At the end of World War II, the
Potsdam Agreement divided pre-war Germany into four occupation zones, one
controlled by each of the four Allied powers:
the USA, UK, France and Soviet Union.
Tensions between the western
powers and Soviets remained high and on the 7th October 1949 the German
Democratic Republic (East Germany)
was declared. The majority of those living in the new Eastern Bloc nations
aspired to independence but by the early 1950s, the Soviet’s had instead begun
to restrict national movement.
On the 13th August 1961, the
border between East and West Berlin was closed and East German troops installed
barbed wire fences along the 156 kilometres (97 mi); the precursor to The
Berlin Wall.
The next 28 years saw a bitterly
divided nation, at the forefront of the Cold War. In May 1989, the East German
regime began to falter when the removal of
Hungary's border fence opened a hole in the Iron Curtain.
Six months later, The Berlin Wall
officially fell on the 9th November 1989 although in its entirety was not torn
down immediately. What followed was the ‘Peaceful
Revolution’ a series of protests by East Germans. This led to
negotiations between the German Democratic Republic and Federal Republic of Germany
that culminated in Unification Day on the 3rd October 1990 when five new
Federal States were created, and East and West Berlin were unified as a single
city-state.
Photo Legacy: Making your memories last forever www.photolegacy.com
Research courtesy of Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_reunification
Image courtesy of: Neftali /
Shutterstock.com
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