History UsefulNotes / BerlinWall

Within the [[{{Commieland}} Communist nation]] (and UsefulNotes/WarsawPact member) of UsefulNotes/EastGermany was the isolated Western exclave of West UsefulNotes/{{Berlin}}, the Allied-occupied remnants of the former capital of UsefulNotes/NaziGermany until the end of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and by then the epicenter of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar. West Berlin was not a part of UsefulNotes/WestGermany -- its residents couldn't serve in the West German military or vote in federal elections. But it was still connected to West Germany, and it was a little node of freedom within the Eastern Block of the UsefulNotes/IronCurtain. If you could get to West Berlin, you could get to anywhere in UsefulNotes/TheWest. And for a time, many East Germans did exactly that.

* ''Film/TheLivesOfOthers''

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* ''Film/FuneralInBerlin'' involved the titular faked funeral as a ruse to smuggle defecting Soviet intelligence Colonel Stok across the Wall for MI5. The German gangster and escape maestro Kreutzmann even has a lookalike East German pensioner killed and organizes a fake "relative" in the West to claim the body. [[spoiler:Long story short, it was all a Soviet ploy to expose Kreutzmann, and when the coffin is opened in the West, it's him in it - dead - instead of the Colonel]].

!!!Facts about the Wall

* It's claimed that more than 200 people were killed trying to cross the wall from East to West. A research project in 2005 placed the death toll at 136, including 8 guards killed by escapees and 3 suicides after failed escape attempts, but not including 16 cases of drowning which are definitely connected to escape attempts. The overwhelming majority of the victims were men in their twenties. The most infamous case came early in the wall's existence, in 1962, when Peter Fechter was shot just short of the Western side of the wall and fell back into the "death strip" -- the West Germans could see him but could do little to help, and the East Germans just let him bleed to death.

!!!Famous Wall Locations (listed clockwise starting in the northeast)

!!!Ways People Tried to Illegally Cross the Wall

* [[RammingAlwaysWorks Barrelling through it]]. One escapee successfully used a ''train'', because the wall was just laid across the pre-existing tracks; after that, the East Germans tore up the tracks.
* [[PunkInTheTrunk Smuggling oneself in someone's trunk]], often a diplomat's car. The East Germans were so used to this that they could spot it by measuring the headlight angles of the driver's [[TheAllegedCar Trabant]], knowing that the weight of a body in the back will compress the springs in the back and raise the front -- and thus the headlights.

* Drive straight through the checkpoint. [[RefugeInAudacity Audacious, to be sure]], but it had worked before. A West Berliner studying in East Berlin smuggled his East Berliner girlfriend to the West by putting her in the trunk and driving straight through a checkpoint -- he got an absurdly low sports car that fit under the barrier, and the border guards were so stunned that they didn't fire a shot. The East Germans fixed this with a metal beam, only for the ''next'' group to try this to modify their car to easily become an InstantConvertible. The East Germans solved ''that'' by [[ObviousRulePatch building zig-zagging roads through the checkpoints]].

!!!The Fall of the Wall

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Until 13 August 1961, when the East German regime put a stop to it by building a wall separating the two halves of the city. And in doing so, they provided some of the most powerful evidence of the oppression and lack of liberties going on in communist satellites of the [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn Soviet Union]] (and the Soviet Union itself), because while most walls are designed to keep people out, this one was designed to keep people ''in''. More than 100 people died trying to cross the Wall over the course of its 28-year history.

Within the [[{{Commieland}} Communist nation]] (and UsefulNotes/WarsawPact member) of UsefulNotes/EastGermany was the isolated Western exclave of West UsefulNotes/{{Berlin}}, the Allied-occupied remnants of the former capital of UsefulNotes/NaziGermany until the end of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and by then the epicenter of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar. West Berlin was not a part of UsefulNotes/WestGermany -- its residents couldn't serve in the West German military or vote in federal elections. But it was still connected to West Germany, and it was a little node of freedom within the Eastern Block of the UsefulNotes/IronCurtain. If you could get to West Berlin, you could get to anywhere in UsefulNotes/TheWest. And for a time, many East Germans did exactly that, and some died trying.

Until 13 August 1961, when the East German regime put a stop to it by building a wall separating the two halves of the city. And in doing so, they provided some of the most powerful evidence of the oppression and lack of liberties going on in communist satellites of the [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn Soviet Union]] (and the Soviet Union itself), because while most walls are designed to keep people out, this one was designed to keep people ''in''.

Within the [[{{Commieland}} Communist nation]] (and UsefulNotes/WarsawPact member) of UsefulNotes/EastGermany was the isolated Western exclave of West UsefulNotes/{{Berlin}}, the Allied-occupied remnants of the former capital of UsefulNotes/NaziGermany until the end of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and by then the epicenter of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar. West Berlin was not a part of UsefulNotes/WestGermany -- its residents couldn't serve in the West German military or vote in federal elections. But it was still connected to West Germany, and it was a little node of freedom within the Eastern Block of the UsefulNotes/IronCurtain. If you could get to West Berlin, you could get to anywhere in the West. And for a time, many East Germans did exactly that, and some died trying.

* In the opening credits of the ''{{Anime/Patlabor}}'' TV series, [[http://imgur.com/EbqRwQ5 we see military Labors (mechas) with]] [[UsefulNotes/WeAreNotTheWehrmacht Bundeswehr]] insignia standing guard at the Berlin Wall.

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* ''Film/JamesBond''

* The wall is seen several times in ''Film/AtomicBlonde'', then footage of its demolition is featured after Lorraine leaves the city.

Until 13 August 1961, when the East German regime put a stop to it by building a wall separating the two halves of the city. And in doing so, they provided some of the most powerful evidence of the oppression and lack of liberties going on in communist satellites of the [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn Soviet Union]], because while most walls are designed to keep people out, this one was designed to keep people ''in''.