HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2023-10-11T08:01:26.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Berlin’s turbulent 20th century
items: Cold War summits: how USA & USSR leaders worked to end the conflict
items: “We missed a precious window”: why did America and Russia squander an opportunity for peace in the 1990s?
items: Witnesses to the Berlin Wall
items: The Cold War: everything you wanted to know
items: The Berlin Wall: everything you need to know
items: A brief history of Checkpoint Charlie
items: Escape from East Berlin: an audacious bid to tunnel under the Berlin Wall
items: The rise and fall of the Berlin Wall
items: What happened after the fall of the Berlin Wall?

Berlin’s turbulent 20th century
type: item
date: 2022-10-18T09:01:59.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: From the wild hedonism of the Weimar years to living in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, Sinclair McKay traces the history of the German city through the lives of its inhabitants
encoded: Sinclair McKay traces the history of the German city through the lives of its inhabitants, and how they weathered the tumult of the 20th century – from the wild hedonism of the Weimar years cut short by Nazism, to the fall of the famed wall that divided East and West. Sinclair McKay is the author of Berlin: Life and Loss in the City That Shaped the Century (Penguin, 2022) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones

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Cold War summits: how USA & USSR leaders worked to end the conflict
type: item
date: 2022-08-31T08:45:30.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: On 3 December 1989, the leaders of the USA and the USSR declared an end to the Cold War, after two days of talks at the Malta summit. What typically happened at a summit and to what extent did summitry bring about the end of the Cold War? David Reynolds and Kristina Spohr, editors of Transcending the Cold War, explain
encoded: In context: Summits in the 1970s and 1980s, primarily involving the leaders of the US, USSR, and East and West Germany, aimed to tackle two thorny Cold War issues: the nuclear arms race and the German situation. The Reagan-Gorbachev summits of the 1980s resulted in a real improvement of relations. Then, as the Eastern Bloc collapsed from 1989, Helmut Kohl, Mikhail Gorbachev and George HW Bush worked to ensure a peaceful transition from communism. The summits only really got going halfway through the Cold War. Why? David Reynolds: The word ‘summit’ was introduced into common parlance in the 1950s by Winston Churchill, who wanted to have “parleys at the summit” to defuse the Cold War, but in the 1950s and 1960s the confrontation was still too hot. It was not until the era of détente that leaders felt they ought to meet to try to develop mutual understanding, because nuclear weapons were just too dangerous to play around with. Kristina Spohr: Another strand here is the German question at the heart of the Cold War in Europe. West Germany would not de jure recognise East Germany as a separate independent state because it wanted to keep open the option of reunification. It was not until the period of détente that they began to meet, with the West German chancellor Willy Brandt travelling by train to East Germany. This was really, as Brandt said, to “get a smell of each other”. DR: This was a huge icebreaker at a time when there was a fundamental division between the two Germanies. KS: At one point during a meeting in Erfurt, Willy Brandt went to a window and outside was a crowd shouting: “Willy! Willy! Willy!” They meant Brandt, rather than the East German leader Willi Stoph. This spontaneous reaction by its own people totally shocked the East German regime. The locations of summits were clearly important. How were they chosen? DR: Sometimes there were sequences of summits, such as under Nixon and Reagan, moving from one place to another. So Nixon went to Moscow in 1972 –…

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“We missed a precious window”: why did America and Russia squander an opportunity for peace in the 1990s?
type: item
date: 2022-03-16T13:10:19.000Z
creator: Emma Mason
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: US presidents
description: US and Russian leaders squandered the opportunity to forge a lasting partnership at the dawn of the 1990s, says post-Cold War historian Professor Mary Sarotte
encoded: Nearly 30 years ago, US President Bill Clinton and his Russian counterpart Boris Yeltsin (president of Russia from 1991–99) embarked on an unlikely ‘bromance’ defined by optimism, a willingness to cooperate, and the possibilities of partnership. It was, says Professor Sarotte, the greatest opportunity for nuclear disarmament since the dawn of the atomic age. So, what went wrong? Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast in December last year, Professor Sarotte explained how a rare opportunity to forge a bright new future for US-Russian relations in the 1990s was squandered by a series of diplomatic missteps. Among them was America’s decision to pursue a more aggressive form of Nato expansion. These missteps helped fuel Vladimir Putin’s resentment towards the west and ushered in a new period of hostility, says Professor Sarotte. “Not one inch”: America’s hypothetical proposal To understand what went wrong, we must first look back at the unexpected tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War order. Having been divided during the Cold War, it was clear that the country of Germany now wanted to unite. But, crucially, as a result of the Soviet victory over the Nazis during the Second World War, decades later Germany still had occupying forces on its territory – including 400,000 Soviet troops, which had the legal right to remain there. In short, Germany was still technically an occupied country and so could not unify until those occupying countries agreed to let it do so. Mikhail Gorbachev, the then-leader of the Soviet Union, would need to be persuaded to give up his troops before hopes of German reunification could be realised. So how might Gorbachev be convinced? The west wanted to support Germany in its efforts to reunite. So, as part of a host of negotiations, in February 1990 the US Secretary of State James Baker held a meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev. There, as part of a hypothetical bargain, Baker suggested that if Gor…

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Witnesses to the Berlin Wall
type: item
date: 2021-08-13T12:09:10.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Soldiers
description: A panel of eyewitnesses recall their memories of the divided city and the dramatic events of November 1989
encoded: As we approach the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s construction, Major General Sir Robert Corbett and journalists Mark Wood and Alastair Stewart discuss their memories of the divided city and the dramatic events of November 1989. The discussion is chaired by the author Iain MacGregor. Iain MacGregor is the author of Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, the Berlin Wall and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth (Constable, 2019) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones

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The Cold War: everything you wanted to know
type: item
date: 2021-03-07T12:23:04.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
description: Michael Goodman responds to your questions on the decades of geopolitical tension that shaped relations between east and west in the second half of the 20th century
encoded: From espionage across the Iron Curtain, to the global struggles between communists and capitalists, Michael Goodman responds to your questions on the decades of geopolitical tension that shaped relations between east and west in the second half of the 20th century, in the latest in our series tackling the big questions on major historical topics. The Cold War: 9 key questions

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The Berlin Wall: everything you need to know
type: item
date: 2020-08-11T15:00:00.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Period
subject: Communism
description: Professor Patrick Major explores the history of the Berlin Wall – why it was built, how many lives it claimed, and its significance today…
encoded: Please note: This article contains images some readers may find distressing It is just over 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germany’s concrete solution to the mass haemorrhaging of its citizens to the west across the open border of West Berlin at the height of the Cold War. For 28 years following the fateful border closure on Sunday 13 August 1961, the edifice which inspired the novels of John le Carré and Len Deighton had become a fixture in the Cold War landscape, threatening death to any daring to cross it. An audacious bid to tunnel under the Berlin Wall Why was the Berlin Wall built? In the 1950s, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) – that part of Germany which had been the Soviet Occupation Zone in the post-WW2 division of Germany – was threatening to bleed dry, as one in six people fled, usually in search of work under West Germany’s ’economic miracle’ (but in some cases fleeing political or religious persecution). The GDR desperately wanted to halt this so-called ‘brain-drain’, so in August 1961 the East German communists were given the go-ahead by Moscow to close the border and build a physical barrier. The fact that the west did not officially recognise the so-called ‘GDR’, coupled with the risks of escalation, meant that the decision could only come from the Kremlin. The Berlin Wall turned the usual function of walls – to keep people out – on its head; this wall was solely to keep its citizens in. In pictures: remembering the Berlin Wall 30 years on What was life like in East Berlin before the Wall? What events led to the Wall being built? In 1952 East Germany had sealed its mainland border to West Germany, along the river Elbe and in the mountains of the Harz, with barbed wire and fire zones (where all vegetation was cut back within 100m of the border to allow guards an unencumbered field of fire). But there was an unpluggable leak in the centre of the GDR, in the four-power city of Berlin, whose three western sectors were still protect…

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A brief history of Checkpoint Charlie
type: item
date: 2020-06-22T07:10:34.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: General Modern
subject: Period
description: Thirty years ago this month, Checkpoint Charlie – the most famous crossing-point between East and West Berlin – was dismantled. Patrick Major shares a guide to the Berlin Wall spot that became a global symbol of Cold War division
encoded: On 22 June 1990 – thirty years ago this month – a last piece of Cold War theatre played out at the now-defunct Berlin Wall, at its most famous crossing-point, Checkpoint Charlie. Foreign ministers from the US, Britain, France, the Soviet Union and East and West Germany, accompanied by the city’s three western military commandants and two mayors, watched a crane hoist away the portacabin which had guarded what had been the easternmost point of the western world for nearly three decades. This was where ‘East’ met ‘West’ on the Cold War frontline, at the downtown borderline between the district of Kreuzberg in West Berlin (home to a bohemian counterculture) and the more regimented government district of East Germany’s demi-capital. This crossing was for non-Germans only – tourists mostly – and Allied and Soviet military and diplomatic personnel. Why was it called ‘Checkpoint Charlie’? But why ‘Charlie’? This was a military call-sign and letter from the NATO phonetic alphabet: ‘C’ for Charlie. Under the division of Germany into zones and Berlin into sectors, Allied troops travelling from West Germany to Berlin first encountered Checkpoint Alpha at the German-German border. One hundred miles further east, along a 1930s-vintage autobahn, came Checkpoint Bravo which funnelled them into the south-western tip of the US sector of Berlin. Charlie was the final stopping-point in the city centre before East Berlin. Listen | Author and editor Iain MacGregor revisits some of the most dramatic events associated with the history of the Cold War barrier, from its construction in 1961 to its modern afterlife On its eastern side – which was in fact its northern side, due to the city’s convoluted topography – it was simply known as ‘Border Crossing-Point Friedrichstraße’. A series of vehicle chicanes with swing-barriers waited behind a sign which, in the 1960s, informed visitors that they were entering the ‘Democratic Sector’ of East Berlin (but this was ‘people’s democracy’). Such was …

