The construction of the Berlin Wall

Between 1945 and 1961, around 3.6 million people left the Soviet zone and East Berlin, causing increasing difficulties for the leadership of the SED, the East German communist party. Half of this steady stream of refugees left via West Berlin. About half a million people crossed the sector borders each day in both directions, enabling them to compare living conditions on both sides. In 1960 alone, around 360,000 people made a permanent move to the West. The GDR was on the brink of social and economic collapse.

As late as 15 June 1961, GDR head of state Walter Ulbricht declared that no one had any intention of building a wall [Film 0.81 MB]. On 12 August 1961, the GDR Council of Ministers announced that “in order to put a stop to the hostile activity of West Germany’s and West Berlin’s revanchist and militaristic forces, border controls of the kind generally found in every sovereign state will be set up at the border of the German Democratic Republic, including the border to the western sectors of Greater Berlin.”

In the early morning hours of 13 August 1961 [Film 5.80 MB], a Sunday, temporary barriers were put up at the sector boundaries separating East and West Berlin, and the asphalt and cobblestones on the roads linking the eastern half to West Berlin were ripped up. Police and transport police units, along with members of “workers’ militias,” stood guard and turned away all traffic at the sector boundaries.

Coils of barbed wire were strung along the border between East and West Berlin and were followed in the next few days by a solid stone wall built by East Berlin construction workers under the close scrutiny of GDR border guards. The outer walls of houses on, for instance, Bernauer Strasse, where the sidewalks belonged to the Wedding borough (West Berlin) and the houses to Mitte (East Berlin), were integrated into the border fortifications: as a first step, workers bricked up the front entrances and the lower windows. Residents could get to their apartments only via the courtyard, which was in East Berlin. Many people were evicted from their homes already in 1961 – not only in Bernauer Strasse, but also in other border areas.

Overnight, streets, squares, and houses were separated from one another, and S- and U-Bahn connections were severed. On the evening of August 13, Governing Mayor Willy Brandt said in a speech to the House of Representatives: “The Berlin Senate publicly condemns the illegal and inhuman measures being taken by those who are dividing Germany, oppressing East Berlin, and threatening West Berlin....”

On 25 October 1961, American and Soviet tanks faced off against each other at Checkpoint Charlie, the border crossing point for foreigners. GDR border guards had attempted to check the identification of representatives of the Western Allies as they crossed into the Soviet sector, thus violating their right to move freely throughout all of Berlin. The two nuclear powers briefly stood armed and facing one another from a distance of just a few meters. After three days, both sides withdrew and the Western Allies were again permitted to cross the sector border at Checkpoint Charlie without hindrance.

In the years to come, the barriers were reinforced and further expanded, and the system of controls at the border was perfected. The Wall running through the city center, which separated East and West Berlin from one another, was 43.1 kilometers long. The border fortifications separating West Berlin from the rest of the GDR were 111.9 kilometers long. Well over 100,000 citizens of the GDR tried to escape across the inner-German border or the Berlin Wall. Several hundred of them were shot and killed by GDR border guards or died in other ways during their escape attempt.