Aug 11, 2024 · Formidable concrete walls took shape at the seven crossing points between East and West Berlin on December 4, 1961. The new walls were seven feet high and five feet thick. Only small passages for traffic were left open.

Dec 8, 2021 · The Berlin Wall’s story began in the early hours of August 13th, 1961, when the government of East Germany ordered the closure of all borders between East and West Berlin. As the sun rose that morning, Berliners were awoken by the sound of trucks, jackhammers, and other heavy machinery.

Photos -- most of which never ran in LIFE magazine -- of the earliest days of the brutal divide and ultimate Cold War symbol.

Today 54 years ago people of Berlin woke up in a divided city. In the early morning hours East German border police had secured the border line between the East and West Berlin sector and workers had begun zu build the actual wall.

Jun 22, 2013 · On a day when the Berlin Wall is open, throngs of West Germans wait for friends and relatives to arrive from the Eastern sector, 1960. (Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images) Families and friends, once neighbours, now stand divided and wave across to each other over the Berlin wall, 1960.

The building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 divided families and neighborhoods in what had been the capital of Germany. The Wall represented a uniquely squalid, violent, and ultimately futile, episode in the post-war world.

May 9, 2012 · Here, LIFE offers powerful pictures of the construction and earliest days of the Wall—photos that offer a glimpse into an era that today feels at once profoundly alien, and disturbingly familiar. A hand reaches above the broken …

In the ensuing mad rush to escape to the West, the destruction of the Berlin Wall began. West Berliners gather at the Berlin Wall in August 1961 while an East German soldier patrols on the other side. Paul Schutzer/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images East Germans look over the wall at the West.

Nov 10, 2014 · Below is a collection of amazing black and white photos of the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. In this Aug. 1961 file photo, an East German worker lays some of the first stone blocks of the Berlin Wall, shortly after the border between East and West Berlin was sealed.

May 15, 2014 · The Berlin Wall bears the shadowy silhouettes of West Berliners waving to their relatives on the unseen, Eastern side of the Wall in December 1962. Paul Schutzer—Time & Life Pictures/Getty...