Topic

Cold War Berlin

Blockade, Wall and spies in the divided city, 1945–90.

Cold War Berlin1948–49 Stalin bet West Berlin could not be fed from the air. For fifteen months a plane landed, on average, every 2 min 23 s.

Cold War Berlin1961–1992 For 28 years, West Berlin’s trains ran under the East through 15 sealed stations where they were forbidden to stop

Cold War Berlin1962–1990 West Germany bought 33,755 political prisoners out of East German jails

Cold War Berlin1963 Kennedy had seven and a half hours in West Berlin. The speech the world remembers took about nine minutes of them

Cold War Berlin1944–1952 The Morgenthau Plan was never adopted. Yet for twenty-six months its words told the US Army not to rebuild Germany

Cold War Berlin1953–56 The KGB knew about the Berlin spy tunnel before it was dug, and let it tap Soviet lines for 11 months, 11 days

Cold War Berlin1935–1995 Gatow had no hard runway until the RAF laid one. Through it, British aircraft flew in nearly half the food airlifted to West Berlin

Cold War Berlin1947–1987 For 20 years and 10 months, four armies took turns guarding one Nazi prisoner

Cold War Berlin1961–1989 The Wall the world photographed was the last of nine barriers

Cold War Berlin1961–1990 East Germany spent 28 years hardening the Berlin Wall. One sentence opened it 4 h 37 min later

Cold War Berlin1962–1986 Forty-three people crossed this bridge. Thirty of them walked west.

Cold War Berlin1961–1989 At least 140 people died at the Berlin Wall. 90 of them died in its first decade

Cold War Berlin1949–1961 Before the Wall went up, 2.7 to 3.5 million East Germans had left

Cold War Berlin1963 At 19, Wolfgang Engels drove a stolen armoured carrier into the Berlin Wall. It stuck, and drinkers from the corner pub pulled him over the top

Cold War Berlin1961–1984 Within a fortnight of the Wall, West Berlin stopped riding its own S-Bahn. East Germany ran the near-empty trains for more than twenty-two years

Cold War Berlin1945–2024 After the Wall, US troop strength in Germany fell 71% in six years

Cold War Berlin1961–1989 Historians examined 576 deaths at the Berlin Wall. They could prove 140; the youngest was 15 months old

Cold War Berlin1962 Four years, twenty-one months, six months — all ended on one February morning