bloc. It was built around West Berlin to stop East Germans fleeing the Communist State. The wall was also viewed as a protective shell around East Berlin while the west presented it as a prison wall.The whole of Communist Europe was swept by revolution in 1989, one by one, all the Communist states were overthrown by democracy, and by 1990, this great divide brought the Eastern European countries solidarity and democracy.

On October 3rd, 1990, the world viewed the unfolding of thousands of ecstatic, euphoric and exuberant Germans bringing down the most prominent icon of divide at the heart of Europe—the Berlin Wall. For two generations, the Wall was the powerful depiction of the Iron Curtain. In fact, East German border guards had orders to shoot people trying to defect. But just as the Wall had become a symbol of the division of Europe, its fall came to denote the end of the Cold War.

This allowed East Germans to journey through Austria into West Germany. Since the West German population enjoyed a much higher living standard than that of the East, the East Germans were voluntarily inclined to move into West Germany. Eleven thousand East Germans fled from the strict Communist regime to a more democratic Capitalist rule, which proved there extreme feelings towards anti-communism.

This west-ward migration came to a legal end with the collapse of the Berlin wall on the 3rd of October, 1990. As well as denoting and representing the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe this event led to the reunification of Germany. The East German deliberation allowed the Chancellor of West Germany, Helmut Kohl, to reunite Germany under Western conditions. This meant a consolidated Germany would join NATO and the European