The Cold War

1
The Cold War

• Rivalry For Global Supremacy
• 1945-1962

2
Background
The Cold War was the period of protracted
conflict and competition between the United
States and the Soviet Union and their allies from
the late 1940s until the late 1980s. The main
U.S. allies were Western Europe, Japan and
Canada. The main Soviet allies were Eastern
Europe and China. In 1947 the term "Cold War" was
introduced to describe emerging tensions between
the two former wartime allies. There never was a
major battle between the U.S. and the Soviet
Union. But there was a half-century of military
buildup, and political battles for support around
the world, including major proxy wars. Although
the U.S. and the Soviet Union had been wartime
allies against Nazi Germany, the two sides
differed on how to reconstruct the postwar world
even before the end of the Second World War. Over
the next 4 decades, the Cold War spread outside
Europe to every region of the world, as the U.S.
sought the "containment" of communism and forged
numerous alliances to this end, particularly in
Western Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast
Asia.
3
Critical Moments

• There were repeated crises that threatened to
  escalate into world wars but never did, notably
  the Korean War (1950-1953), the Cuban Missile
  Crisis (1962), and the Vietnam War (1964-1975).
  There were also periods when tension was reduced
  as both sides sought détente. The Cold War ended
  in the late 1980s following the launching of
  Mikhail Gorbachev's reform programs, perestroika
  and glasnost. The Soviet Union consequently ceded
  power over Eastern Europe and dissolved in 1991.

4
Yalta Conference

• At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the
  Allies attempted to define the framework for a
  postwar settlement in Europe, but could not reach
  firm agreements on the crucial questions the
  occupation of Germany, postwar reparations from
  Germany, and loans. No final consensus was
  reached on Germany, other than to agree to a
  Soviet request for reparations totaling 10
  billion. Debates over the composition of Poland's
  postwar government were also held.

• Following the Allied victory, the Soviets
  effectively occupied the countries of Eastern
  Europe and the U.S. occupied much of Western
  Europe. In occupied Germany the U.S. and the
  Soviet Unionthe world's two superpowers, along
  with France and Britain, established zones of
  occupation and a loose framework for four-power
  control.

5
Potsdam

• At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, serious
  differences emerged over the future development
  of Germany and Eastern Europe. The U.S. was
  represented by a new president, Harry S. Truman,
  succeeded to the office upon Roosevelt's death.
  Truman was unaware of Roosevelt's plans for
  postwar engagement with Soviet Union, and
  generally uninformed about foreign policy and
  military matters. Therefore, the new president
  was initially reliant upon a set of advisers,
  including Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. This
  group tended to take a harder line toward Moscow
  than had Roosevelt.
• One week after the Potsdam Conference ended, the
  atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki added
  to Soviet distrust of the United States. Shortly
  following the attacks, Stalin protested to U.S.
  officials when Truman offered the Soviets little
  real influence in occupied Japan.

6
Polish Question

• Of all the countries involved in the war,
  Poland lost the highest percentage of its
  citizens over 6 million perished, half of them
  Polish Jews. At the war's conclusion, Poland's
  borders were shifted westwards. The new Poland
  emerged 20 smaller by 77,500 square km . The
  shift forced the migration of millions of people
  Poles, Germans, Ukrainians, and Jews.

As a result of these events, Poland became, for
the first time in its multicultural history, an
ethnically unified country. A Polish minority is
still present in neighbouring countries of
Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, as well as in
other countries. The Soviet Union instituted a
new Communist government in Poland, analogous to
much of the rest of the Eastern Bloc. Military
alignment within the Warsaw Pact throughout the
Cold War was also part of this change.
7
Communism in Czechoslovakia

• The Third Republic came into being in April 1945.
  Its government installed and moved to Prague in
  May, was a National Front coalition in which
  three socialist partiesKSC, Czechoslovak Social
  Democratic Party, and Czechoslovak National
  Socialist Partypredominated. Certain
  non-socialist parties were included in the
  coalition among them were the Catholic People's
  Party (in Moravia) and the Democratic Party
  (Slovakia).
• Following Nazi Germany's surrender, some 2.9
  million ethnic Germans were expelled from
  Czechoslovakia with Allied approval.
  Czechoslovakia fell within the Soviet sphere of
  influence.
• Although the communist-led government initially
  intended to participate in the Marshall Plan, it
  was forced by Moscow to back out.

