Editing Berlin Wall (section)

==Background==
===Post-war Germany===
[[File:Allied occupation in Berlin (1945-1990).png|thumb|400px|The occupied sectors of Berlin]]
After the [[end of World War II in Europe]], what remained of pre-war Germany west of the [[Oder-Neisse line]] was divided into four occupation zones (as per the [[Potsdam Agreement]]), each one controlled by one of the four occupying [[Allies of World War II|Allied powers]]: the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the [[Soviet Union]]. The capital, [[Berlin]], as the seat of the [[Allied Control Council]], was similarly subdivided into four sectors despite the city's location, which was fully within the Soviet zone.<ref name="miller4">{{Harvnb|Miller|2000|pp=4–5}}</ref>

Within two years, political divisions increased between the Soviets and the other occupying powers. These included the Soviets' refusal to agree to reconstruction plans making post-war Germany self-sufficient, and to a detailed accounting of industrial plants, goods and infrastructure—some of which had already been removed by the Soviets.<ref name="miller16">{{Harvnb|Miller|2000|p=16}}</ref> France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the [[Benelux]] countries later met to combine the non-Soviet zones of Germany into one zone for reconstruction, and to approve the extension of the [[Marshall Plan]].<ref name="cnn.com"/>

=== Eastern Bloc and the Berlin airlift ===
{{Further|Eastern Bloc|Berlin Blockade}}
[[File:SFP 186 - Brandenburger Tor.ogv|thumb|right|[[Brandenburg Gate]] in 1945, after the end of World War II]]
Following the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, the Soviet Union engineered the installation of communist regimes in most of the countries occupied by Soviet military forces at the end of the war, including Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and the GDR, which together with Albania formed the [[Comecon]] in 1949 and later a military alliance, the [[Warsaw Pact]]. The beginning of the [[Cold War]] saw the [[Eastern Bloc]] of the Soviet Union confront the [[Western Bloc]] of the [[United States]], with the latter grouping becoming largely united in 1949 under [[NATO]] and the former grouping becoming largely united in 1955 under the [[Warsaw Pact]].<ref name="Yoder1993">{{cite book |author=Amos Yoder |title=Communism in Transition: The End of the Soviet Empires |url=https://archive.org/details/communismintrans00yode |url-access=registration |year=1993 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-0-8448-1738-5 |page=[https://archive.org/details/communismintrans00yode/page/58 58] |access-date=1 January 2016}}</ref><ref name="Reinalda2009">{{cite book |author=Bob Reinalda |title=Routledge History of International Organizations: From 1815 to the Present Day |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ln19AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA369 |date=2009 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-02405-6 |page=369 |access-date=1 January 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160101212444/https://books.google.com/books?id=Ln19AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA369 |archive-date=1 January 2016 |url-status=live}}</ref> As the Soviet Union already had an [[Soviet Empire|armed presence and political domination]] all over its eastern [[satellite state]]s by 1955, the pact has been long considered "superfluous",<ref>Laurien Crump (2015). ''The Warsaw Pact Reconsidered: International Relations in Eastern Europe, 1955–1969''. Routledge. p. 17</ref> and because of the rushed way in which it was conceived, NATO officials labeled it a "cardboard castle".<ref>Laurien Crump (2015). ''The Warsaw Pact Reconsidered: International Relations in Eastern Europe, 1955–1969''. Routledge. p. 1.</ref> There was no direct military confrontation between the two organizations; instead, the conflict was fought on an ideological basis and through [[proxy war]]s. Both NATO and the Warsaw Pact led to the expansion of military forces and their integration into the respective blocs.<ref name="Reinalda2009" /> The Warsaw Pact's largest military engagement was the [[Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia]], its own member state, in August 1968.<ref name="Reinalda2009" />

Since the end of the war, the USSR installed a Soviet-style regime in the [[Soviet occupation zone of Germany]] and later founded the GDR, with the country's political system based on a centrally planned socialist economic model with nationalized means of production, and with repressive secret police institutions, under party dictatorship of the [[Socialist Unity Party of Germany|SED]] (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands; Socialist Unity Party of Germany) similar to the party dictatorship of the Soviet Communist Party in the USSR.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.hoover.org/research/leaving-socialism-behind-lesson-germany |title=Leaving Socialism Behind: A Lesson From Germany |last=Berman |first=Russell A. |website=Hoover Institution |date=1 October 2020 |access-date=27 March 2021 |language=en |archive-date=14 April 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210414080739/https://www.hoover.org/research/leaving-socialism-behind-lesson-germany |url-status=live }}</ref>

At the same time, a parallel country was established under the control of the Western powers in the zones of post-war Germany occupied by them, culminating in the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949,<ref>{{Harvnb|Turner|1987|p=20}}</ref> which initially claimed to be the sole legitimate power in all of Germany, East and West. The material [[standard of living]] in the Western zones of Berlin began to improve quickly, and residents of the Soviet zone soon began leaving for the West in large numbers, fleeing hunger, poverty and repression in the Soviet Zone for a better life in the West. Soon residents of other parts of the Soviet zone began to escape to the West through Berlin, and this migration, called in Germany "Republikflucht", deprived the Soviet zone not only of working forces desperately needed for post-war reconstruction but disproportionately of highly educated people, which came to be known as the "Brain Drain".{{citation needed|date=November 2019}}

