The Fall of the Berlin Wall As a Direct Cause for German Reunification

The Fall of the Berlin Wall As a Direct Cause for German Reunification PDF

Author: Hendrik Doobe

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2011-07

Total Pages: 29

ISBN-13: 3640953029

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Essay from the year 2002 in the subject History of Germany - Modern History, grade: IB-Diploma full score, Waterford Kamhlaba United World College of Southern Africa, course: History, language: English, abstract: This investigation, including the examination of unpublished primary sources, accounts for the Fall of the Berlin Wall as a historical event. The disintegration of the Warsaw Pact along with the interior social, economic and political problems in the GDR are examined as long term causes as well as the influence of the media, the church and the citizens of the GDR themselves as main players in the short term. Additionally, the immediate events in the beginning of November 1989 are scrutinized in connection with the Fall of the Wall. The research question in two parts is whether the events around the 9th of November, 1989, can be labelled 'peaceful revolution' and what the causes for that revolution are. What is the historical significance of the event and what was it derived from? Consistent with the primary and secondary sources used, the essay concludes that the Fall of the Wall was indeed a peaceful revolution. Examining the development towards pluralism and democracy by the USSR and her satellite states as the foundation for that revolution, the essay scrutinizes both the work of the media with its fuelling effect and the actions of the church as a 'replacement public' as causes for the incident. The state with its restrictive forces impaling every aspect of public life producing social, economic as well as political disadvantages for its citizens is the reason for opposition developing. Encountering this opposition, the party looses control over the people and misses a historical chance. Instead of selling the Fall of the Berlin Wall as a sovereign decision for empowerment of the GDR's citizens it has to watch how the means of isolating them from foreign influences is dismantled. Therefore the significance of the 9th of November 1989 lying in the irreve

The Fall of the Berlin Wall as a direct cause for German reunification

The Fall of the Berlin Wall as a direct cause for German reunification PDF

Author: Hendrik Doobe

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2011-07-07

Total Pages: 26

ISBN-13: 3640953355

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Essay from the year 2002 in the subject History of Germany - Modern History, grade: IB-Diploma full score, Waterford Kamhlaba United World College of Southern Africa, course: History, language: English, abstract: This investigation, including the examination of unpublished primary sources, accounts for the Fall of the Berlin Wall as a historical event. The disintegration of the Warsaw Pact along with the interior social, economic and political problems in the GDR are examined as long term causes as well as the influence of the media, the church and the citizens of the GDR themselves as main players in the short term. Additionally, the immediate events in the beginning of November 1989 are scrutinized in connection with the Fall of the Wall. The research question in two parts is whether the events around the 9th of November, 1989, can be labelled ‘peaceful revolution’ and what the causes for that revolution are. What is the historical significance of the event and what was it derived from? Consistent with the primary and secondary sources used, the essay concludes that the Fall of the Wall was indeed a peaceful revolution. Examining the development towards pluralism and democracy by the USSR and her satellite states as the foundation for that revolution, the essay scrutinizes both the work of the media with its fuelling effect and the actions of the church as a ‘replacement public’ as causes for the incident. The state with its restrictive forces impaling every aspect of public life producing social, economic as well as political disadvantages for its citizens is the reason for opposition developing. Encountering this opposition, the party looses control over the people and misses a historical chance. Instead of selling the Fall of the Berlin Wall as a sovereign decision for empowerment of the GDR’s citizens it has to watch how the means of isolating them from foreign influences is dismantled. Therefore the significance of the 9th of November 1989 lying in the irreversible loss of power and control by the SED was initiated by the party itself.

After the Berlin Wall

After the Berlin Wall PDF

Author: K. Gerstenberger

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2011-11-21

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0230337759

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Twenty years after its fall, the wall that divided Berlin and Germany presents a conceptual paradox: on one hand, Germans have sought to erase it completely; on the other, it haunts the imagination in complex and often surprising ways

The Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall

The Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall PDF

Author: R. G. Grant

Publisher: BDD Promotional Books Company

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 9780792455516

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The story of the Wall itself and of all that it came to signify in East-West relations, from the fall of the Third Reich in 1945 and the division of Germany to the series of events leading to reunification in 1990.

The Collapse

The Collapse PDF

Author: Mary Sarotte

Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)