8
The Iron Curtain

• The "Iron Curtain" was the boundary which
  symbolically, ideologically, and physically
  divided Europe into two separate areas from the
  end of World War II until the end of the Cold
  War, roughly 1945 to 1991. The term was coined by
  Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and made
  famous by Winston Churchill.

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the
Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across
the continent. Behind that line lie all the
capitals of the ancient states of Central and
Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna,
Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all
these famous cities and the populations around
them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere.
9
Truman Doctrine

• The Truman Doctrine was a United States foreign
  policy designed to contain Communism by stopping
  its spread to Greece and Turkey. Gaining the
  support of the Republicans who controlled
  Congress, President Harry S. Truman proclaimed
  the Doctrine on March 12, 1947. It stated that
  the U.S. would support Greece and Turkey with
  economic and military aid to prevent their
  falling into the Soviet orbit. The Doctrine
  shifted American foreign policy towards the
  Soviet Union from détente to, as George F. Kennan
  phrased it, a policy of containment of Soviet
  expansion. It is often used by historians as the
  starting date of the Cold War.

10
Marshall Plan

• The Marshall Plan (European Recovery Program was
  the primary plan of the United States for
  rebuilding the allied countries of Europe and
  repelling communism after World War II. The
  initiative was named for United States Secretary
  of State George Marshall.
• The reconstruction plan was developed at a
  meeting of the participating European states in
  July 12 1947. The Marshall Plan offered the same
  aid to the Soviet Union and its allies, if they
  would make political reforms and accept certain
  outside controls. In fact, America worried that
  the Soviet Union would take advantage of the plan
  and therefore made the terms deliberately hard
  for the USSR to accept. The plan was in operation
  for four fiscal years beginning in July 1947.
  During that period some 13 billion of economic
  and technical assistanceequivalent to around
  130 billion in 2006was given to help the
  recovery of the European countries that had
  joined in the Organization for Economic
  Co-operation and Development.

11
Marshall Plan Success

• By the time the plan had come to completion, the
  economy of every participant state, with the
  exception of Germany, had grown well past pre-war
  levels. Over the next two decades, Western Europe
  as a whole would enjoy unprecedented growth and
  prosperity. The Marshall Plan has also long been
  seen as one of the first elements of European
  integration, as it erased tariff trade barriers
  and set up institutions to coordinate the economy
  on a continental level. An intended consequence
  was the systematic adoption of American
  managerial techniques.
• In recent years historians have questioned both
  the underlying motivation and the overall
  effectiveness of the Marshall Plan. Some
  historians contend that the benefits of the
  Marshall Plan actually were also resulted from
  new laissez faire policies that allowed for
  markets to stabilize through economic growth. It
  is now acknowledged that the United Nations
  Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which
  helped millions of refugees from 1944 to 1947,
  also laid the foundation for European postwar
  recovery without ideological motivation.

12
Division of Germany

• The war resulted in the death of several million
  German soldiers and civilians, in total nearly
  ten million, large territorial losses, the
  expulsion of about 15 million Germans and the
  destruction of multiple major cities. Germany and
  Berlin were partitioned by the Allies into four
  military occupation zones. The sectors controlled
  by France, the United Kingdom, the United States
  were merged in May, 1949, to form the democratic
  nation of the Federal Republic of Germany and in
  October, 1949 the Soviet Zone established the
  German Democratic Republic. The two states were
  known informally as "West Germany" and "East
  Germany".
• West Germany, established as a liberal
  parliamentary republic with a "social market
  economy", was allied with the United States, the
  UK and France. The country eventually came to
  enjoy prolonged economic growth beginning in the
  early 1950's. The recovery was largely because of
  U.S. assistance through the Marshall Plan aid.

