The Berlin Crisis: a divided city

Refugee problems
1. The east German government was unpopular so many eastern Germans fled to the west
  1. West Germany was attractive, as there was more wealth and people had a better quality of life
    1. Between 1946 and 1961 2.7 million East German refugees fled to the West of Germany
      1. It was made easy because east Germans fled to east Berlin then crossed to the west and escaped into the west of German (easy access to a better quality of life and more jobs)
Khrushchev's challenge
1. He had the challenge of finding a solution to stop people fleeing over the the west. He was in a difficult position and needed to act dicisively to solve the propaganda disaster (it proved many people preferred west Berlin to east).
  1. He came up with the solution of asking the US to withdraw troops from Berlin within 6 months (the six month ultimatum) and declared the whole of Berlin to be officially owned by East Germany
2. He wanted to humiliate the US by not letting any more people escape to the West of Germany to prove their plan of influencing capitalism had failed

Resource summary

	Created by milliewernyj17 about 12 years ago