Thirty years ago this month, crowds of people in Berlin, Germany, began tearing down a barrier known as the Berlin Wall. At the time, Germany was divided in two. West Germany was democratic. East Germany was controlled by the Soviet Union, which was Communist.
For nearly 45 years, the Soviet Union and the U.S. were fierce rivals locked in a tense standoff. Each nation was determined to spread its own political system around the world. That conflict is known as the Cold War (1947-1991), and the Berlin Wall became a key symbol of it.
The wall was constructed in 1961 by the Soviets to separate East Berlin and West Berlin. Their goal: to prevent East Germans, whose freedoms were limited, from fleeing to democratic West Berlin. Those caught trying to escape were arrested or killed.
For years, world leaders pressured the Soviets to remove the barrier. On November 9, 1989, the wall’s gates between East and West Berlin suddenly opened. Berliners on both sides rushed to the wall and soon began hacking away at it. The wall was torn down, and a year later Germany was reunified as a democracy.