US tanks pass spectators on the Friedrichstrasse in West Berlin

Night-shot, MLS of crowd with tanks driving past in the foreground U.S. tanks with bulldozer shovel attachments drive past spectators gathered on the West Berlin side of the Friedrichstrasse during the Berlin Crisis of 1961. In August 1961, during the Cold War, Soviet and East German forces, headed by Nikita Khrushchev and Walter Ulbricht, respectively, erected the Berlin Wall in an effort to halt westward emigration out of the Soviet-controlled Eastern Bloc. The wall bisected the north-south-running Friedrichstrasse, where Checkpoint Charlie, the most well-known crossing point between East and West Berlin, is located. In October 1961, towards the end of the Berlin Crisis, President John F. Kennedy ordered the US Air National Guard to mobilize numerous squadrons in response to Soviet efforts to block allied, Big Four access to Berlin.