In 1948, in response to moves by the Western powers to establish a separate, federal system of government in the Western zones, and to extend the US [[Marshall Plan]] of economic assistance to Germany, the Soviets instituted the [[Berlin Blockade]], preventing people, food, materials and supplies from arriving in [[West Berlin]] by land routes through the Soviet zone.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=33}}</ref> The United States, the United Kingdom, [[France]], [[Canada]], [[Australia]], [[New Zealand]] and several other countries began a massive "[[Berlin airlift|airlift]]", supplying West Berlin with food and other supplies.<ref>{{Harvnb|Miller|2000|pp=65–70}}</ref> The Soviets mounted a public relations campaign against the Western policy change. Communists attempted to disrupt the elections of 1948, preceding large losses therein,<ref name="turner29">{{Harvnb|Turner|1987|p=29}}</ref> while 300,000 Berliners demonstrated for the international airlift to continue.<ref>Fritsch-Bournazel, Renata, ''Confronting the German Question: Germans on the East-West Divide'', Berg Publishers, 1990, {{ISBN|0-85496-684-6}}, p. 143</ref> In May 1949, Stalin lifted the blockade, permitting the resumption of Western shipments to Berlin.<ref name="Gaddis 2005, p. 34">{{Harvnb|Gaddis|2005|p=34}}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Miller|2000|pp=180–181}}</ref>

The German Democratic Republic (the "GDR"; East Germany) was declared on 7 October 1949. On that day, the USSR ended the Soviet military government which had governed the Soviet Occupation Zone (Sowetische Besatzungszone) since the end of the war and handed over legal power<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kenull |first1=Torsten |title=Die Geschichte der DDR in Ihren Gründzügen |date=2005 |publisher=GRIN Verlag für akademische Texte |location=Hary}}</ref>{{page needed|date=August 2020}} to the Provisorische Volkskammer under the new Constitution of the GDR which came into force that day. However, until 1955, the Soviets maintained considerable legal control over the GDR state, including the regional governments, through the Sowetische Kontrollkommission and maintained a presence in various East German administrative, military, and secret police structures.<ref name="wettig179">{{Harvnb|Wettig|2008|p=179}}</ref><ref>In a congratulatory telegram, Stalin emphasized that, with the creation of East Germany, the "enslavement of European countries by the global imperialists was rendered impossible." (Wettig, Gerhard, ''Stalin and the Cold War in Europe'', Rowman & Littlefield, 2008, {{ISBN|0-7425-5542-9}}, p. 179)</ref> Even after legal sovereignty of the GDR was restored in 1955, the Soviet Union continued to maintain considerable influence over administration and lawmaking in the GDR through the Soviet embassy and through the implicit threat of force which could be exercised through the continuing large Soviet military presence in the GDR, which was used to repress [[East German uprising of 1953|protests in East Germany bloodily in June 1953]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Kenull |first=Torsten |title=Die Geschichte der DDR in Ihren Grundzügen |date=2005 |publisher=GRIN Verlag für akademische Texte |location=Harz |page=8}}</ref>

East Germany differed from West Germany ([[West Germany|Federal Republic of Germany]]), which developed into a [[Western world|Western]] capitalist country with a [[social market economy]] and a [[democracy|democratic]] parliamentary government. Continual economic growth starting in the 1950s fueled a 20-year "[[Wirtschaftswunder|economic miracle]]" ({{lang|de|"Wirtschaftswunder"}}). As West Germany's economy grew, and its standard of living steadily improved, many East Germans wanted to move to West Germany.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/history/berlin-wall-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-barrier-that-divided-east-and-west-9847347.html |title=Everything you need to know about the Berlin Wall |date=7 November 2014 |work=The Independent |access-date=9 April 2019 |archive-date=28 January 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180128124342/http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/history/berlin-wall-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-barrier-that-divided-east-and-west-9847347.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

===Emigration westward in the early 1950s===
{{Main|Eastern Bloc emigration and defection|Eastern Bloc}}
After the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, the majority of those living in the newly acquired areas of the [[Eastern Bloc]] aspired to independence and wanted the Soviets to leave.<ref name="thackeray188">{{Harvnb|Thackeray|2004|p=188}}</ref> Taking advantage of the zonal border between occupied zones in Germany, the number of GDR citizens moving to West Germany totaled 187,000 in 1950; 165,000 in 1951; 182,000 in 1952; and 331,000 in 1953.<ref>{{lang|de|[http://www.stmas.bayern.de/migration/aussiedler/aussstat.pdf Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Arbeit und Sozialordnung, Familie und Frauen, Statistik Spätaussiedler Dezember 2007]}}, p. 3 (in German)</ref><ref name="loescher60">{{Harvnb|Loescher|2001|p=60}}</ref> One reason for the sharp 1953 increase was fear of potential further [[Sovietization]], given the increasingly paranoid actions of [[Joseph Stalin]] in late 1952 and early 1953.<ref name="loescher68">{{Harvnb|Loescher|2001|p=68}}</ref> In the first six months of 1953, 226,000 had fled.<ref name="dale17">{{Harvnb|Dale|2005|p=17}}</ref>