Berlin Wall Facts – 70 Interesting Facts About the Berlin Wall

Facts about Berlin Wall

The end of Berlin Wall helped in putting an end to Cold War.

The Berlin was not built as a single structure, but a series of four different wall, starting with two wire fences and then with two concrete walls.

Berlin had honored Usain Bolt by giving him a 3 ton segment of the Berlin Wall.

5 million East Germans defected from GDR before the Wall was erected.

On August 24, 1961, Gunter Litfin was the first person to be shot while escaping to the west.

To prevent escape attempts, wires and mines were setup underneath the surface, and to prevent the wall from being scaled, pipes were mounted on the wall.

Conrad Schumann was the first East German border guard, who defected to West Berlin by jumping the barbed wire on August 15, 1961.

An East German once stole a tank and drove it through the Berlin Wall to escape in 1963.

In the initial 2 years of the Berlin Wall over 1,300 GDR uniformed men defected to West.

The West Berlin city government sometimes refereed the Berlin Wall as the “Wall of Shame”, to condemn the Wall’s restriction on freedom of movement.