Published: 2014-10-07

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0465064949

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On the night of November 9, 1989, massive crowds surged toward the Berlin Wall, drawn by an announcement that caught the world by surprise: East Germans could now move freely to the West. The Wall—infamous symbol of divided Cold War Europe—seemed to be falling. But the opening of the gates that night was not planned by the East German ruling regime—nor was it the result of a bargain between either Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It was an accident. In The Collapse, prize-winning historian Mary Elise Sarotte reveals how a perfect storm of decisions made by daring underground revolutionaries, disgruntled Stasi officers, and dictatorial party bosses sparked an unexpected series of events culminating in the chaotic fall of the Wall. With a novelist’s eye for character and detail, she brings to vivid life a story that sweeps across Budapest, Prague, Dresden, and Leipzig and up to the armed checkpoints in Berlin. We meet the revolutionaries Roland Jahn, Aram Radomski, and Siggi Schefke, risking it all to smuggle the truth across the Iron Curtain; the hapless Politburo member Günter Schabowski, mistakenly suggesting that the Wall is open to a press conference full of foreign journalists, including NBC’s Tom Brokaw; and Stasi officer Harald Jäger, holding the fort at the crucial border crossing that night. Soon, Brokaw starts broadcasting live from Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, where the crowds are exulting in the euphoria of newfound freedom—and the dictators are plotting to restore control. Drawing on new archival sources and dozens of interviews, The Collapse offers the definitive account of the night that brought down the Berlin Wall.

Germany 1989

Germany 1989 PDF

Author: Lothar Kettenacker

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-01-14

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1317875664

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In autumn 1989 the world watched transfixed as East German citizens, demonstrating under the banner ‘We are the people!’, staged the only successful, totally peaceful revolution in German history. By October 1990, the process of reunification was formally concluded, bringing together a nation that had been divided for almost four decades. Now, nearly twenty years later, it is possible to judge the causes and consequences of the revolution more clearly. Was the fall of the Berlin Wall an unexpected fluke, or was it, in fact, the result of a long process of engagement between East and West? And did the momentous events of 1989 really signal the start of a bright new future for a united Germany? In this probing and wide-ranging account, Lothar Kettenacker considers the background behind the division of Germany and explains how the Berlin Wall and its death trap border proved to be the most horrendous manifestation of East-West antagonism. He also looks beyond 1990 to show how the confusion caused by the sudden collapse of the GDR and the fusion of two radically different economies is proving to be a challenge that will preoccupy Germany for generations to come.

Between Containment and Rollback

Between Containment and Rollback PDF

Author: Christian F. Ostermann

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2021-04-27

Total Pages: 566

ISBN-13: 1503607631

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In the aftermath of World War II, American policymakers turned to the task of rebuilding Europe while keeping communism at bay. In Germany, formally divided since 1949,the United States prioritized the political, economic, and, eventually, military integration of the fledgling Federal Republic with the West. The extraordinary success story of forging this alliance has dominated our historical under-standing of the American-German relationship. Largely left out of the grand narrative of U.S.–German relations were most East Germans who found themselves caught under Soviet and then communist control by the post-1945 geo-political fallout of the war that Nazi Germany had launched. They were the ones who most dearly paid the price for the country's division. This book writes the East Germans—both leadership and general populace—back into that history as objects of American policy and as historical agents in their own right Based on recently declassified documents from American, Russian, and German archives, this book demonstrates that U.S. efforts from 1945 to 1953 went beyond building a prosperous democracy in western Germany and "containing" Soviet-Communist power to the east. Under the Truman and then the Eisenhower administrations, American policy also included efforts to undermine and "roll back" Soviet and German communist control in the eastern part of the country. This story sheds light on a dark-er side to the American Cold War in Germany: propaganda, covert operations, economic pressure, and psychological warfare. Christian F. Ostermann takes an international history approach, capturing Soviet and East German responses and actions, and drawing a rich and complex picture of the early East–West confrontation in the heart of Europe.

Masterpieces of History

Masterpieces of History PDF

Author: Svetlana Savranskaya

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2010-05-20

Total Pages: 783

ISBN-13: 6155211884

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Twenty years in the making, this collection presents 122 top-level Soviet, European and American records on the superpowers' role in the annus mirabilis of 1989. Consisting of Politburo minutes; diary entries from Gorbachev's senior aide, Anatoly Chernyaev; meeting notes and private communications of Gorbachev with George H.W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand; and high-level CIA analyses, this volume offers a rare insider's look at the historic, world-transforming events that culminated in the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War. Most of these records have never been published before.

Germany since Unification

Germany since Unification PDF

Author: K. Larres

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2001-02-13

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0230800033

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A decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the GDR and the end of the Cold War, Germany has begun to cope with the political, economic, social and nationalistic challenges unification has posed to its institutions and way of life in both the western and eastern part of the once divided nation. The books' eleven authors, all experts in their field, analyse the way united Germany has tackled the many unforeseen problems and highlighted the gradually emerging short- and long-term patterns in Germany's slow adjustment to the new realities. The country has not only become more populous and territorially bigger, but also burdened with much underestimated problems, particularly economic and social ones. The emergence of a new economic, political and perhaps military superstate as feared by many in 1990 has not materialised. Instead, Germany today is only just coping with the domestic and external challenges of unification. The economic and social integration of the former East Germany into the Federal Republic has still not been completed and may take yet another ten to fifteen years. The book is a timely and well-researched effort by a team of outstanding experts to evaluate Germany's performance to date. It gives the reader ample and well-analysed information to comprehend the many challenges facing Germany and its European neighbours in the post-Cold War world