13
Berlin Blockade

• On June 24, 1948, the Soviet Union blocked access
  to the three Western-held sectors of Berlin,
  which lay deep within the Soviet-controlled zone
  of Germany, by cutting off all rail and road
  routes going through Soviet-controlled territory
  in Germany. The Western powers had never
  negotiated a pact with the Soviets guaranteeing
  these rights. Amid the fallout of the London
  Conference, the Soviets now rejected arguments
  that occupation rights in Berlin and the use of
  the routes during the previous three years had
  given the West legal claim to unimpeded use of
  the highways and railroads. As a further means of
  applying pressure, the Western sectors of Berlin
  were isolated from the city power grid, depriving
  the inhabitants of domestic and industrial
  electricity supplies.

14
Plan A Too Risky!

• The commander of the American occupation zone in
  Germany, General Lucius D. Clay, proposed sending
  a large armoured column driving peacefully, as a
  moral right, down the Autobahn from West Germany
  to West Berlin, but prepared to defend itself if
  it were stopped or attacked. President Harry S.
  Truman, however, following the consensus in
  Washington, believed this entailed an
  unacceptable risk of war.
• Truman stated, "It is too risky to engage in this
  due to the consequence of war". Clay was told to
  take advice from General Curtis LeMay, commander
  of United States Air Forces in Europe, to see if
  an airlift was possible.

15
Operation Vittles

• On June 25 Clay gave the order to launch a
  massive airlift using both civil and military
  aircraft (ultimately lasting 462 days) that flew
  supplies into the Western-held sectors of Berlin
  over the blockade during.
• This aerial supplying of West Berlin became known
  as the Berlin Airlift. Military confrontation
  loomed while Truman embarked on a highly visible
  move which would publicly humiliate the Soviets.
• Hundreds of aircraft, nicknamed "raisin bombers"
  by the local population, were used to fly in a
  wide variety of cargo, ranging from large
  containers to small packets of candy with tiny
  individual parachutes intended for the children
  of Berlin. Sick children were evacuated on
  return flights. The aircraft were supplied and
  flown by the United States, United Kingdom and
  France, but pilots and crew also came from
  Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand
  in order to assist the supply of Berlin.
  Ultimately 278,228 flights were made and
  2,326,406 tons of food and supplies, including
  more than 1.5 million tons of coal, were
  delivered to Berlin.

16
Allied Victory

• At the height of the operation, on April 16,
  1949, an allied aircraft landed in Berlin every
  minute, with 1,398 flights in 24 hours carrying
  12,940 tons (13,160 t) of goods, coal and
  machinery, beating the record of 8,246 (8,385 t)
  set only days earlier.
• The USSR lifted its blockade at 0001, on May 12,
  1949. However, the airlift did not end until
  September 30, as the Western nations wanted to
  build up sufficient amounts of supplies in West
  Berlin in case the Soviets blockaded it again.

Berlin Airlift Monument in Berlin-Tempelhof,
displaying the names of the 39 British and 31
U.S.-American pilots who lost their lives during
the operation.
17
NATO

• The Treaty of Brussels, signed on 17 March 1948
  by Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France,
  and the United Kingdom, is considered the
  precursor to the NATO agreement. This treaty
  established a military alliance, later to become
  the Western European Union. However, American
  participation was thought necessary in order to
  counter the military power of the Soviet Union,
  and therefore talks for a new military alliance
  began almost immediately.
• These talks resulted in the North Atlantic
  Treaty, which was signed in Washington, DC on 4
  April 1949 (during the Berlin Blockade),
  declaring that an attack on any one would be
  considered an attack against them all. It
  included the five Treaty of Brussels states,
  United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway,
  Denmark and Iceland. Three years later, Greece
  and Turkey also joined. Because of geography,
  Australia and New Zealand missed out on
  membership. In place of this, the ANZUS agreement
  was made by the United States with these nations.

18
NATO Cont.

• Its headquarters are located in Brussels,
  Belgium. It is one of the strongest military
  forces in the world and unites the largest, most
  modern and efficient military capabilities and
  resources.
• The core of NATO is Article V of the North
  Atlantic Treaty, which states

• The Parties agree that an armed attack against
  one or more of them in Europe or North America
  shall be considered an attack against them all.
  Consequently they agree that, if such an armed
  attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the
  right of individual or collective self-defense
  recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the
  United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties
  so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and
  in concert with the other Parties, such action as
  it deems necessary, including the use of armed
  force, to restore and maintain the security of
  the North Atlantic area.

