Checkpoint Charlie

Checkpoint Charlie (or "Checkpoint C") was the Western Bloc's name for the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War (1947–1991), becoming a symbol of the Cold War, representing the separation of East and West. East German leader Walter Ulbricht agitated and maneuvered to get the Soviet Union's permission to construct the Berlin Wall in 1961 to prevent brain drain, emigration and defection from East Berlin and the wider German Democratic Republic into West Berlin. Soviet and American tanks briefly faced each other at the location during the Berlin Crisis of 1961. On 26 June 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy visited Checkpoint Charlie and looked from a platform onto the Berlin Wall and into East Berlin, the same day he gave his famous Ich bin ein Berliner speech. After the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc and the reunification of Germany, the American guard house at Checkpoint Charlie became a tourist attraction. It is now located in the Allied Museum in the Dahlem neighborhood of Berlin.