Less than a year after the destruction of the Berlin Wall, East Germany and West Germany come together for what is called “Unity Day”.
Since 1945, when Soviet forces occupied East Germany and the United States and other Allied forces occupied the western half of the nation at the end of World War II, divided Germany had become the one of the most enduring symbols of the Cold War. .
Some of the most dramatic episodes of the Cold War took place there. Perhaps the most famous were the Berlin Blockade (June 1948-May 1949), in which the Soviet Union blocked all land travel to West Berlin, and the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. With the gradual decline of Soviet power in the late 1980s, the Communist Party of East Germany began to lose its grip on power. Tens of thousands of East Germans began to flee the country, and in late 1989 the Berlin Wall began to collapse.
Shortly thereafter, talks between officials from East and West Germany, which were joined by officials from the United States, Britain, France and the USSR, began to unfold. explore the possibility of reunification. Two months after reunification, all-German elections were held and Helmut Kohl became the first chancellor of reunified Germany. Although this action took place more than a year before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, for many observers, the reunification of Germany effectively marked the end of the Cold War.
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