Barbed Wire to Bloodshed: How the Wall Became a Killing Machine

The Wire Goes Up

Here's what most people get wrong about the Berlin Wall. They picture it as a single dramatic act, a decision made in daylight, announced and enforced.

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A City Cut in Half

The decision to build the wall came from Walter Ulbricht, the East German leader, with Moscow's backing. The urgency was economic and existential.

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Checkpoint Charlie and the Edge of War

Checkpoint Charlie emerged at the intersection of Friedrichstraße and Zimmerstraße, the crossing point designated for Allied personnel and foreign nationals. From October nineteen sixty-one onward, it became the most heavily watched border crossing on earth, and the most dangerous in its implications.

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The Human Cost

In August nineteen sixty-two, exactly one year after the wall went up, an eighteen-year-old bricklayer named Peter Fechter tried to cross into the West. He made it over the inner wall.

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Kennedy and the Weight of Words

In June nineteen sixty-three, President John F. Kennedy came to West Berlin.

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The Slow Crumble

For twenty-six years after Kennedy's speech, the wall held. People still tried to cross.

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Reagan at the Gate

Two years before the wall fell, in June nineteen eighty-seven, Ronald Reagan had stood at the Brandenburg Gate and delivered his own defining Berlin speech. "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." The line was almost cut from the speech by Reagan's own advisers, who thought it too provocative. Reagan kept it.

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The Blunder That Ended an Era

November ninth, nineteen eighty-nine. East German Politburo spokesman Günter Schabowski held a routine press conference.

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What It Left Behind

The physical wall came down gradually over the following months. Some sections were demolished.

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