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Escape from East Berlin: an audacious bid to tunnel under the Berlin Wall
type: item
date: 2019-12-27T08:00:25.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: The building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 triggered a rush of escape bids – none more ambitious than one masterminded by a student named Joachim Rudolph. Helena Merriman, producer and presenter of new podcast Tunnel 29, tells a story of flooded tunnels, Stasi spies and families reunited – filmed live for American TV
encoded: It’s the middle of the night and Joachim Rudolph is wading through a river. There’s a watchtower above him with border guards inside; he knows they’ll kill him if they see him. He clambers up a bank, crawls through a field, and as the sun begins to rise, he realises he’s made it. He’s escaped to West Berlin. This was September 1961, a little less than two months after the Berlin Wall had gone up. It was built by the East German government to stop the flood of people leaving the communist dictatorship for a better life in the west. What made this wall so extraordinary was the speed at which it was built. Ten thousand East German soldiers had gone into the streets in the dead of night, stringing barbed wire from posts and making concrete barricades. When people woke up on 13 August 1961, they suddenly found themselves on one side of the wall: wives were cut off from their husbands; brothers from their sisters. There were even stories of newborn babies in the west now separated from their mothers. What happened after the fall of the Berlin Wall? In pictures: remembering the Berlin Wall 30 years on The secret history of the Berlin Wall That very day, the escapes had begun. Some just jumped over the barbed wire; others were more inventive, like the couple who swam across the river Spree, pushing their three-year-old daughter in front of them in a bathtub. Joachim had spent weeks planning his escape, and now he’d done it. He enrolled in an engineering course at a West Berlin university and was beginning his new life, when one morning there was a knock at the door. It was two students. They had a plan to build a tunnel to get some friends out of the East and they wanted Joachim to help dig it. A nest of spies There’s an old East German joke: why do Stasi officers make such good taxi drivers? Because you get in the car, and they already know your name and where you live. The Ministry for State Security (otherwise known as the Stasi) was the most powerful part of the East Ge…

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The rise and fall of the Berlin Wall
type: item
date: 2019-11-07T16:37:12.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Iain MacGregor revisits some of the most dramatic events associated with the history of the Cold War barrier
encoded: On the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, author and editor Iain MacGregor revisits some of the most dramatic events associated with the history of the Cold War barrier, from its construction in 1961 to its modern afterlife.

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What happened after the fall of the Berlin Wall?
type: item
date: 2019-11-05T15:10:57.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: What happened after the fall of the Berlin Wall? The end of decades of physical division in Berlin sparked diverse reactions in the two Germanies. Writing for BBC World Histories, Hester Vaizey explores the context and contemporary reactions to this seismic change...
encoded: Thirty years ago, on 9 November 1989, the barrier between communist East and capitalist West Germany was breached. In a series of articles for BBC World Histories magazine – on sale from Thursday 9 November, three experts revisit that pivotal moment and explore its global legacy. Here, historian Hester Vaizey offers her take on the events and what happened after the Wall came down... Arguably the most seismic changes in European geopolitics – certainly in the second half of the 20th century – stemmed from events that unfolded in Berlin on 9 November 1989. In the aftermath of its defeat in the Second World War, Germany had been divided into two countries: the German Democratic Republic (GDR), or East Germany, comprising the Soviet zone of occupation, and the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), which evolved from the combined occupation zones of the British, French and US allies. Over the following years, in the competitive climate of the Cold War, it was troubling to East German leaders that the equivalent of a town’s worth of people were electing to move each year from the communist state to capitalist West Germany in search of jobs and higher living standards. So the GDR decided to erect a physical barrier between East and West Berlin to stem the flow of this tide. The Wall was constructed rapidly and without public warning, and the first barrier was largely completed in just a few days beginning on 13 August 1961. The Berlin Wall: everything you need to know In pictures: remembering the Berlin Wall 30 years on During the 1980s, the communist Eastern Bloc countries faced increasing economic challenges, and the socialist dictatorships in Poland and Hungary lost their stranglehold on power, a situation that raised questions about the future of the GDR. The East German Politburo was keen to avoid similar upheavals; one member commented: “Just because one of your neighbours changes the wallpaper in his house, does that mean you have to follow suit?” Yet many Ea…

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