20 Years of Freedom

At the end of World War II, what remained of Germany was divided into four territories, each occupied by one of the major Allied powers – The US, France, Britain, and the Soviet Union. Berlin was set as the central control area for all four powers, an arrangement which doomed it into being split by political strain between the victors.

The Soviets refused to agree to the reconstruction plans put forth by the other three powers, which would have allowed a devastated Germany to again become self sufficient, and continued to pillage the city for goods and dismantling any industry it had left. As the tensions grew, Britain, France, and the US combined their controlled areas and extended the Marshall Plan even further, allowing the western part of Germany to being rebuilding and growing again.

Following these disagreements, Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade in 1948, which many consider the first major crisis of the Cold War. This prevented food or supplies from arriving in West Berlin. The other allied countries responded by airlifting in a massive amount of food and supplies to West Berlin, causing a war of propaganda to erupt between the Soviet and Allied governments. Ultimately the blockade was lifted, but the damage was done. Only a few months after the shipments restarted, East Germany was formally absorbed into the USSR as the German Democratic Republic, and West Germany began to embrace western capitalism and democracy wholeheartedly. Throughout the 1950s, the West’s economy and standard of living grew rapidly, while the East saw only stagnation, resulting in a permeating feeling of envy and a desire to escape to the West. Continue reading 20 Years of Freedom