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After the Berlin Wall by 
The fall of the Berlin Wall : the Cold War ends by This documentary examines the events that led to the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. A comprehensive overview of the Cold War politics, the documentary contains archival footage, first-person testimonials and dramatisation of events. It is a valuable resource for year 10 students studying the Cold War superpowers and the Berlin Wall, as well as senior secondary students investigating the evolving nature of the Cold War in Europe.
For years West Berlin was an escape route for East Germans seeking to flee communism. But growing Cold War tensions forced the Soviet bloc to erect a deadly blockade across the city, a wall that divided Berlin for nearly three decades.
Shows how the Berlin Wall was built in a clandestine operation that surprised even the Allies in West Berlin. It was a time of families torn apart, of desperate East Berliners leaping from their apartment windows, of men and women digging tunnels to the Western sector. It was also the time when Berlin became a hotbed of international espionage, with Stasi, KGB, CIA, MI6 and BND all jostling for information in a city of threats and secrets. This film rebuilds the Wall with CGI and re-enacts the most daring escapes. Interviews with ex-border guards, spies, politicians, escapees and the engineers of the barrier are interspersed with archival footage, home movies and propaganda films.
Tonight's episode focuses on dramatic escape stories during the 1970s and 1980s as the GDR regime crumbled at the end of the Cold War. Broadcast in two parts. -Narrator, Andrew Solomon. -Summary: Shows how the Berlin Wall was built in a clandestine operation that surprised even the Allies in West Berlin. It was a time of families torn apart, of desperate East Berliners leaping from their apartment windows, of men and women digging tunnels to the Western sector. It was also the time when Berlin became a hotbed of international espionage, with Stasi, KGB, CIA, MI6 and BND all jostling for information in a city of threats and secrets. This film rebuilds the Wall with CGI and re-enacts the most daring escapes. Interviews with ex-border guards, spies, politicians, escapees and the engineers of the barrier are interspersed with archival footage, home movies and propaganda films
On August 13, 1961, the Communist government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) began to build a barbed wire and concrete “Antifascistischer Schutzwall,” or “antifascist bulwark,” between East and West Berlin. The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West.
During the early years of the Cold War, West Berlin was a geographical loophole through which thousands of East Germans fled to the democratic West. In response, the Communist East German authorities built a wall that totally encircled West Berlin. It was thrown up overnight, on 13 August 1961.
