Berlin Wall Monument (Chicago) described the effects of the wall and its ultimate fall by arguing that "It became the landmark that symbolized the Cold War… the Berlin Wall also left a lasting impression on the psyche of the German people". She further argues that The Berlin Wall "provides a salient and powerful example of how material culture intersects with knowledge production in the psychological sciences". Since the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, fragments of the Berlin Wall have been donated to various cities in the world. Chicago was offered a piece of the wall in 2008 by the German
Berlin Wall expected the Soviet sector to be sealed off from West Berlin, but were surprised by how long the East Germans took for such a move. They considered the Wall as an end to concerns about a GDR/Soviet retaking or capture of the whole of Berlin; the Wall would presumably have been an unnecessary project if such plans were afloat. Thus they concluded that the possibility of a Soviet military conflict over Berlin had decreased. The East German government claimed that the Wall was an "anti-fascist protective rampart" () intended to dissuade aggression from the West. Another official justification was the