South Bay Model United Nations 2021 JCC: FALL OF THEEAST BERLIN GERMANY WALL [email protected] southbaymun.com/committees/jcc-east Co-Chairs: Niyatee Jain and Conner Yin Crisis Staff: Howard Peng, Luke Li, Janelle Cai Crisis Director: Parth Asawa Table of Contents Welcome Message 2 Position Papers 2 Introduction to JCC: East Germany 3 Topic Overview 3 Case Studies 4 Key Issues 6 Questions to Consider 7 Works Cited 8 Welcome Message Hey everyone! Welcome to SBMUN’s JCC Committee. In this joint committee, we will be discussing the Berlin Wall and the events that led up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, specifically from East Germany’s point of view. We hope that you will enjoy the committee, and most of all have fun participating. Your Chairs and Crisis Staff Position Papers Position papers are to be emailed as a PDF to ​[email protected]​ by ​March 26​. You will not be eligible for any award if you do not submit a position statement. In order to show your research into your topics, we request that each delegate submit a 2–5 page, typed, and double-spaced position paper, to be emailed as a PDF to [email protected]​ by ​March 26​ at 11:59 pm. Google Drive links will not be accepted. In this research paper, we request that you write three sections: one on an overview of your topic, one on your country or individual’s policies as extrapolated from the sources you evaluate, and one on the solution(s) you propose in your topic. We would also like for you to cite your sources in this paper to show that you have performed research. As this is a crisis committee, you will be expected to put forward a plan for the success of the organization in your solutions section. The heading should look like this (please do not include your name OR your school name in the heading!): Character Name/Position JCC East Germany SBMUN V If you have any specific questions about position papers, please feel free to email [committee email]! Introduction to JCC: East Germany Joint Crisis Committees are a special type of crisis committee as the actions done in either committee can have an affect on the other committee. In this specific committee, delegates in the East German committee will be working against the West German committee. Large actions done in both committees can and will affect each other directly. Crisis committee procedure differs from general assembly, as crisis moves forward through crisis notes as well as your general moderated/unmoderated caucuses. There are three types of crisis notes: personal (used to push yourself forward), joint/personal (done in collaboration with one or two other delegates, and committee (large actions that are voted and passed on by committee [sort of like resolutions]). This is a general overview of how the committee will work, and more procedural information can be given either by emailing the chairs (​[email protected]​) or at the beginning of the committee during SBMUN. Please also message the chairs if you have clarification questions surrounding content given in the background guide. Topic Overview Following the events of World War II, the Allied forces divided Germany into four occupation zones during the Potsdam conferences in 1945. Each zone was controlled by one of the following Allied forces: United States, United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union. East Germany was heavily influenced by the Soviet Union. The German capital of Berlin lied solely in the zone controlled by the Soviet Union, though was split into East and West Berlin. The Soviet Union, in conjunction with concurring East Germans, created a communist regime in East Berlin which became the German Democratic Republic, while the other Allies created a similar regime in West Berlin called the Federal Republic of Germany. The people of West Germany seemed to be thriving under capitalism and support from the other allies. In 1948, Western attempts to spread this regime caused the Soviet Union to prevent any food, materials, and people from arriving in West Berlin through land. This led to the Berlin Airlift, where other countries would provide supplies to West Berlin through airlift. During the airlift, an Allied supply plane landed in West Berlin every 30 seconds, making a total of 300,000 flights over the course of the event. This was the only way any residents could get supplies from outside the city. Eventually, the blockade was lifted in 1949 by Joseph Stalin, seeing that it was ineffective due to the success of the airlift. Over the next 10 years, immigration out of East Berlin/Germany grew more and more prominent, causing Walter Ulbricht, head of the Germany Democratic Republic, to propose the building of the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall was then established in 1961. Two years following the Berlin Wall's construction, under East and West Berlin's agreement, over 170,000 passes were issued to West Berlin