The height of the wall that gradually surrounded West Berlin reached 6 meters. Anyone who might try to illegally cross the wall and thus end up in the “death strip” was ordered by Order No. 101 to open fire on the GDR border guards. Most of the successful escapes to the West occurred in the first months after the construction of the wall, when it was not yet perfected.
the night of August 12-13, 1961. The thermometer showed 13 degrees Celsius. The sky was cloudy and a light breeze was blowing. Like every Saturday, most residents of the GDR capital went to bed late, hoping to sleep longer on August 13th. Until 0 o'clock this night in Berlin proceeded as usual. But shortly after midnight, the telephone rang in many apartments in the capital, and traffic rapidly increased. Functionaries of the SED, the state apparatus and economic departments were unexpectedly and urgently called to duty. Huge mechanism quickly and accurately
came into motion. At 1 hour 11 minutes the General German News Agency broadcast the statement of the Warsaw Pact states... When the morning of August 13 arrived, the border between the German Democratic Republic and West Berlin was under control. After noon, security was ensured on it,” wrote East German historians Hartmut and Ellen Mehls. That night the united city of Berlin was divided into two parts.
Historical reference
The grim symbol of the Cold War was built 45 years ago. Before this, the border between the western and eastern parts of Berlin was open. The 44.75 km dividing line (the total length of West Berlin's border with the GDR was 164 km) ran right through streets and houses, canals and waterways. Officially, there were 81 street checkpoints, 13 crossings in the metro and on the city railway. In addition, there were hundreds of illegal routes. Every day, from 300 to 500 thousand people crossed the border between both parts of the city for various reasons.
The situation around Berlin worsened in the summer of 1961: the tough course of the East German leader Walter Ulbricht, economic policies aimed at “catching up and overtaking the Federal Republic of Germany” and the corresponding increase in production standards, economic difficulties, forced collectivization 1957-1960, foreign policy tensions and a higher level of wages in West Berlin encouraged thousands of GDR citizens to leave for the West. In total, more than 207 thousand people left the country in 1961. In July 1961 alone, more than 30 thousand East Germans fled the country. These were most often young and qualified specialists. Outraged East German authorities accused Berlin and Germany of “human trafficking,” “poaching” personnel and attempts to thwart their economic plans. They claimed that the economy of East Berlin annually loses 2.5 billion marks because of this.
In the context of the aggravation of the situation around Berlin, the leaders of the ATS countries decided to close the border. Rumors of such plans were in the air as early as June 1961, but the leader of the GDR, Walter Ulbricht, then denied such intentions. In fact, at that time they had not yet received final consent from the USSR and other members of the Eastern Bloc. From August 3 to 5, 1961, a meeting of the first secretaries of the ruling communist parties of the ATS states was held in Moscow, at which Ulbricht insisted on closing the border in Berlin. On August 7, at a meeting of the Politburo of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED - East German Communist Party), a decision was made to close the border of the GDR with West Berlin and the Federal Republic of Germany. The project was called "Chinese Wall II". About 25 thousand members of paramilitary “battle groups” from GDR enterprises occupied the border line with West Berlin; their actions covered parts of the East German army. The Soviet army was in a state of readiness.
The construction of the Berlin Wall did not initially involve a blockade of West Berlin, as in the late 1940s. Since 1963, residents of the western part of the city were allowed to visit their relatives in East Berlin for Christmas and New Year, but five years later the GDR introduced a passport and visa regime for transit travel for German citizens and the West Berlin population. The passage of members and officials of the West German government, as well as German military personnel, through the territory of East Germany was suspended.
To the West: by air, by water and underground
According to the latest data provided by the German Die Welt, the number of Germans who died while trying to cross from the GDR to the Federal Republic of Germany exceeded 1,000 people.
The count included fugitives who managed to get to the West, but who were later eliminated by Eastern agents or were kidnapped and taken back to the East and executed or otherwise killed there. The exact number of killed Soviet deserters still remains unknown.
How many more deaths may be associated with attempts to cross the border between the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany is unknown. However, historians are close to obtaining definitive data. The investigation into the failed escape attempts across the Baltic Sea, which claimed the lives of 181 people, is almost complete.
