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At the Vienna summit on 4 June 1961, tensions rose. Meeting with US President John F. Kennedy, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev reissued the Soviet ultimatum to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany and thus end the existing four-power agreements guaranteeing American, British, and French rights to access West Berlin and the occupation of East Berlin by Soviet forces. [1]
The political history of East Germany had four periods: [80] 1949–1961, which saw the building of socialism; 1961–1970, after the Berlin Wall closed off escape, was a period of stability and consolidation; 1971–1985 was termed the "Honecker Era", and saw closer ties with West Germany; and 1985–1990 saw the decline and extinction of East ...
By the 1980s, the number of escape attempts was rising again as East Germany's economy stagnated and living conditions deteriorated. [3] Attempts to flee across the border were carefully studied and recorded by the East German authorities to identify possible weak points. These were addressed by strengthening the fortifications in vulnerable areas.
The border was a physical manifestation of Winston Churchill's metaphorical Iron Curtain that separated the Soviet and Western blocs during the Cold War. Built by the East German government in phases from 1952 to the late 1980s, [2] the fortifications were constructed to stop Republikflucht, the large-scale emigration of East German citizens to ...
Checkpoint Charlie (or "Checkpoint C") was the Western Allies' name for the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War (1947–1991), [1] becoming a symbol of the Cold War, representing the separation of East and West. East German leader Walter Ulbricht agitated and manoeuvred to get the Soviet ...
The German Democratic Republic (GDR), German: Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), often known in English as East Germany, existed from 1949 to 1990. [1] It covered the area of the present-day German states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Berlin (excluding West Berlin), Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt, and Thüringen.
This is a list of wars involving Germany from 962. It includes the Holy Roman Empire, Confederation of the Rhine, the German Confederation, the North German Confederation, the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, the German Democratic Republic (DDR, "East Germany") and the present Federal Republic of Germany (BRD, until German reunification in 1990 known as "West Germany").
Barbed Wire Sunday (German: Stacheldrahtsonntag), is the name given to 13 August 1961, when the military and police of East Germany closed the border between East and West Berlin and began the construction of what would become the Berlin Wall. The intention of closing the border was to prevent the migration of East Germans to the West. [1]