citizens, allowing for a one-day visit to East Berlin. In West Berlin, many newspapers viewed visitors to East Germany as pawns of East German propaganda and claimed that communists would use the visitation policy as a ploy to gain acceptance of Germany's permanent division. The revolutions of 1989 in Poland and Hungary challenged the Communist government and set the stage for a popular movement. This resulted in refugees from Eastern Europe going through Hungary and Germany in the biggest escape movement since the Berlin Wall was constructed. The year is now 1989 and the rise of East German refugees plus calls for the destruction of the Berlin Wall from Western politics, media, and figures, creates a problem for West Germany. With many West Germans upset at the wall, while many East Germans, with the exclusion of the refugees that may be there in East Berlin, are supportive of their government, it will be your jobs as delegates to figure out what will happen next. Case Studies Emigration From 1949 to 1961, many people left East Germany for West Germany because they believed that West Germany was more prosperous and had a better political climate in comparison to the communist East Germany (Connolly 2019). This caused a “brain drain” in East Germany, as many of those who left were educated or skilled workers. As a result, the Berlin wall was initially built in order to prevent emigration from East Germany to West Germany, even though the official reason was to prevent “fascists” from West Germany from entering into East Germany (“Berlin Wall” 2019). The wall’s height, as well as other defenses such as barbed wire and guards, made it very difficult for anyone to leave. Over 100,000 citizens tried to escape, and at least 140 people were killed in trying to do so (“Victims”). However, only around 5,000 people were able to successfully escape, and they took great risks in doing so (Blakemore 2019). Government After WWII, Germany was partitioned into four occupation zones split between France, Britain, America, and the Soviet Union as part of the Yalta agreement (“Berlin Blockade.”). The primary purpose of the conference was to limit Germany’s future capacity for war (Llewellyn). In reality however, the agreement was backed by other interests as well-- for the Soviets, maintaining hegemonic control of European nations was crucial for its expansionist policies at the time, which involved setting up numerous friendly communist governments in Eastern European nations. For the Allies, they saw Germany as a buffer for the communist threat they recognized in the Soviet Union. These special interests tore Germany in two, and set the stage for the construction of the Berlin Wall. On October 7th, 1979, the Soviet Union ceded political control to a new, independent government in East Germany: the German Democratic Republic. Under a newly written constitution, citizens were granted basic civil freedoms including the right to protest. The socialist regime promised that all Eastern German citizens would be treated equally. In reality, this was far from the truth. First, citizens had very little civil power. All legislative matters were decided by a politburo under the single ruling party, the Socialist Unity Party (abbreviated as SED) (Solsten). Moreover, the Soviet Union still maintained significant legal control over the GDR until around 1955 (Ferstanau). And finally, historically marginalized groups such as the queer population in East Germany at the time experienced direct homophobia, oftentimes directly by the hands of government officials (Armstrong). The GDR also experimented with a command economy. The government made numerous attempts to nationalize key industries, in particular agriculture. By the 1960s, almost 85% of all available farmland was consolidated into “Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaft,” or collectivized farmland. This period of time was marked by many food shortages and strikes, largely seen today as a failure in a planned economic system. Revolutions In the 1980s, anti-communist sentiment was growing in East Germany. Millions of East Germans watched Western television and saw the riches and luxuries in the West while living in squalor and filth. For many years, Pastor Christopher Wonneberger led “peace prayers” in Protestant Nikolaikirche - St Nicholas Church. (BBC) The church was known as a safe place where dissenters could freely speak against the government. As conditions grew worse and worse, many citizens arrived at the church. On September 4th, many protesters gathered in Leipzig for the freedom of speech and assembly . That day was the international fair in Leipzig, and Western journalists were allowed into the city. Though the protest was quickly suppressed, Western media covered the brutality and millions of West Germans saw the protesters not as counter-revolutionary criminals, but as citizens who wanted to make a change.