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    Berlin Wall Interview: Interviewers: Lena and Liesel Kemmelmeier Interviewee: Peter Baldwin

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    Peter Baldwin, a professor at UCLA who has visited Berlin multiple times, discusses the impact of the Berlin Wall and division of Berlin during the Cold War in an interview. He notes that the division of Berlin concentrated the Cold War confrontation in one location and made it easier for Cold War agents to move between East and West. When visiting East Berlin in the late 1970s, Baldwin observed it was run-down, poor, and grim compared to West Berlin, reflecting the ideological differences between communist East and capitalist West. The Berlin Wall also involved the four occupying powers of Berlin - the Soviets, Americans, British, and French - with the city divided between Soviet-controlled East Berlin and the western sectors controlled by the other three powers.

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    Berlin Wall Interview: Interviewers: Lena and Liesel Kemmelmeier Interviewee: Peter Baldwin

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    Peter Baldwin, a professor at UCLA who has visited Berlin multiple times, discusses the impact of the Berlin Wall and division of Berlin during the Cold War in an interview. He notes that the division of Berlin concentrated the Cold War confrontation in one location and made it easier for Cold War agents to move between East and West. When visiting East Berlin in the late 1970s, Baldwin observed it was run-down, poor, and grim compared to West Berlin, reflecting the ideological differences between communist East and capitalist West. The Berlin Wall also involved the four occupying powers of Berlin - the Soviets, Americans, British, and French - with the city divided between Soviet-controlled East Berlin and the western sectors controlled by the other three powers.

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    Peter Baldwin, a professor at UCLA who has visited Berlin multiple times, discusses the impact of the Berlin Wall and division of Berlin during the Cold War in an interview. He notes that the division of Berlin concentrated the Cold War confrontation in one location and made it easier for Cold War agents to move between East and West. When visiting East Berlin in the late 1970s, Baldwin observed it was run-down, poor, and grim compared to West Berlin, reflecting the ideological differences between communist East and capitalist West. The Berlin Wall also involved the four occupying powers of Berlin - the Soviets, Americans, British, and French - with the city divided between Soviet-controlled East Berlin and the western sectors controlled by the other three powers.

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    14 views2 pages

    Berlin Wall Interview: Interviewers: Lena and Liesel Kemmelmeier Interviewee: Peter Baldwin

    Uploaded by

    Cows
    Peter Baldwin, a professor at UCLA who has visited Berlin multiple times, discusses the impact of the Berlin Wall and division of Berlin during the Cold War in an interview. He notes that the division of Berlin concentrated the Cold War confrontation in one location and made it easier for Cold War agents to move between East and West. When visiting East Berlin in the late 1970s, Baldwin observed it was run-down, poor, and grim compared to West Berlin, reflecting the ideological differences between communist East and capitalist West. The Berlin Wall also involved the four occupying powers of Berlin - the Soviets, Americans, British, and French - with the city divided between Soviet-controlled East Berlin and the western sectors controlled by the other three powers.

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    Berlin Wall Interview

    Interviewers: Lena and Liesel Kemmelmeier

    Interviewee: Peter Baldwin

    Peter Baldwin is a professor at the University of California Los Angeles and researches
    comparative history of modern Europe and the United States. In addition, Baldwin has
    also visited Berlin multiple times in the late 70s.
    Interviewer: How did Post-War Berlin impact the Cold War?
    Peter: The division of Berlin meant that the Cold War confrontation had a focal point to play out
    in, a place where the confrontation between East and West was concentrated and flared up
    continuously.

    Interviewer: How was the Berlin Walls division an obstacle for Soviet and Cold
    War-agents?
    Peter: Only insofar as before the Wall it was easier for agents from both sides to get in and out
    of the other sphere. Berlin before the Wall was the only place where the East and West had an
    open border to each other. That is why the Wall was eventually built, because too many East
    Germans were fleeing to the West in the early 1960s and East Germany was losing too many
    of its trained workers- doctors, engineers and the like who could get good jobs in the West.

    Interviewer: Did ideals help define Soviet and American powers? Can this
    difference be applied to East and West Berlin?
    Peter: Berlin was where the Communist East and the free-market Capitalist West faced each
    other most dramatically. When you went across the wall from West to East Berlin (which I did
    many times back in the late 1970s) it was like travelling 50 years into the past. The East was
    run-down, poor, dimly-lit. The stores had nothing to buy in them. The buildings were
    unrenovated, still pocked with bullet holes from the war. Grim-faced policeman were
    everywhere. It was like walking into a 1930s movie, an absolutely extraordinary contrast.
    Indeed, it was almost as though society was black and white, like a movie. They had no money
    for paint so basically by the 1970s, the last time anything had been given a fresh coat of paint
    was in the 30s, half a century earlier. Everything was grey.

    Interviewer: How did the Berlin Wall involve multiple powers?

    Peter: The Wall involved the four occupying powers, with the Soviets having half of Berlin
    (which by the way was the old downtown area with most of the official building, while the
    western part of Berlin was the more residential area around the Kurfrstendamm). The western
    half was then divided among the western allies, via the Americans, British, and the French. But
    those zones werent really divided among each other, so basically the division was between
    East and West.

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