East Germany Builds the Berlin Wall
Overnight, a barbed wire fence seals the border and divides a city and its families for nearly three decades
Quick facts
- Date built
- 13 August 1961
- Ordered by
- Walter Ulbricht, East German leader
- Purpose
- Stop East German emigration to the West via Berlin
- Duration standing
- Nearly 28 years (1961-1989)
What happened
On the morning of 13 August 1961, Berliners woke to find that on the orders of East German leader Walter Ulbricht, a barbed wire fence had gone up overnight, sealing the border between West and East Berlin and cutting off movement between the two halves of the city. East Germany had been losing population steadily to the West through Berlin, the one remaining gap in the Iron Curtain where East Germans could simply walk across a city street into West German and Allied-controlled territory, and the barrier was built specifically to stop that flow. The barbed wire fence was quickly reinforced and expanded into a fortified concrete wall system with guard towers, checkpoints, and a heavily monitored no-man's-land.
Why it matters
The Wall became the single most visible physical symbol of the Cold War's division of Europe for the next 28 years, separating families and turning Berlin into the place where the entire Cold War standoff was made concrete, literally, in a way no other Cold War border was. This site's Cold War timeline covers the Wall's construction within the fuller context of the Berlin crises and superpower confrontation of the period.
How we know
The Wall's construction is documented in contemporaneous CIA and State Department reporting, since Western intelligence and diplomatic personnel in Berlin observed and reported on the closure within hours of it beginning.
Sources
- Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State. Milestones: 1953-1960 - Berlin Crises · Reputable sourcehistory.state.gov · The domain "history.state.gov" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- CIA Reading Room (FOIA). The Berlin Wall Collection: A City Torn Apart: Building of the Berlin Wall · Reputable sourcecia.gov · The domain "cia.gov" is on our Reputable source registry.
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Related timelines
- The Cold War → · The Berlin Wall in the context of the wider Cold War standoff between the superpowers