The Treaty was invoked for the first time in its
history on 12 September 2001, in response to the
previous day's attacks on the United States.
19
Soviet Response

• The incorporation of West Germany into the
  organisation on 9 May 1955 was described as "a
  decisive turning point in the history of our
  continent" by Halvard Lange, Foreign Minister of
  Norway at the time. Indeed, one of its immediate
  results was the creation of the Warsaw Pact,
  signed on 14 May 1955 by the Soviet Union and its
  satellite states as a formal response to this
  event, firmly establishing the two opposing sides
  of the Cold War.

20
Josip Broz Tito

• After the elections in November 1945, Tito became
  the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign
  Affairs. It was at this time that Tito's forces,
  in loose conjunction with the Red Army, were
  involved in killings and deportations to Yugoslav
  and Soviet labor camps of many ethnic Germans
  from Yugoslavia, as well as those Yugoslavs who
  objected. In November 1945, a new constitution
  was proclaimed and Tito organized a strong army
  and a strong secret police force (the UDBA) loyal
  to him. The UDBA methodically found, imprisoned
  and even executed a large number of Nazi
  collaborators, Catholic priests, those who had
  opposed the communist-led dictatorship, and even
  communists who did not agree with Tito. He
  established labour and concentration camps
  thousands of people were killed within a few
  months after the war. Tito's rule had the
  character of a dictatorship. The Communist Party
  won the first post-war elections under unfair
  conditions, and it conducted espionage and
  assassinations with the secret police and
  security agency, as well as politically motivated
  trials and imprisonment. It did, however, unite a
  country that had been severely affected by the
  war and successfully suppressed the nationalist
  sentiments of the peoples of Yugoslavia in favor
  of the common Yugoslav goal.

21
Tito and Stalin

• In 1948, Tito became the first Communist leader
  to defy Stalin's leadership of the Cominform he
  was one of the few people to stand up to Stalin's
  demands for absolute loyalty. Stalin took it
  personallyfor once, to no avail. The Yugoslav
  Communist Party was expelled from the association
  on June 28, 1948. Tito's form of communism was
  labelled Titoism by Moscow, which encouraged
  purges against suspected "Titoites'" throughout
  the Communist bloc.

"Stop sending people to kill me If you don't
stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow,
and I won't have to send a second."
22
Nikita Khrushchev De-Stalinization

• After Stalin's death in March 1953, there was a
  power struggle between different factions within
  the party.
• Becoming party leader on September 7 of that
  year, and eventually rising above his rivals,
  Khrushchev's leadership marked a crucial
  transition for the Soviet Union. He pursued a
  course of reform and shocked delegates by making
  his famous Secret Speech denouncing the "cult of
  personality" that surrounded Stalin (although he
  himself had no small part in cultivating it), and
  accusing Stalin of crimes committed during the
  Great Purges.
• This effectively alienated Khrushchev from the
  more conservative elements of the Party, but he
  managed to defeat what he termed the Anti-Party
  Group after they failed in a bid to oust him from
  the party leadership in 1957.
• In 1958, Khrushchev became prime minister and
  established himself as the undisputed leader of
  both state and party. He became Premier of the
  Soviet Union on March 27, 1958. Khruschev
  promoted reform of the Soviet system and began to
  place an emphasis on the production of consumer
  goods rather than on heavy industry.

23
The Kitchen Debate

• In 1959, during Richard Nixon's journey to the
  Soviet Union, he took part in what was later
  known as the Kitchen Debate. Khrushchev
  reciprocated the visit that September, spending
  thirteen days in the United States. His new
  attitude towards the West as a rival instead of
  as an evil entity alienated Mao Zedong's China.
  The Soviet Union and the People's Republic of
  China, too, would later be involved in a similar
  "cold war" triggered by the Sino-Soviet Split in
  1960.

