The City of Berlin, located 200 miles inside East Germany, was also divided. Half of the city?West Berlin?was actually part of West Germany. Many East Germans did not want to live in a communist country and crossed into West Berlin, where they could either settle or find transportation to West Germany and beyond.

Berlin was split as a direct result of the Potsdam Agreement of 1945 following the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. The city, despite being located deep within the Soviet occupation zone, was divided into four sectors managed by the victorious Allies: the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. As the Cold War intensified between the Western capitalists and the Eastern communists, the three Western sectors merged into "West Berlin," while the Soviet sector became "East Berlin." The split was finalized physically on August 13, 1961, when the East German government erected the Berlin Wall to stop the "brain drain" of citizens fleeing to the more prosperous West. For 28 years, Berlin served as the ultimate global symbol of the "Iron Curtain" until the wall's fall in 1989. In 2026, the scars of this split are still visible in the city's architecture and the distinctive "double" sets of museums and public institutions.