Explanation: During the Cold War, Germany was split into East Germany and West Germany. Berlin, likewise, was split into East Berlin and West Berlin. West Berlin was a ‘popular’ destination for East Germans seeking to get out of East Germany, since West Berlin was an exclave in East Germany.
Rumors in East Germany abounded about the government’s plans to build a wall to stop East Germans from ‘escaping’ through West Berlin. The government denied it.
Predictably, the government was, in fact, building a wall, complete with barbed wire and kill-zones covered by machine guns.
East Germans still risked their lives trying to escape to West Germany.
“Nobody has the intention to build a wall.”
They just built one unintentionally. Happens all the time.
Merely a room separator.
And contrary to many people’s imagination, the wall did not run north south through all of Germany. ‘West Berlin’ was just the west half of Berlin, controlled by the West (ie not the ussr like the rest of Germany ) and it was like an island surrounded by east Germany. The wall itself was mostly just across the city north/south but with barbed wire mined death zones elsewhere. The West had to fly supplies in initially, feeding the 2 million there with a peak of one flight every 45s for nearly a year.
Yep! The Berlin Airlift, just to be clear for anyone reading (not saying you were implying otherwise), was before the Berlin Wall was built.
And while the Berlin Wall did not run across the East/West German border as a whole, the border was quite gruesome by similar (though less explicitly wall-like) means.
