Question

what impact did the berlin wall have on the U.S.

Answer 1

It didn't have that much of a direct effect on the United States, per se, but it did affect their policies in West Berlin and West Germany on several levels. It was largely symbolic to the US at large. Many in the US viewed it as an example of hardline Communism and the kind of attitude the system had towards its people.

Answer 2

The Wall was made mainly of precast concrete panels with big concrete pipes on top of them. It was only a few inches thick at the places the panels were used. Around the Brandenburg Gate, they built this very strong structure with concrete, block, steel...lots of things to make it strong enough that a tank couldn't batter its way through. (The East Germans were worried about a tank battering its way through at the Brandenburg Gate, for some reason.) And in other places, it was big metal mesh panels. These you would see down in the Potsdam area--places where East Germans either didn't live or couldn't see anything really prosperous. They didn't want people trying to escape just to get nicer houses like they saw in the West. And along the Spree River, which separated East Berlin from West Berlin in places, they put a fence down the middle of the river so no one could swim over, and called it good. source wiki answers

Answer 3

It was considered a provocation in two ways: first, because it verged close to threatening to seal off East Berlin from Allied observation and control. Keep in mind Berlin was occupied jointly by all four Allied powers (the US, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union) at the end of the Second World War, and under the terms of the London Protocol of 1944, each of the four Allied powers had free access for military observation and control to the entire city. That is, US troops were free to conduct patrols in East Berlin, and in fact occasionally did so. I don't recall if Soviet troops conducted patrols in West Berlin, but perhaps not, given the threat (to the Soviets) of defection.

Sealing off most of the ways into the Soviet Sector was provocative, in that it prevented Western military access except at a few entryways which, of course, the Soviets would and did fortify. It clearly contradicts the spirit, if not quite the letter, of the agreements made near the end of the war.

Secondly, it strongly suggests a permanent division of Berlin, which was contradictory to Allied agreements and intentions during the war, which included an eventual unified and independent Germany. The United States certainly never had any intention of spending blood and treasure liberating Germany from the Nazis only to have half of it fall under the Soviet dictatorship, which was very little better. It cemented the impression begun by the failure of the Red Army to allow fair and free elections in "liberated" Eastern Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania) after the war which Churchill noted in his famous "Iron Curtain" speech.

In short, it was a major step along the path by which the Soviet Union traveled from trusted wartime ally to (as perceived in the West) a treaty-breaking, deceptive, dishonest and untrustworthy opponent interested in dominating, not liberating, the people of Eastern Europe.

In their (the USSR's) defense, it should be noted the West did not, I think, fully grasp the paranoia and disorganization present in the USSR in the late 50s, near the end of Stalin's life and in the years just following it. It should have been better recognized that the Soviets in that time period were probably simply incapable, as a country, of making the soundest of strategic decisions, and could do no better than address immediate fears with short-sighted immediate "solutions" -- like the Berlin Wall.

Answer 4

It caused a bit of friction between the Americans and the Russians because of the way the russians ran "their" side