East and West Germany united into one single country on this day in 1990. The lingering division of the leading Axis power of World War II was one of the starkest symbols of the Cold War, providing a physical example of the differences between the ways of life in the American-led and Soviet-led spheres of influence. After the Allies invaded Germany and carved it up in 1945, the country shifted from a literal battleground to an ideological one between the Western and Eastern Blocs. That conflict would continue for four and a half decades, until the Cold War began thawing in the late 1980s.
As the divisions between the United States and Soviet Union grew tenser, the security situation on the ground worsened, exemplified in the Berlin Blockade in the years after World War II ended and the 1961 construction of the Berlin Wall. There were times where it seemed impossible for Germany to be reunited to the governments on either side of the divide, whether it was the democratic West Germany or communist, single-party state in East Germany. But the people themselves always held out hope that the lines dividing families and communities would be erased.
That finally started to happen when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. With that infamous physical barrier between the East and West demolished, Germans all around were finally able to come back together to figure out what a unified country might look like. On “Unity Day” the next year, the dream came true. Two months later, Germany held its first national multi-party election since 1933, when the Nazis had eliminated all political opposition.
