Calendar – Past Event

While it's hot and steamy this summer, why not explore the Cold War with PBS? THE WALL - A WORLD DIVIDED, premiering Monday, June 28 at 10 p.m., chronicles the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall and the Wall's effects on the lives of ordinary Germans. From the secret plans to erect the wall in the middle of the night to the chaotic human events that tore it down, THE WALL is a fascinating history of the increasingly extreme attempts of a government to exercise power over the people.

On Sunday morning, August 13, 1961, Berliners who weren't away on summer vacation awoke to find their city cut in two by a ribbon of barbed wire and concrete. East German police patrolled the border. On one city street, the front doors of apartment buildings opened on West Berlin and freedom -- while the back doors opened into Communist East Berlin.

The notorious Berlin Wall remained in place until 1989, when, through an East German bureaucrat's misstatement, travel restrictions between East and West Germany were lifted. Before his error could be rescinded, Tom Brokaw and NBC Nightly News were on the scene and thousands of citizens were flowing back and forth in an unstoppable human wave.

How and why was the Berlin Wall erected? THE WALL reveals the history and the human stories of those who risked -- and those who lost -- their lives in the search for freedom.

Produced, directed and written by Eric Stange, the film includes interviews with George H. W. Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, Helmut Kohl, James Baker, Condoleezza Rice, Brent Scowcroft, and Daniel Schorr.