Fall of berlin wall

The Fall of Berlin Wall

The conflict began with the United States wanting a democracy to rise from the ashes of Adolf Hitler's dictatorship. To guarantee freedom, allied military forces build aprivately owned press free of government control in West Germany. People were able to read what they want and make up their own minds. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union rebuilds its Berlin sector as asocialistic republic, the government controls all economic activity, including the media. News is used as a teaching tool. People are supposed to read it and learn what the government wants them to know.By early 1961, as many as 1,000 people a day flee East German communism for a better life in the capitalist west. 

Western media report the exodus. Eastern state-controlled media ignore it. Still,East Berliners can see their neighbors leaving. The migration continues. 

On Aug. 13, 1961, the East German government throws up a 27-mile-long wall of barbed wire across the city, splitting East fromWest Berlin to "protect citizens from capitalism". 

Telephone lines and mail service between East and West Germany are cut and East Berliners can't even visit family members in the West, therazor-sharp wire is replaced with tons of stone, steel and deadly force-The Berlin Wall is born.

By the 1980s, communism was bankrupt. In East Germany, wages were low. Homes bombed during World War IIwere still unrepaired. Citizens lived in poverty; communist leaders lived in luxury. 
 
"The Berlin Wall," said East German leader Erich Honecker, "will still exist in 50 and in 100 years, unless thereasons for its existence are eliminated."
 
But the end was near. The Soviet Union no longer could afford the Cold War - decades of military, political, and economic rivalry with the United States. TwoU.S. presidents who visited the wall made strong statements in support of West Berlin and democracy. In 1963, John F. Kennedy visited. In 1987, Ronald Reagan visited Berlin and demanded: "Mr....