The height of the wall that gradually surrounded West Berlin reached 6 meters. Anyone who might try to illegally cross the wall and thus end up in the “death strip” was ordered by Order No. 101 to open fire on the GDR border guards.
Most of the successful escapes to the West occurred in the first months after the construction of the wall, when it was not yet perfected. The first incident recorded on camera occurred on Tuesday, August 15, 1961: 19-year-old East German border guard Konrad Schumann, whose fiancée remained in West Berlin after the division of the city, jumped over the wire fences on Bernauer Strasse. Subsequently, Schumann happily married, settled in Bavaria and worked at the Audi plant.
Security was strengthened, but citizens of the GDR began using vehicles to overcome the wall, recalls Gzt.Ru. 14 escapes were carried out in heavy trucks that accelerated and rammed into an obstacle. After this, a strip with “Stalin grass” (steel spikes) appeared in front of the wall. Then they started using low-slung sports cars that could slip under the checkpoint barriers, however, then they began to weld vertical iron rods to the barriers. Then people began to hide under the bottoms of cars and in specially converted tanks. One day, nine people, one after another, managed to cross the border in the engine compartment of an Isetta minicar, from which the battery and radiator had been removed. In December 1961, a month before the East German authorities ordered the dismantling of the tram and train tracks connecting various parts of the city, 24 defectors in the Nollendorf Platz area broke into West Berlin on the S-Bahn. Of course, the most daring escape took place in October 1961. Four men ordered uniforms of Soviet senior officers from a seamstress they knew, got hold of cowhide boots, and made shoulder straps and order pads. In broad daylight, they passed the checkpoint in the Potsdamer Platz area, passing between the GDR border guards who saluted them.
It was possible to sail away from East Berlin: in June 1962, 14 GDR citizens seized a tugboat sailing along the Spree River, tied up the captain and, writing sinusoids under hurricane machine-gun fire, took the ship away from the city center to the west.
There were several attempts to cross the wall underground, that is, to dig a tunnel. One of them ended successfully - in 1964 there was a mass escape. 37 students from the GDR, for their part, and their friends and relatives in West Berlin, for their part, dug a tunnel towards each other for 6 months. The total length of the underground passage, which ran at a depth of 12 meters, was about 300 meters. Over the course of three days, from October 3 to October 5, 1964, 57 people - 31 men, 23 women and 3 children - crossed through the tunnel to the West. Despite the fact that the last group was discovered, they managed to shoot back and cross the border.
Perhaps the worst escape options are by air. On the seventh day of the wall's existence, East Berliner Rudolf Urban decided to jump over the border. Having chosen a house on Bernauer Strasse, which overlooked West Berlin on one side, he pushed off from the window sill and jumped. He was shot while jumping... Two months later, on the same street, Berndt Lenzer was shot dead in a fourth-floor window, after which the windows of all the houses on this street facing west were walled up. On August 17, 1962, 18-year-old Peter Fechter jumped over a wall with a pole, was shot in the stomach and lay bleeding in no man's land for an hour.
But there were also successful attempts: on the night of July 28, 1965, the Holzapfel family, consisting of 6 people, climbed onto the roof of the GDR ministries complex, a small building that was once Goering’s fiefdom. They threw a rope from the roof, which their relatives caught on the other side of the border - they pulled it tight and held it until the whole family climbed over the wall.
They also told about a case when parents, trying to save their child, “shot” them like a slingshot, while they themselves remained in East Berlin.
The last victim of the wall while attempting to jump over the wall was 20-year-old Chris Gueffroy - he was killed on February 6, 1989, two weeks before the repeal of Order No. 101. After the order ceased to apply, the border claimed another life. On May 8, 1989, Winfried Freudenberg crashed to his death while trying to fly to West Berlin in a homemade hot air balloon.
The Berlin Wall in numbers:
Length - 155 km
Length on the border of East and West Berlin - 43 km
Length on the border of West Berlin and the GDR - 112 km
Length of control strip - 124 km
Number of guard dogs - 600
Number of watchtowers - 302
Number of bunkers - 22
The number of GDR border guard corps on the border with West Berlin is 14 thousand people
Escape statistics:
5043 people successfully crossed the wall, 574 of them were soldiers of the People's National Army of the GDR and members of the People's Police
More than 60 thousand people were brought to criminal responsibility for preparing an escape
Arrested on the approaches to the wall - 3221 people
Killed while trying to overcome the wall - 1008 people
Of these, over 40 children and adolescents, as well as 60 women
The ages of those killed range from one year to 86 years.
