A Divided Berlin

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  • A divided Berlin
    • West Berlin
      • West Berlin was deep inside Soviet-controlled East Germany
      • Gave the USA a foothold inside the Soviet Eastern Bloc
      • Some Germans in East Germany did not like having a communist government
      • Better jobs with higher wages
      • Easy to get to West Germany once you had reached the western zones of Berlin
    • The Refugee problem in Berlin
      • Population of west increased while economy benefited from an influx of skilled workers, left the east with a skills shortage
      • Looked bad for Soviets: people clearly preferred the West
      • 1949-61, 2.7m East Germans crossed from the East to the West in Berlin
    • Khrushchev's Berlin ultimatum (Nov 1958)
      • All Berlin belonged to East Germany, occupying troops must leave in six months
      • USSR know if it tried to pus West out of Berlin using force, a war would start that it could not win. So, a series of summit meetings took place
    • Summit meetings
      • Geneva (May 1959), foreign representatives only. No solution agreed, further summit organised
      • Camp David (Sept 1959), Eisenhower and Khrushchev. No solution agreed, another summit organised
      • Paris (May 1960), Eisenhower and Khrushchev, disaster - Khrushchev walks out because US spy plane shot down over USSR
      • Vienna (Jan 1961), Kennedy and Khrushchev, neither willing to back down. Khrushchev saw Kennedy's inexperience as a weakness and reissued his ultimatum

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