## The Wall and What Came After
The Berlin Airlift ended, the blockade was lifted, West Germany was established, and the division of Europe settled into the patterns that would define it for the next forty years. The Wall that went up in August 1961 was in one sense the blockade’s final expression: having failed to dislodge the Western Allies from Berlin through economic strangulation, the Soviet Union and East Germany eventually built a physical barrier to stop the flow of East Germans leaving for the West.
The children who had been at the Tempelhof fence in July 1948 were young adults when the Wall went up. The Wall divided some families. It ran through the middle of the city where they had grown up. Those who lived in West Berlin could see the Wall from certain streets. Those who had moved to East Berlin, or who were visiting relatives there when it went up, found themselves separated from family and friends in West Berlin.
The airlift, which had demonstrated that the Western Allies would sustain their position in Berlin rather than yield, was part of the foundation on which the Wall was eventually demolished. The logic runs forward from 1948 through 1989: the Western Allies stayed in West Berlin, West Berlin remained a Western enclave, the contrast between West and East Berlin grew over decades, and the pressure from East Germans wanting access to the West eventually became irresistible. The Wall came down on November 9, 1989, while Halvorsen was still active and attending commemorations.