The debate is not only called "The Kitchen
Debate" because it took place in a kitchen, but
also because Nixon tried to steer the focus of
the conversation to household appliances such as
the washing machine, rather than bombs or
weapons, to prevent showing any potential
shortfalls of the United States military in
comparison to the Soviet Union.
24
Key Political Actions

• In his Secret Speech, Khrushchev denounced Stalin
  for his
• personality cult and his regime for
  "violation of Leninist norms of
• legality", marking the onset of the
  Khrushchev Thaw.
• Dissolved the Cominform organization and
  reconciled with Josip
• Broz Tito, which ended the Informbiro
  period in the history of
• Yugoslavia.
• Established the Warsaw Pact in 1955 in response
  to the
• formation of NATO.
• Ordered the 1956 Soviet military intervention in
  Hungary
• Provided support for Egypt against the West
  during the 1956 Suez Crisis.
• Promoted the doctrine of "Peaceful co-existence"
  in the foreign policy, accompanied by the slogan
  "To catch up and overtake the West" in internal
  policy.
• Triggered Sino-Soviet Split by talks with the
  U.S. and refusing to support the Chinese nuclear
  program.
• Initiated the Soviet space program that launched
  Sputnik I and Yuri Gagarin, getting a head start
  in the space race.
• Participated in negotiations with U.S. President
  John F. Kennedy for a joint moon program,
  negotiations that ended when Kennedy was
  assassinated in 1963.
• Cancelled a summit meeting over the Gary Powers
  U-2 incident.
• Met with Eisenhower in Iowa.
• Initiated the deployment of nuclear missiles in
  Cuba, which led to the Cuban missile crisis.
• Approved East Germany's construction of the
  Berlin Wall in 1961, after the West ignored his
  ultimatum that West Berlin be incorporated into a
  neutral, demilitarized "free city".

25
Khrushchev the Good

• He was admired for his efficiency and for
  maintaining an economy which, during the 1950s
  and 1960s, had growth rates higher than most
  Western countries, contrasted with the stagnation
  beginning with his successors. He is also
  renowned for his liberalisation policies, whose
  results began with the widespread exoneration of
  political sentences.
• With Khrushchev's amnesty program, former
  political prisoners and their surviving relatives
  could now live a normal life without the infamous
  "wolf ticket". 'Wolf Ticket' is also a
  translation of a Polish term used at the end of
  World War II. It was used to refer to those who
  headed for the forests and hills to act as
  partisan fighters against first the Nazis and, as
  the Soviet Army swept through, the Communists. If
  you took the wolf ticket, you went where every
  man's hand was against you, into the wilds, to
  both avoid and fight domination and enslavement.
• His policies also increased the importance of the
  consumer, since Khrushchev himself placed more
  resources in the production of consumer goods and
  housing instead of heavy industry, precipitating
  a rapid rise in living standards.
• He allowed Eastern Europe to have a greater
  freedom of action in their domestic and external
  affairs, without the intervention of the Soviet
  Union.
• His de-Stalinization caused a huge impact on
  young Communists of the day. He encouraged more
  liberal communist leaders to replace hard-line
  Stalinists throughout the Eastern bloc. Alexander
  Dubcek, who became the leader of Czechoslovakia
  in January 1968, accelerated the process of
  liberalisation in his own country with his Prague
  Spring programme. Mikhail Gorbachev, who became
  the Soviet Union's leader in 1985, was inspired
  by it and it became evident with his policies of
  glasnost and perestroika. Khrushchev is sometimes
  cited as "the last great reformer" among Soviet
  leaders before Gorbachev.

26
Khrushchev the Bad

• He was criticized for his ruthless crackdown of
  the 1956 revolution in Hungary, and also for
  encouraging the East German authorities to set up
  the notorious Berlin Wall in August 1961. He also
  had very poor diplomatic skills, giving him the
  reputation of being a rude, uncivilised peasant
  in the West and as an irresponsible clown in his
  own country. He had also renewed persecutions
  against the Russian Orthodox Church, publicly
  promising to show the "last priest" on Soviet
  television. Between 1960 and 1962, up to 30
  percent of churches were destroyed, with the
  number of monasteries falling by a quarter.
• His methods of administration, although
  efficient, were also erratic since they
  threatened to disband a large number of
  Stalinist-era agencies. He made a dangerous
  gamble in 1962 over Cuba, which almost made a
  Third World War inevitable. Agriculture barely
  kept up with population growth, as bad harvests
  mixed with good ones, culminating with a
  disastrous one in 1963 that was triggered by bad
  weather. All this damaged his prestige after 1962
  and was enough for the Central Committee,
  Khrushchev's critical base for support, to take
  action against him. They used his right-hand man
  Leonid Brezhnev to lead the bloodless coup.
• Due to the results of his policies, as well as
  the increasingly regressive attitude of his
  successors, he became more popular after he gave
  up power, which led many dissidents to view his
  era with nostalgia as his successors began
  discrediting or slowing down his reforms.

