Who did the Berlin Wall help?

Answer 1

It didn't really help anybody.

The issue was that after World War II, the Allies divided Germany into administrative zones, with different members of the Allies having responsibility for different zones.

This was done for the country as a whole, and more pertinently, for Berlin specifically.

Berlin happened to be within the Soviet (USSR) administrative zone, but because unlike other cities it was portioned out separately, parts of Berlin ("West Berlin") were administered by countries other than the USSR.

When the Soviet-controlled zone became a separate (communist) country from the rest of Germany, that meant there was a tiny region of democracy within soviet East Germany. (The other zones merged into West Germany. Technically, West Berlin was not actually a part of West Germany but a separate administrative area; however, they behaved in essentially every practical way as if they were part of West Germany, even to the extent of having their legislature vote to approve all laws passed by West Germany without debate.)

Many people decided they'd rather live in a democratic country than a socialist one (that's little-d democratic as in "democracy", not big-d Democratic as in "the Democratic party." Thought I should mention that to make it clear there was an actual difference between the two.).

And, since Berlin was kind of right there, people started streaming in.

The USSR didn't like this, so they built a wall to keep it from happening. (Also, they were somewhat offronted by the very concept of "West Berlin," and hoped they'd be able to basically starve the people into agreeing to become part of East Germany... this didn't work because of the Berlin Airlift, where other countries sent food to West Berlin by plane; the USSR didn't want actual war with other countries, particularly not the US, so while they could and did stop trucks from traveling through East Germany to get to Berlin, they couldn't really just shoot the planes down.)

In the general collapse of the Iron Curtain countries under the weight of Soviet mismanagement in the late 20th century, the wall was mostly torn down and the two Germanies reunited into a single country.

So, temporarily, it helped the Soviets keep control of East Germany and not continually lose people to West Germany, by providing a physical barrier making it harder for them to simply stroll across the border. But in the long run, it was ultimately futile.