In act one, George proclaims, "I will not give up Berlin!" George's reference to Berlin, in the heat of battle with his braying wife Martha, not only reveals the influence of the Cold War on Albee's play but suggests deeper and darker meanings for the symbol of Berlin than those touched upon in Kennedy's famous speech.
George, the battle-weary male protagonist of Edward Albee's 1962 play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? references this Cold War understanding of Berlin. "Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us." Indeed, Berlin became a potent and embattled symbol during the Cold War 1960's in both politics and literature. In his famous speech, Kennedy declared that Berlin was a symbol of democracy and freedom. Not only did this wall physically close the border between East and West Germany, separating families and prohibiting travel between the two nations, but it soon because a potent symbol in the Cold War. Kennedy traveled to West Berlin and uttered the now-famous statement, "Ich bin ein Berliner." Nearly two years earlier, on the night of August 13, 1961, the Communist East German government had erected the Berlin Wall.