27
East vs. West

• From 1948 onwards, West Germany developed into a
  western capitalist country with a social market
  economy and a democratic parliamentary
  government. Prolonged economic growth starting in
  the 1950s fuelled a 30-year "economic miracle".
  Across the inner-German border, East Germany
  established an authoritarian government with a
  Soviet-style command economy. While East Germany
  became one of the richest, most advanced
  countries in the Eastern bloc, many of its
  citizens still looked to the West for political
  freedoms and economic prosperity.

28
Massive emigration

• From 1949 through to 1961, huge numbers of
  professionals and skilled workers migrated daily
  from East to West Berlin earning the name
  "Grenzgänger" frequently because of lucrative
  opportunities connected with rebuilding Western
  Europe funded by the Marshall Plan (one day the
  entire Mathematics Department of the University
  of Leipzig defected). Furthermore, many West
  Berliners travelled into East Berlin to do their
  shopping at state-subsidized stores, where prices
  were much lower than in West Berlin. This drain
  of labour and economic output threatened East
  Germany with economic collapse. This had
  ramifications for the whole Communist bloc and
  particularly the Soviet Union, because East
  Germany's economy was being subsidised by the
  Soviet government, and simultaneously, the
  now-threatened East German production was
  responsible for all war reparations to Poland and
  the Soviet Union.

29
Proposed Barrier

• The impetus for the creation of the Berlin Wall
  came from East German leader Walter Ulbricht,
  approved by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, but
  with conditions imposed. Ulbricht's proposal for
  a second air blockade was refused and the
  construction of a barrier was permitted provided
  that it was composed at first of barbed wire. If
  the Allies challenged the barrier, the East
  Germans were to fall back and were not to fire
  first under any circumstances.

30
Construction Begins, 1961

• Construction of 45 km (28 miles) around the three
  western sectors began early on Sunday 13 August
  1961 in East Berlin. That morning the zonal
  boundary had been sealed by East German troops.
  The barrier was built by East German troops and
  workers, not directly involving the Soviets. It
  was built slightly inside East German territory
  to ensure that it did not encroach on West Berlin
  at any point if one stood next to the West
  Berlin side of the barrier (and later the Wall),
  one was actually standing on East Berlin soil.
  Some streets running alongside the barrier were
  torn up to make them impassable to most vehicles,
  and a barbed-wire fence was erected, which was
  later built up into the full-scale Wall. It
  physically divided the city and completely
  surrounded West Berlin. During the construction
  of the Wall, NVA and KdA soldiers stood in front
  of it with orders to shoot anyone who attempted
  to defect. Additionally, the whole length of the
  border between East and West Germany was closed
  with chain-fences, walls, minefields, and other
  installations (see wikipedia GDR border system).

31
Immediate Effects

• Many families were split. Many East Berliners
  were cut off from their jobs and from chances for
  financial improvement West Berlin became an
  isolated enclave in a hostile land. West
  Berliners demonstrated against the wall, led by
  their mayor Willy Brandt, who strongly criticised
  the United States for failing to respond. Allied
  intelligence agencies had hypothesized about a
  wall to stop the flood of refugees but the main
  candidate for its location was around the
  perimeter of the city.

32

• John F. Kennedy had acknowledged in a speech on
  25 July 1961, that the United States could hope
  to defend only West Berliners and West Germans
  to attempt to stand up for East Germans would
  result only in an embarrassing climbdown.
  Accordingly, the administration made polite
  protests at length via the usual channels, but
  without fervour, even though it was a violation
  of the postwar Four Powers Agreements, which gave
  the United Kingdom, France and the United States
  a say over the administration of the whole of
  Berlin. Indeed, a few months after the barbed
  wire went up, the U.S. government informed the
  Soviet government that it accepted the Wall as "a
  fact of international life" and would not
  challenge it by force.
• The East German government claimed that the Wall
  was an "anti-fascist protection barrier"
  ("antifaschistischer Schutzwall") intended to
  dissuade aggression from the West, despite the
  fact that all of the wall's defenses pointed
  inward to East German territory.
• Thus, this position was viewed with skepticism
  even in East Germany its construction had caused
  considerable hardship to families divided by the
  Wall and the Western view that the Wall was a
  means of preventing the citizens of East Germany
  from entering West Berlin was widely seen as
  being the truth.

