For a long time after the World War II, the border between the “Soviet” and “Allied” parts of Germany was arbitrary. Local residents could move freely between them — no additional permits were required by border guards. After all, Germany in the late 1940s was more or less homogeneous: people lived in poverty, cities were destroyed everywhere, and fields were mined.
Later, the situation changed. The economic recovery of West Germany turned out to be surprisingly rapid. A market economy, a new own currency and American aid, known as the “Marshall Plan”, led to the fact that already in 1950 the foreign press called the West German economy “the miracle on the Rhine”. And over the next ten years, real income in the Federal Republic of Germany grew by 73 percent.
Volkswagen Beetle cars played an important role in the economic recovery of Germany at that time. They were actively bought all over the world, appreciated for their reliability and affordability. Thanks to advertisers, the model received the nickname "the good German".
In East Germany, things were different. First, the Soviet occupation administration, and from 1949 the authorities of the newly founded German Democratic Republic built a planned, not a capitalist, economy. Collectivization was declared in agriculture, and all large enterprises became state-owned.
This led, for example, to the fact that it became unprofitable for even small local farmers to grow products for sale — high taxes leveled off profits. In the GDR, a deficit began in the 1950s. Work and life in West Germany became increasingly attractive for East Germans. And migration was not difficult: many had relatives in the Federal Republic of Germany, the countryʼs economy needed hands and brains — and could already pay decently for work.
Therefore, for example, in 1951, 165 000 Germans were exchanged from East to West.
Refugees from the GDR, 1949.
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Joseph Stalin was also aware of the problem of migration in Germany. On April 1, 1952, at a meeting with the GDR leadership in Moscow, he said:
“The demarcation line between East and West Germany should be considered a border — and not an ordinary one, but a dangerous one. Which the Germans will defend with their lives.”
East Germany began building a full-fledged border — with barbed wire, mines, armed border guards with dogs. In 1953, 331 000 people fled from the GDR to the Federal Republic of Germany, expecting stricter rules. And then the numbers throughout Germany began to decline.
However, a gap remained — West Berlin. There was no physical border between this enclave of the Federal Republic of Germany in socialist Germany and the eastern part of the city. Yes, there were checkpoints where they could restrict the passage of certain types of transport, but in general freedom of movement was preserved. After all, the eastern and western parts of the city were connected by a subway line.
Thus, Berlin became a door to the Western world for the population of the socialist camp. Once in the western part of the city, you could board a plane — and fly to the Federal Republic of Germany or some other capitalist country without any obstacles.
July 1961, refugees from East Germany at the Marienfelde center in West Berlin. Here, people were prepared for further departure to the West. There were three such centers in West Berlin.
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By the early 1960s, East Berlin was becoming more and more like a dormitory area. Every day, about 60 000 of its residents left for work in the wealthier West Berlin. These were mostly the most professional and highly paid workers. As for emigration from the country, from 1948 to 1961, from 3 to 3.5 million people, or about 20 percent of the total population, left the GDR.
Most of the escapees were younger than 25, a significant proportion of them were scientists, engineers, and teachers. It got to the point that hospitals in small towns in the GDR were left without doctors, and people of retirement age were working as tram drivers — there was simply no opportunity to attract others. If before World War II, the share of the working-age population in East Germany was 70.5 percent, then in 1960 it was 61.
The mass escapes from the socialist country, which in the Western world were called Republikflucht, were considered a disaster by the GDR leadership. The countryʼs leader, Walter Ulbricht, vainly demanded the equivalent of 17 billion dollars from the Federal Republic of Germany for the loss of labour, declaring the escapees traitors and people unworthy of life in East Germany.
However, he understood that without closing the "hole" in Berlin, the economic and social spheres of the country would simply crumble. On August 12, 1961, Ulbricht and the top leadership of the state met at the government dacha north of East Berlin and agreed on all the details of the operation.
Walter Ulbricht (center) visits a German collective farm, 1953.
Celebration of Stalinʼs 70th birthday. Ulbricht is second from the right.
West Berlin had already suffered from the GDRʼs restrictions. For example, in 1948, when the United States, Britain, and France decided to unite the territories under their control in Germany and transfer jurisdiction over them to the local government. At that time, the Soviet administration of East Germany first introduced passport control on land routes to West Berlin, and then completely blocked land and water communication with it.
The only way out was by air — and the United States organized an air corridor through which food was supplied to the city with a population of two million during 1948-1949. Sometimes more than ten thousand tons per day — until the USSR recognized the futility of such a blockade.
Soviet military bases were deployed around West Berlin, particularly in neighbouring Potsdam. Also, Soviet and East German military personnel, according to international agreements, could move around the territory of West Berlin. Because of this, the local population feared that the western districts of the city could be seized and incorporated into the GDR at any time. However, there was also a contingent of Allied troops on their territory — a total of about 15 thousand soldiers.
Despite all the problems, West Berlin was indispensable for the GDR for a long time — important railways passed through its territory. In particular, those that connected East Berlin and the rest of Germany. As in the case of modern Russia and the Nord Stream, the GDR authorities decided to build a railway that would bypass West Berlin. The construction of the "Berlin Outer Ring" began in 1951 and was completed on May 25, 1961. There were no more obstacles on the way to building the wall.
