International A Wall Divides Berlin
“Today the endangered frontier of
freedom runs through divided Berlin.”
President Kennedy, on July
22, 1961, three weeks before the Berlin Wall was erected. A grim convoy of tanks and troops wound
through eastern Berlin
in the predawn hours of August
13, 1961.
By sunrise, East German soldiers had stretched barbed
wire across the city, cutting off the Communist sector from the capitalist. The
wire was soon replaced by a network of concrete walls and electrified fences, guarded
by armed men, dogs, and minefields, a 30-mile-long barrier separating German
from German. Churchill’s Iron Curtain metaphor had become reality. Ostensibly
built to keep out saboteurs and subversives, the Berlin Wall was in fact meant
to keep East Germans in. Since 1949, 2.5 million had fled the economic
hardships and political repression of Germany’s Communist half, creating
labor shortages and a “brain drain” of professionals and skilled workers. West Berlin, an island of democracy and capitalism in the
midst of East Germany,
was the principal escape route. (Since thousands of eastern Berliners worked in
western Berlin
before the wall was built, defectors could usually evade detection.)
Through
the years, the Soviets had periodically demanded that all Berlin be made a “free city,” with both
Western and Soviet occupation troops withdrawn, but the Western powers, fearing
a total Communist takeover, had refused. In June 1961, Khrushchev threatened to
use nuclear weapons if the “Berlin
question” was not swiftly resolved. When heightening tension accelerated the
stampede of illegal immigrants, 30,000 East Germans defected in July, Communist
authorities decided to stem the flow by force. The wall was their solution.
Henceforth, travel eastward would be subject to tight restrictions and travel
westward, banned.
Though crowds of angry West Berliners confronted the wall
builders (only to be dispersed with tear gas and water cannons) and the United States
sent in extra troops as a symbolic gesture, fear of retaliation ruled out more
forceful measures: A trade embargo against East Berlin
was considered, but the Communists vowed to blockade West
Berlin in response. Eventually, the East Germans encircled all of West Berlin with a fence topped by watchtowers. Travel restrictions
for Westerners eased somewhat in the 1980s, but the wall, and all it stood for,
remained intact for nearly three decades.
