When the Wall Was Built

[Hawk1981]

In the early morning hours of August 13, 1961, temporary barriers were put up at the border separating the Soviet sector of East Berlin from West Berlin. Over the next few days and weeks, the coils of barbed wire strung along the border to West Berlin were replaced by a wall of concrete slabs and hollow bricks. The wall was built by East Berlin construction workers closely watched by East German border guards and militia. The Berlin Wall succeeded in completely sealing off the two sections of Berlin, and came to symbolize the Cold War.

The border between the two Germanys had been sealed off for some time, but when the Wall went up, the loophole into West Berlin, through which East Germans had been able to flee to West Germany, was also closed. The East German regime had effectively locked up its own population. Between 1949 and 1961, about 2.7 million people left East Germany for the west, causing increasing difficulties for the East German Communist Party. Many of the people who fled the East were much needed youth, half of the refugees in 1960 and 1961 were under 25 years old. In the planned economy of the East, all workers were needed to try to keep pace with the economic advances in the West.

During a press conference in East Berlin in June, 1961, Walter Ulbricht, head of the State Council of East Germany told reporters that, "No one has the intention of building a wall." But during the summer Ulbricht and the leader of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev had been in conversations about how to stem the flow of Germans crossing the border to West Berlin. About 200,000 had left in 1960 alone, which was seriously endangering economic planning. When Khrushchev told Ulbricht, "When I attended your party convention two years ago, everything was fine. What happened? You wanted to pull ahead of West Germany by 1961/62." Ulbricht replied candidly, "The population is making demands that cannot be met."

Walter Ulbricht had been the effective head of the German Democratic Republic in eastern Germany since 1950. A veteran of the First World War on the eastern front, Ulbricht had deserted at the end of the war and during the German Revolution, became the head of the soldier Soviet in his army corps. During the Weimar Republic he rose rapidly through the ranks of the German Communist Party and was a member of the Central Committee. When the National Socialist regime assumed power in Germany, Ulbricht fled to France and the Soviet Union.

During the Second World War, Ulbricht became a close ally to Nikita Khrushchev, who organized the city's defenses during Battle of Stalingrad while Ulbricht used a bullhorn to encourage German soldiers to change sides. Following the conclusion of the battle in 1943, Ulbricht and other German communist exiles conducted a large communist rally in downtown Stalingrad that many German prisoners were forced to attend.

At the conclusion of the war, Ulbricht returned to Germany to build up the Communist Party following an orthodox Stalinist plan. Personally loyal to Stalin, cold and calculating, Ulbricht was known for his inflexibility and unwillingness to make compromises. Disliked even among his German Communist peers, he was a shrewd and intelligent politician well known for denouncing his rivals and having a talent for escaping difficult situations.

Walter Ulbricht

The plans for building a wall around Berlin's western sectors were well along during the summer of 1961. Ulbricht had managed to keep secret the purchase of vast amounts of building materials, including barbed wire, concrete pillars, timber, and mesh wire. Khrushchev sent his ambassador to see Ulbricht in order to "explain to him my idea of taking advantage of the current tensions with the West and laying an iron ring around Berlin."

On August 13, 1961, Ulbricht issued a communique stating "Beginning tomorrow, checkpoints will be erected and transit will be prohibited. Anyone who wishes to cross the border can do so only with the permission of certain authorities of the German Democratic Republic."

Ulbricht's implementation of his New Economic System after the construction of the Wall failed to match the pace of West Germany's economy, and he found himself increasingly isolated. The construction of the Berlin Wall became a public relations disaster for him, not only in the West, but even with the Eastern Bloc. Ulbricht was out of step under the new Soviet regime under Brezhnev and was forced to step down from most of his duties as Chairman of the East German Communist Party in 1971. He continued in the honorary role of head of state until his death in 1973.