On the night of August 13, 1961, shortly after a meeting of the GDR leadership at a country house, 34 000 East German police and soldiers, along with hundreds of kilometers of barbed wire, arrived in the area around West Berlin. By seven in the morning, the operation was complete: the western districts of the city were surrounded by a fence 80 centimeters high. Since then, August 13 has been known in Germany as “Barbed Wire Sunday”.
Construction of the first version of the wall.
Map of the Wall with Berlin in the background. Dots mark checkpoints: blue for German citizens only, red for everyone.
Rallies gathered on both sides of the fence, but the new border was guarded by armed soldiers. The Western Allies protested, but had little leverage: barbed wire was installed on East German territory and even a little deeper, and the GDR authorities had also provided a strip of land several meters in front of the fence to patrol it.
Although when a concrete wall appeared in place of the fence, GDR representatives appeared on the outside mainly to paint over the most offensive graffiti.
The only thing the US, Britain, and France did was increase their military contingent in West Berlin for the sake of local security.
A stone wall was built to replace the barbed wire fence within a few days, on August 17. At the same time, the East German authorities issued an order to shoot fugitives.
And there were already fugitives: on August 15, East German border guard Konrad Schumann left the GDR by jumping over the barbed wire. Photographs of his escape have since become a symbol of the Republikflucht.
For 19-year-old Konrad Schumann, duty at the fence on August 15 was the first. As he later recalled, his unit was ordered to "ensure order at the border". Arriving at the post, they could not understand for a long time what exactly they were supposed to do. During the day, Schumann saw a young woman over the barbed wire handing an elderly woman a bouquet of flowers. This was how the daughter apologized to her mother for not being able to come to her birthday. Then a small demonstration gathered near the post, people shouted: "Pigs! You are guarding a concentration camp!" Schumann was ordered to push back the crowd with a rifle with a bayonet. He did this, but realized that he did not want to follow such orders anymore. And soon jumped over the fence. Schumann then settled in Bavaria, where he worked as a car mechanic at the Audi factory.
For internal propaganda, the GDR explained the construction of the wall as protection against fascists and spies. The goal, they said, was to prevent anyone from West Berlin from entering the GDR, rather than fleeing there. Although in reality, after the wall was built, it was easier to get from West Berlin to East Berlin than vice versa.
For the first few years, the border was indeed closed to crossings: only in 1963, before Catholic Christmas, were residents of both parts of the city allowed to hold family reunions.
Such short-term permits were issued several more times until, in 1971, the governments of the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR agreed on a regime of permits and passes. East Germany reserved the right to deny people entry into or exit from West Berlin without giving any reason.
1961. An elderly woman greets friends and family from East Berlin after a three-hour wait.
In 1962, a 12-minute film about a year of living with the Berlin Wall was released on West German television. It records escape attempts. You can see a father using gestures to communicate with his children who remained on the other side. GDR soldiers bricked up the windows of houses adjacent to the wall so that those who wanted to escape to Germany would not jump out.
For the same purpose, they covered the roofs of these houses with barbed wire. At the same time, loudspeakers were installed in West Berlin, from which they called on the soldiers not to shoot at escapees:
“Do not obey the orders of your superiors. Murder is always murder!”
The calls did not help: during the first year of the wall’s existence, as the film says, 50 people died trying to cross the border. But the border was still weak. The GDR authorities continued to strengthen the wall.
In the spring of 1962, the so-called inner wall began to be built parallel to the main wall, a hundred meters deep into East Berlin.
To clear the area between the walls, hundreds of houses were demolished. Gradually, a moat, a fence under tension, a strip of sand or gravel on which footprints were visible, areas with specially trained dogs, watchtowers, bunkers, and the so-called "Stalin rugs" were added to the structure — sharp metal pins hidden in the sand under the balconies, from which one could start an escape.
The guards on the wall were deliberately appointed not from Berlin, but from other regions of the GDR — so that they would have less sentimentality.
The wall was constantly improved, its final version in 1980 already contained concrete blocks 3.6 meters high, which were shattered in the famous footage of the fall of the wall in 1989. The wall turned out to be an effective project to prevent people from escaping from the GDR: from 1961 to 1989, only about 5 thousand successful attempts to overcome the obstacle were recorded.
The Berlin Wall closed the last gap in the “iron curtain” between the socialist and Western worlds. As a result, for example, from 1970 to 1979, only 1.1 million people emigrated from the socialist countries. Three quarters of them — thanks to official programs for the departure of national minorities, for example, Soviet Jews or Bulgarian Turks. There were no such programs in East Germany.
The Wall lasted until November 9, 1989. It was torn down spontaneously and, in fact, by accident — due to the confusion of the GDR authorities (we wrote about it in detail here). However, Berliners can still distinguish between the "Ossies" — those who lived east of the wall — and the "Wessies", residents of the western part.
The former are often more conservative, the latter are more enterprising. The former are nostalgic for socialism, the latter have a better attitude towards the EU. They read different newspapers, watch different TV channels and vote for different political parties.
For example, among residents of the eastern districts of Berlin, the Eurosceptic party "Alternative for Germany" has consistently higher support. As German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in 2019, marking the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Wall, "Germany has become a single state. However, there is still no unity of Germans as a people".
GDR soldiers during the destruction of the wall by civilians, 1989.