The Cold War and the Berlin Wall essays

The Cold War and the Berlin Wall essays 1. The Cold War was caused by the differences in idealism between the Western and Eastern superpowers. Yet, that idealism was not necessarily the reigning idealism of the people within the nations of the United States and the Soviet Union. Many citizens within the Soviet Union and its satellite nations proved to abhor the tyrannical Communist regime of Stalin and his predecessors. However, there were forced to adopt the nationalization seen in Communism. The United States used this tyrannical image to portray a savior image of its own representation. Based on the occurrences which led to the rise of these two very different idealisms, it is apparent that the Cold War could not have been averted, but in fact we should consider ourselves lucky for not escalating further. 2. East and West Berlin, to me, represented a single country divided by political circumstances which plagued millions of lives for generations. It is seen through the efforts of East Germans to escape over the Berlin Wall that many East Germans hated the tyrannical puppet government which proved a slave to the Soviet Union. As West Germany combined and began to flourish with the Western world, East Germans were forced to envy their western counterparts from across the ugly concrete wall. The stadium built for the 1936 Olympic Games was just a reminder of a distant past haunted by unification under the wrong mores. 3. Once the two zones were once again united after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the city and country was re-united. When the two zones were officially united in 1990, much of Eastern Germany had refocused in consumer goods and a free-market economy. Germans were allowed to freely travel between the formerly guarded Berlin border. The Western culture was allowed to influence the formerly Communist East Germany. Yet, still some regional differences continued to persist within a small portion of the population. Old Communist buildings littered ...