A Look Back at the Berlin Wall
Archived images reveal the Communist divide rising and falling.
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Sightseers climb onto a bus to look at the newly built Berlin Wall on Feb. 19, 1964. The East German government began building on Aug. 13, 1961, to seal off the Western section of the city occupied by three main Western powers - the U.S., Britain, and France - after World War I. It essentially divided the city into capitalist West and communist East, known as the "Iron Curtain" that eventually went on to separate Western Europe from the pro-Soviet Eastern Bloc in the ensuing Cold War before its fall on Nov. 9, 1989.
Keystone/Getty Images
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Tanks approach a checkpoint area of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Historians estimate that hundreds attempting to leave East Berlin were shot and killed by East German border guards while the wall was up.
Express Newspapers/Getty Images
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Fog shrouds the Brandenburg Gate as a guard stands watch in West Berlin on Nov. 25, 1961. The wall essentially prevented mass illegal immigration for those trying to escape East Germany.
Heinrich Sanden Sr./AP
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West German police arrest a young man while an angry crowd throwing stones at a bus full of Soviet guards protested at the Soviet War Memorial on Aug. 20, 1962. The crowd were incensed by the death of 18-year-old Peter Fechter, who became on of the first people shot while trying to cross the Berlin Wall to West Germany a few days earlier.
Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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The Berlin Wall stands at Koepenicker Strasse in Berlin's Kreuzberg district on March 12, 1971. The concrete walls became known as the "death strip", where guards relied on towers, minefields, trip wires and automatic machine guns.
Edwin Reichert/AP
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On Nov. 9, 1989, Gunter Schabowski, the East Berlin Communist party boss, declared that East Germans would be free to leave the country, without permission, at any point along the border and including the Berlin Wall. Pictured, West Berliners crowd in front of the Berlin Wall early Nov. 11, 1989, to watch East German border guards open a new crossing point near the Potsdamer Platz.
Gerard Malie/AFP/Getty Images
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East Berlin citizens crowd the new passage at Bernauer Strasse in Berlin where East German border police tore down segments of the wall on Nov. 11, 1989, two days after the borders were opened in the divided city.
Rudi Blaha/AP
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Thousands of young East Berliners crowd on top of the wall in front of Brandenburg Gate on Nov. 11, 1989.
Gerard Malie/AFP/Getty Images
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East German border guards watch a bulldozer tear down parts of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 10, 1989, to make more space for more border crossings between East and West Germany.
Str/Weitz/AP
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Germans from East and West stand on the Berlin Wall in front of the Reichstag Building on Nov. 10, 1989, one day after the wall opened.
AP
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A West Berliner swings a sledgehammer at the Berlin Wall near Potsdamer Platz on Nov. 12, 1989.
John Gaps III/AP
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A West German policeman, left, gives a helping hand to an East German border guard who climbs through a gap of the Berlin Wall when East Germany opened another passage at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, Nov. 12, 1989.
Thomas Kienzle/AP
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Police occupy the Brandenburg Gate, as seen from West Berlin, on Aug. 13, 1961.
AP
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President John F. Kennedy stands on an observation platform as he looks into East Berlin over the wall on June 26, 1963.
AP
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President Ronald Reagan calls on Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "Tear down this wall!" during his famous speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin on June 12, 1987.
Darryl L. Heikes for USN&WR
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Military police stand near the Berlin Wall, where residential housing is visible on the other side on June 12, 1987.
Darryl L. Heikes for USN&WR
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East German workers assemble a wall of concrete blocks in the French sector of East Berlin on Aug. 15, 1961. Apartments facing the French sector had their windows bricked up as a way of closing those escape hatches.
Eddie Worth/AP
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A little girl chisels away at the Berlin Wall from the east side on New Year's Eve in 1989.
Steve Eason/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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This Nov. 10, 1989, file photo shows East German citizens applauded by West Berliners when they cross Checkpoint Charlie with their cars to visit West Berlin. Thousands of East Germans moved into West Berlin after the opening of the wall by East German government.
Thomas Kienzle/AP
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Berliners celebrate on top of the wall as East Germans, backs to camera, flood through the dismantled Berlin Wall at Potsdamer Platz on Nov. 12, 1989.
Lionel Cironneau/AP
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Next:
World War I, 100 Years Later