33
The Wall 1961-1989

• The Wall was over 155 km (96 miles) long. In June
  1962, work started on a second parallel fence up
  to 91 meters (100 yards) further in, with houses
  in between the fences torn down and their
  inhabitants relocated. A no man's land was
  created between the two barriers, which became
  widely known as the "death strip". It was paved
  with raked gravel, making it easy to spot
  footprints left by escapees it offered no cover
  it was mined and booby-trapped with tripwires
  and, most importantly, it offered a clear field
  of fire to the watching guards.
• Over the years, the Wall went through four
  distinct phases
• Basic wire fence (1961)
• Improved wire fence (1962-1965)
• Concrete wall (1965-1975)
• Grenzmauer 75 (Border Wall 75) (1975-1989)

Position and course of the Berlin Wall and its
border control checkpoints (1989)
34
The Wall Cont.

• The "fourth generation wall", known officially as
  "Stützwandelement UL 12.11"(Retaining wall
  element UL 12.11), was the final and most
  sophisticated version of the Wall. Begun in 1975
  and completed about 1980, it was constructed from
  45,000 separate sections of reinforced concrete,
  each 3.6 m (12 ft) high and 1.2 m (4 ft) wide,
  and cost 16,155,000 East German Marks. The top of
  the wall was lined with a smooth pipe, intended
  to make it more difficult for escapers to scale
  it. It was reinforced by mesh fencing, signal
  fencing, anti-vehicle trenches, barbed wire, over
  116 watchtowers, and twenty bunkers. This version
  of the Wall is the one most commonly seen in
  photographs.

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Official crossings and usage

• There were eight border crossings between East
  and West Berlin, allowing visits by West
  Berliners, West Germans, western foreigners and
  Allied personnel into East Berlin, as well as
  visits of East German citizens into West Berlin,
  provided they held the necessary permit. Those
  crossings were restricted according to which
  nationality was allowed to use it (East Germans,
  West Germans, West Berliners, other countries).
  The most famous was Friedrichstraße (Checkpoint
  Charlie), which was restricted to Allied
  personnel and non-German citizens.
• Several other border crossings existed between
  West Berlin and surrounding East Germany. These
  could be used for transit between West Germany
  and West Berlin, for visits by West Berliners
  into East Germany, for transit into countries
  neighbouring East Germany (Poland,
  Czechoslovakia, Denmark), and for visits by East
  Germans into West Berlin carrying a permit. After
  the 1972 agreements, new crossings were opened to
  allow West Berlin waste be transported into East
  German dumps, as well as some crossings for
  access to West Berlin's exclaves.

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Illegal Emigration

• During the Wall's existence there were around
  5,000 successful escapes (a form of illegal
  emigration) into West Berlin. Varying reports
  claim either 192 or 239 people were killed trying
  to cross and many more injured.
• Early successful escapes involved people jumping
  the initial barbed wire or leaping out of
  apartment windows along the line but these ended
  as the wall improved. On August 15, 1961, Conrad
  Schumann was the first East German border guard
  to escape by jumping the barbed wire to West
  Berlin.

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Escaping the Wall
Later successful escape attempts included long
tunnels, sliding along aerial wires, flying ultra
lights, and even one man who drove a very low
sports car underneath a barricade at Checkpoint
Charlie. The most notorious failed attempt was
that of Peter Fechter who was shot and left to
bleed to death in full view of the western media,
on August 17, 1962. The last person to be shot
dead while trying to cross the border was Chris
Gueffroy on February 6, 1989.

• Peter Fechter lies dying after being shot by East
  German border guards. This photo achieved
  international notoriety, 1962.
• Both the eastern and western networks convered
  event

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Sources

• Wikipedia
• Google Images