Border guards and police guarding the wall were killed - 27 people
Storms of the wall were undertaken, accompanied by attempts to break it - 35
The material was prepared by the online editors of www.rian.ru based on information from the RIA Novosti Agency and other sources
Test on the topic: “Cold War” 9-11 grades.
1. The reason for the emergence of the Cold War:
A) disagreements between the Orthodox Church and other areas of Christianity;
B) US demands for the return of Lend-Lease debts to the USSR;
C) rivalry between the USSR and the USA in the military-technical sphere;
D) the desire of the ruling circles of the USSR and the USA to establish their system of values, way of life and worldview as universal;
D) the struggle for spheres of influence between the USSR, USA and Great Britain.
2. When the Truman Doctrine was proclaimed:
A) in 1945 B) in 1947
B) in 1949 D) in 1950
3. The purpose of the Truman Doctrine was to:
A) prevent the transition to USSR control of territories declared vital for ensuring US security interests;
B) isolate the USSR in the international arena and exclude it from the UN;
C) ban the Communist Party in the USA;
D) prepare for a nuclear war with the USSR.
4. Continue the phrase: “According to the Marshall Plan, the United States...”
A) pledged to ensure the holding of democratic elections in countries liberated from the Nazi yoke;
B) allocated economic assistance to European countries to overcome the consequences of the war;
C) provided military assistance to Western European countries;
D) declared the USSR an aggressor and terminated diplomatic relations with it.
5. When two German states were created: West Germany (FRG) and East Germany (GDR):
A) in 1949 B) in 1952
B) in 1947 D) in 1945
6. Which states created the “Council for Mutual Economic Assistance” (CMEA) union in 1949:
A) England, France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg;
B) USA, Canada and Western European countries;
B) the USSR and the states of Eastern Europe;
D) USSR and China
7. In what year was the Warsaw Pact Organization (WTO) created:
A) in 1949 B) in 1948 B) in 1955 D) in 1953
8. The Warsaw Pact organization was a military-political alliance:
A) USSR and Eastern European countries;
B) USA and Western European countries;
B) USA, Canada and Western European countries;
D) USSR, China and Eastern European countries
9. The NATO military-political alliance included:
A) countries of Western Europe;
B) USA, Canada and Western European countries;
B) USSR and countries of Eastern Europe;
D) Countries of Western and Eastern Europe
10. The 1951 Peace and Security Treaty between the United States and Japan did not contain the following provision:
A) the right of the United States to have military bases in Japan;
B) deprivation of Japan's colonial possessions;
C) delimitation of spheres of influence in Asia between the United States and Japan.
11. Most of the colonial possessions in Africa gained independence:
A) in 1950-1951 B) in 1974-1975
B) in 1960-1961 D) in 1980-1981
12. Which of the following is not the reason for the aggravation of internal conflicts in countries that have freed themselves from colonial rule:
A) heterogeneous ethnic composition of the population, intertribal (interclan) confrontation for control over the central government;
B) borders that do not coincide with religious and ethnic borders, arbitrarily established in the past by colonialists;
C) low standard of living, which determines the particular severity of social contradictions;
D) the struggle of the liberated countries among themselves for markets for their products.
13. What role did the military power of the USSR and the USA play in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962:
A) military power was used during hostilities;
B) military power was used as a factor to intimidate the opponent;
C) military power did not play any role;
14. Name the countries that were split as a result of the Cold War conflicts:
A) China, Korea, Germany, Vietnam; B) Japan, India, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia;
B) Iran, Türkiye, Greece, Egypt; D) India, China, Hungary, Bulgaria
15. In which European city was a wall erected in 1961 that outlasted it and became a symbol of the Cold War:
A in Prague B) in Berlin
B) in Warsaw D) in Budapest
16. What prompted the leaders of countries that freed themselves from colonial dependence to address the issue of choosing a model (path) of development:
A) the desire to destroy the traditional way of life;
B) the desire for the speedy implementation of modernization, overcoming economic backwardness;
D) intention to strengthen military power and prepare for the conquest of neighboring countries.
