History of Berlin for a unified Germany. Loshitzky depicts the role of the Berlin Wall as a symbol of the Cold War, détente, and the collapse of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe. She divides the history of the Wall into six major stages: the erection of the Wall (1961); the period of the "geography of fear" from the Cold War; the period of détente; the short period of glasnost and perestroika; the fall of the Wall (1989); and after the Wall. On August 13, 1961 the Communist East German government started to build a wall, physically separating West Berlin from East Berlin
Berlin Wall of the Wall; the governments later used industrial equipment to remove most of what was left. The "fall of the Berlin Wall" paved the way for German reunification, which formally took place on 3 October 1990. After the end of World War II in Europe, what remained of pre-war Germany west of the Oder-Neisse line was divided into four occupation zones (as per the Potsdam Agreement), each one controlled by one of the four occupying Allied powers: the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union. The capital of Berlin, as the seat of the Allied Control Council,