Could the Berlin Wall have been a Smart Border? (1/2)

Source: (NATO, n.d.)

After the end of World War II in 1945, the Allies split Germany into four “Allied Occupation Zones”. The Eastern part of the country was allocated to the Soviet Union, and the Western part to the United States, Great Britain, and France. However, the city of Berlin was a different situation. Even though it was geographically located in the Eastern part of Germany (it was over 100 miles from the rest of West Germany), as the capital city it was divided between the USSR and the other Allies. This, among other factors, led to a significant period of tension between the communist Soviets and their majorly capitalist counterparts. Since the end of the Berlin blockade in 1949, over 3 million young and skilled workers fled from east to west, which greatly embarrassed the Soviets. To stop the flow of emigrants from East Germany, leader of the USSR Nikita Krushchev decided to indefinitely close the border on August 12th 1961. Two weeks later, a concrete and barbed wire wall had been fully erected along the East/West Berlin border, guarded and patrolled by East German soldiers (History.com, 2019).

Source: (Berlin-hotels.redflag.info, n.d.)

Before the wall, crossing from East to West was a daily occurrence for many Berliners. However, it was now virtually impossible for people who weren’t diplomats or state officials.

The wall also represented the Cold War and the ideological divide between the communist eastern bloc, and the western democratic capitalist bloc. To many, it also symbolised the lack of freedom that existed in the communist USSR (Gwtoday.gwu.edu, 2009). In total, it is estimated that at least 171 people lost their lives trying to get past the wall through different means (History.com, 2019). When Gorbachev came into power as Soviet leader in 1985, his commitment to a new era of openness was in stark contrast to his predecessors. It was this vision that many hailed as the reason for the removal of the Berlin Wall. It seemed an unlikely possibility to most of the outside world when Ronald Reagan demanded in his Brandenburg Gate speech In June 1987 “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this Wall”, but just two and a half years later, this yearning came to fruition.

In today’s world, when US President Donald Trump called for a wall to be built along the US/Mexico border, many across the world felt it echoed much of the same divisive sentiments of the Berlin Wall that occurred decades previous. Gorbachev reasserted his beliefs when he said in October 2019 “In 1989 the World Chose Peace; We Need That Vision Today” (Time, 2019). Additionally, with the advent of modern technologies that can be used for border patrol and surveillance, a lot of people argue that there is less need for physical barriers and that technology can be more effective and cheaper than the proposed wall by Trump. Many might wonder that if today’s technology had existed, could it have greatly aided Gorbachev’s strategic vision in gradually removing the physical barrier earlier in his tenure? In part two of this post, we will take a deeper look into today's technologies that are changing the way borders have been patrolled and managed.

Bibliography:

NATO. (n.d.). Building the Berlin Wall. [online] Available at: https://www.nato.int/cps/fr/natohq/declassified_136183.htm.

History.com. (2019). [online] Available at: https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/berlin-wall.

Gwtoday.gwu.edu. (2009). Remembering the Berlin Wall. [online] Available at: https://gwtoday.gwu.edu/remembering-berlin-wall

Time. (2019). Mikhail Gorbachev: In 1989 the World Chose Peace; We Need That Vision Today. [online] Available at: https://time.com/5714770/mikhail-gorbachev-berlin-wall/.

Berlin-hotels.redflag.info. (n.d.). [online] Available at: https://www.berlin-hotels.redflag.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/the-wall-berlin-1961.jpg.