The Path to the Berlin Wall Critical Stages in the History of Divided Germany [Hardcover]

The long path to the Berlin Wall began in 1945, when Josef Stalin instructed the Communist Party to take power in the Soviet occupation zone while the three Western allies secured their areas of influence. When Germany was split into separate states in 1949, Berlin remained divided into four sectors, with West Berlin surrounded by the GDR but lingering as a captivating showcase for Western values and goods. Following a failed Soviet attempt to expel the allies from West Berlin with a blockade in 194849, a second crisis ensued from 195861, during which the Soviet Union demanded once and for all the withdrawal of the Western powers and the transition of West Berlin to a Free City. Ultimately Nikita Khrushchev decided to close the border in hopes of halting the overwhelming exodus of East Germans into the West.

Tracing this path from a German perspective, Manfred Wilke draws on recently published conversations between Khrushchev and Walter Ulbricht, head of the East German state, in order to reconstruct the coordination process between these two leaders and the events that led to building the Berlin Wall.

Foreword
List of Abbreviations
Map of Germany, 194989
Map of Berlin, 194989

Introduction

PART I: THE POLARIZATION OF POSTWAR EUROPE

Chapter 1. The Allied War Conferences and Europes Postwar Order

• The United States of America and the Anti-Hitler Coalitions Goals for Peace: The Atlantic Charter of 1941
• The Soviet Precedent in 1944 Poland and Churchills Warning about the Iron Curtain in 1945
• Yalta: Controlling Germany without Dismembering It
• Germanys Forced Reorientation
  • Liberation and Occupation Rule
  • The Question of Guilt
  • Emerging from Catastrophe: Konrad Adenauer, Kurt Schumacher, and Walter Ulbricht
• Potsdam 1945

Chapter 2. New Borders for Germany

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