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Divided Berlin: Then-And-Now Photos Show Where The Wall Stood

Thirty-five years after the Berlin Wall was toppled, 2024 images contrasted with archival photos capture the scars that remain from the Cold War's most infamous border.

Berlin's "anti-fascist protection barrier" was installed by East Germany's Soviet-backed left-wing government in the summer of 1961, ostensibly to prevent Western spies from entering East Berlin. In reality, the wall, which turned East Berlin into a vast open-air prison, was a desperate measure by East Germany's government to stop millions of its own citizens fleeing to freedom after Germany was divided into zones of Soviet and Western control following World War II.

Through the decades the wall was in place, thousands of people managed to escape from East Berlin, but at least 140 were killed in the attempt, many of them shot by East German border guards.

The wall was toppled on November 9, 1989, amid massive protests both inside and outside East Germany, a police state that collapsed along with its infamous wall.


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Amos Chapple

Amos Chapple is a New Zealand-born photographer and picture researcher with a particular interest in the former U.S.S.R.

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