The Berlin Wall
A Milestone Documents E-text
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Abstract

For almost three decades, the Berlin Wall stood as a concrete embodiment of the metaphorical “Iron Curtain” dividing the democratic West, led by the United States, and the Eastern bloc of Communist nations led by the Soviet Union. In 1945, at the end of World War II, invading Allied forces occupied their respective conquered territories in the defeated Germany. They similarly divided up Berlin, the German capital that lay entirely within the larger Soviet territory, into zones of occupation. This meant that West Berlin, a non-Communist territory, became a democratic island completely encircled by Soviet-controlled territory.

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