How did the construction of the Berlin Wall help to create Cold War tensions?

Cold War
tensions certainly existed before the
construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. However, the wall
certainly
increased those tensions. Most of all, the presence of the Berlin Wall was a
physical
sign of the Cold War and a symbol of the divide between Eastern
Europe and Western Europe. It
stood for the difference in communist and
capitalist ideology. Its purpose really depended on
who you asked at the
time. Was it a wall built to protect those within it or to imprison them?
At
any rate, it marked the border between the two ideologies in Europe.

To
the West, the wall was a symbol of the tyranny and oppression of
the communists. It distinctly
defined the frontier between freedom and
despotism. When President Reagan famously called on
Premier Gorbachev to
"tear down this wall" in 1987, he was ratcheting up Cold War .
The Soviet
Union interpreted the speech to be "openly provocative,

war-mongering."

href="https://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/13/world/raze-berlin-wall-reagan-urges-soviet.html">https://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/13/world/raze-berlin-wall...