 

[Hawk1981]

The Wall running though the center of Berlin, separating the eastern and western sectors, was 43.1 kilometers long. The border fortifications separating West Berlin from the rest of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) were 111.9 kilometers long. Over 100,000 citizens of the GDR tried to escape across the inner-German border between 1961 and 1988. More than 600 of them were shot and killed by GDR border guards or died in other ways during their escape attempts.

 

[Hawk1981]

On October 27, 1961, a confrontation developed at the boundary of the United State’s “Checkpoint Charlie” where Soviet and American tanks faced each other. The distance between the two forces was about 100 meters.

The confrontation had come about over the increasing difficulties of American and British occupation forces being allowed into the Russian sector of Berlin as allowed by the 1945 Potsdam Conference agreement. The US Army sent armed troops and tanks to the checkpoint to enforce the occupation forces right to transit into the Russian sector, and the Soviets responded with armed troops and tanks positioned on their side of the checkpoint. The alert levels of the US Garrison in West Berlin, then NATO, and finally the US Strategic Air Command (SAC) were raised.

Khrushchev and Kennedy agreed to reduce tensions by withdrawing the tanks. The Soviet checkpoint had direct communications to General Anatoly Gribkov at the Soviet Army High Command, who in turn was on the phone to Khrushchev. The US checkpoint contained a Military Police officer on the telephone to the HQ of the US Military Mission in Berlin, which in turn was in communication with the White House. Kennedy offered to go easy over Berlin in the future in return for the Soviets removing their tanks first. The Soviets agreed. A Soviet tank moved about 5 meters backwards first; then an American tank followed suit. One by one the tanks withdrew. Kennedy stated concerning the Wall: "It's not a very nice solution, but a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war."

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

Berlin was the very frontlIne of the East/West and Cold War confrontation. This also meant that prominent Social Democrat Willy Brandt, the elected Mayor of West Berlin from 1957 (& for decades after the Wall was built), who was there when Kennedy visited, and who later also became Prime Minister of West Germany, was to play a key role.

Brandt was a young anti-Nazi socialist activist who had to flee to Norway under Hitler, was a journalist supporting the Popular Front & opposing Franco during the Spanish Civil War, and was the leader of the Socialist International in the 1970s. He played a key role in building the welfare state in Germany and was the controversial author of “Ost Politik,” which sought rapprochement with Communist Eastern Europe.

Of course he was also a vigorous anti-communist, a “CIA socialist,” and was the first prominent West German politician in 1989 to advocate complete unification. Though strongly opposed by right wing parties in West Germany, Brandt’s approach was crucial in winning the confidence of a new generation of West Germans, while cleverly undermining the Soviet-allied bloc in the East.

It is well worth studying the role Western Social Democrats played in overcoming the Soviet-bloc domination of Eastern Europe, especially when considering foreign policies we should adopt to deal with Russia and especially China today.

 

[whitehall]

JFK didn't think it was important enough to deal with so he sent LBJ to observe. Later when the implication of the Berlin Wall became evident, JFK made the trip to Germany and gave a rousing speech where told the poor East Germans that "we are all Berliners" and then he want home and left them to be shot in the back by the Russians. The media positively loved the speech though.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

Later when the implication of the Berlin Wall became evident, JFK made the trip to Germany and gave a rousing speech where told the poor East Germans that "we are all Berliners" and then he want home and left them to be shot in the back by the Russians. The media positively loved the speech though.

From long before the wall went up, the isolated city of Berlin was a flashpoint in East/West politics, as during the famous Berlin airlift. Of course there were workers’ strikes in East Germany in 1953, the Hungarian uprising in 1956, the rise of independent Titoism in Yugoslavia, the Prague Spring in 1968 — a host of ongoing and crisis situations that every U.S. administration and European political party and government had to deal with. There is no need to make a shallow comment about JFK in answer to either my comment or the OP. After all the wall was up for 27 years and the Iron Curtain in Europe up much longer than that. Unless you advocated going to war in 1962 I don’t see the point of your criticism of Kennedy. What exact strategy would you have favored?

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