It was Sunday when the Berlin Wall started being built. August 13, 1961, to be more precise. Construction workers took their machines to the streets with cops and military forces on their side. This is how Berlin woke up on that summer Sunday so many years ago.

The Berlin Wall started small, but it became one of the most infamous dividing lines in history. In the video below, you will learn with Konrad H. Jarausch how this wall was built, why it came to exist, and how it fell.




I have to say that even though I studied it in school and I remember watching tv when the Berlin Wall fell, I only realized the size of it and its importance when I visited Berlin for the first time, back in the summer of 2011. I remember walking around the Mauer Memorial and getting my mind blow about all this historical information that the schools in Brazil didn’t teach me.

This is why I loved this TED-ED video from Konrad H. Jarausch so much. It explains the Berlin Wall from the beginning. From the reasons behind its construction to the people that died trying to escape it. It tells the main differences between West and East Germany and even explains how the Berlin Wall was more than a wall. It was a complex of constructions with a wall, a death strip, watchtowers, and, sometimes, even more, stuff. Also, it explains how popular pressure made the wall fall.

If you want to learn more about the Berlin Wall, you have to watch this short video from Konrad H. Jarausch. You will learn a lot, and it will make your time in Berlin even more meaningful.

Konrad H. Jarausch explains the Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall on a TED-ED video animation

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