How did the fall of the Berlin Wall affect the rest of the world?

The
Berlin wall was both a fact of and a symbol of the Cold War. It was created as a result of the
way in which Germany was divided up following World War II (the Potsdam agreement). Berlin was a
divided city in a country that had been divided into spheres of influence by four different
allies: the United Kingdom (Britain), France, the United States, and the Soviet
Union. 

The part of Germany under Soviet influence, which was called the
"German Democratic Republic," had a very different political system from that of the
other allies and in the late 1950s decided to prevent defection from east to west through
building the wall. The western part of Berlin was actually deep within the German Democratic
Republic territory, so the east Germans built the wall all the way around West
Berlin. 

The attached picture shows the wall. On the western side was all
kinds of graffiti because western Berliners could approach the wall with impunity. The eastern
side had no graffiti because as east Germans increased the guarding of the wall and added more
barriers to the approach to the wall, people could not get anywhere near the it. Those who tried
to defect by climbing over the wall were shot. 

There were places in the
wall, called checkpoints, where people with the proper identification papers could get through,
but these were heavily guarded. Despite the wall, defectors still managed to get into West
Berlin by tunneling under the wall and even floating in balloons over the wall. Still, that was
risky business. 

The Cold War was a terrifying time for people around the
world, as the arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States escalated. One never knew
when a leader might decide to use nuclear weapons against the other side and there were some
really close calls, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

In the late 1980s, the
Soviet Union began to fall apart and the fall of the Berlin wall marked this event with great
clarity. With the fall of the wall, families who had been divided by the two Germanys could
reunite, people finally had freedom, and the whole world breathed a sigh of relief that the Cold
War had finally ended. 

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