History

• By 1961, Germans were disillusioned and disgusted with the economic and political failure of communism, and were leaving East Berlin for West Berlin at the rate of 1,500 a day. On August 13, 1961, the Soviets erected, over the span of 24 hours, a physical barrier to separate the two halves of the city.
  
  

Families

• Travel restrictions wreaked havoc on families from both sides of the city who could no longer visit one another.
  
  

Work

• Residents of East and West Berlin who commuted to their jobs on the other side of the city were suddenly unemployed.
  
  

Surveillance

• In East Berlin, under hard-line communist rule, the widespread growth of the surveillance state had one in every six citizens engaged in spying, resulting in an explosion of societal paranoia.
  
  

Rumors

• Another tactic undertaken by the East Berlin communist rulers was an Orwellian Big Brother program of spreading lies about people. Countless marriages and reputations were ruined by this method.