Outline the consequences of the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961. (6 marks)

For this question, as it is worth six marks, I would expect the student to provide three well backed-up points with substantial evidence to obtain all the marks available. They may provide both short-term consequences to the building of the Berlin Wall as well as longer-term consequences, and they could focus on consequences within East Germany (GDR), West Germany (FRD), the United States, the Soviet Union as well as the impacted/changed relations between these countries.Possible consequences could include: the growing view in the USSR that the USA and their president John F Kennedy were weak and could be pushed around; a propaganda victory for the USA as it showed communism was so unsuccessful that East Germany had to force people into captivity for their system to work, John F Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in West Berlin in 1963; heightened tensions between the USA and the USSR, as on 27 October 1961, Red Army tanks refused to allow Americans to pass into Berlin’s Eastern sector; heightened tensions between the USA and the USSR, as reflected in the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis.