Shortly after midnight on this day in 1961, East German soldiers begin laying down barbed wire and bricks as a barrier between Soviet-controlled East Berlin and the democratic western section of the city.
After World War II, defeated Germany was divided into Soviet, American, British and French zones of occupation. The city of Berlin, though technically part of the Soviet zone, was also split, with the Soviets taking the eastern part of the city. After a massive Allied airlift in June 1948 foiled a Soviet attempt to blockade West Berlin, the eastern section was drawn even more tightly into the Soviet fold. Over the next 12 years, cut off from its western counterpart and basically reduced to a Soviet satellite, East Germany saw between 2.5 million and 3 million of its citizens head to West Germany in search of better opportunities. By 1961, some 1,000 East Germans–including many skilled laborers, professionals and intellectuals–were leaving every day.
In August, Walter Ulbricht, the Communist leader of East Germany, got the go-ahead from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to begin the sealing off of all access between East and West Berlin. Soldiers began the work over the night of August 12-13, laying more than 100 miles of barbed wire slightly inside the East Berlin border. The wire was soon replaced by a six-foot-high, 96-mile-long wall of concrete blocks, complete with guard towers, machine gun posts and searchlights. East German officers known as Volkspolizei (“Volpos”) patrolled the Berlin Wall day and night.
Many Berlin residents on that first morning found themselves suddenly cut off from friends or family members in the other half of the city. Led by their mayor, Willi Brandt, West Berliners demonstrated against the wall, as Brandt criticized Western democracies, particularly the United States, for failing to take a stand against it. President John F. Kennedy had earlier said publicly that the United States could only really help West Berliners and West Germans, and that any kind of action on behalf of East Germans would only result in failure.
Because the brain s so big and in so many ways unable to explain all the phenomena that occur. And unlike physical problems, psychologicalis often impossible to have in emotion and undoubtedly impossible to observe.
Dorothy West was a black American who lived at a time when blacks were discriminated against. Dorothy West in "Amateur Night in Harlem" paints a picture of the Great Depression as a time when the Whites and Blacks did not get along.
The mood of the mixed-race crowd was changed when a white man was allowed to sing a song that racially profiled the blacks. Despite the fact that he was booed, the emcee allowed him to sing and this hurt the black audience.
In that article, Dorothy West started with a description of a crowd having a good night. The polity became tensed when the blacks felt insulted by a song that was performed by a white man.
This song reminded them of how they have had to slave for the whites. They leave the crowd feeling dejected.