17. The Cold War period was not characterized by:
A) rivalry between the USSR and the USA;
B) creation of military bloc systems;
C) the constant attention of the leaders of the USSR and the USA to building up military power;
D) attempts to destroy opponents in a nuclear war.
18. What prevented the deepening of détente in international tension in the 1970s:
A) the leaders of the USSR and the USA showed understanding on the issue of responsibility for the fate of the world;
B) the anti-war movement began to have an increasing influence on the politics of the leading countries of the world;
C) the Cold War policy began to meet with increasing condemnation of the countries of the world that were part of the non-aligned movement;
D) the military of the USSR and the USA sought to create new weapons systems.
19. According to the SDI program, the start of work on which was announced in the United States in 1983, it was assumed:
A) carry out a joint manned flight with the USSR to Mars;
B) create an underwater missile defense system;
C) create a system of space weapons that protect the United States from nuclear missile weapons;
D) implement a joint space research program
20. Why are the ideas of new political thinking proposed by M.S. Gorbachev, allowed to improve the international situation:
A) they were so convincing, appealing to the sense of self-preservation of peoples and leaders, that it was impossible to reject them;
B) they were accompanied by concrete steps, unilateral concessions to the USSR, which convinced the leaders of NATO countries of the seriousness of Soviet intentions;
B) they met with such strong public support in NATO countries that their leaders could not ignore them;
D) they were accepted as principles of international relations by all countries that are members of the UN
21. Distribute the dates and names of the largest local conflicts of the Cold War:
A) 1950-1953 1. Caribbean crisis
B) 1950-1954 2. Korean War
B) 1956 3. Berlin crisis
D) 1962 4. War in Indochina
D) 1948 5. Middle East conflict
Key: 1d, 2-c, 3a, 4-b, 5-a, 6-c, 7-b, 8-a, 9-b, 10-c,
11-b,12-g,13-b.14-a,15-c,16-b.17-g.18-g.19-c,20b,
21a-2.b-4, c-5, d-1, d-3.
At one time, the Berlin Wall became not only a symbol of the division of the German people, it became the very materialization of the Iron Curtain in Europe and the world, which defined the boundaries of two opposing worldviews during the Cold War. The prerequisite for its future construction was the almost simultaneous entry of Allied troops into Germany. After signing the surrender
By the German generals and the victorious countries, Germany was divided into zones of influence. There were four of them: Soviet, American, British, and French occupation zones. Berlin was also divided into three parts. The goals of this division were to restore the destroyed country and carry out denazification under the control of the triumphants.
The Iron Curtain and the split of the world
However, just a few months after the joint victory, it became obvious that the good neighborly existence of the socialist and capitalist camps was hardly possible. The very nature of the two worldviews contradicted such a reconciliation. And although the concept of immediate revolution throughout the world was discarded by the Soviet government, transitional people's governments began to be created in the countries of eastern and central Europe, which by 1946-48 transferred power to local socialist parties. The first to openly announce the state of affairs was British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who, speaking in Fulton on March 5, 1946, announced that an iron curtain had fallen over the world, separating the countries of two camps with an invisible barrier.
Division of Germany and the Berlin Wall
The fact that Germany was divided between two systems predetermined completely different processes in different zones of occupation. Very soon, former partners, and now opponents, began to put forward claims to each other, the main essence of which boiled down to reproaches for attempts to impose the desired system in their occupation zone and install a puppet government. This led successively to two particularly tense episodes in 1948 and 1961, later called the First and Second Berlin Crisis. As a result of the Second Crisis, the Berlin Wall was built.
How it was
By the end of the 1950s, the Soviet government actually transferred the levers of government in East Germany to the hands of the GDR authorities. At the same time, the United States still continued to rule the roost in the western occupation part. This fact threatened the viability of the GDR, which became the main reason for N. Khrushchev’s ultimatum to the American authorities. According to the ultimatum, the period of foreign rule was to end as soon as possible, and West Berlin was to be liberated from troops and turned into a demilitarized city. However, the departure of US troops threatened that all of Berlin could fall under the rule of the GDR. A series of unsuccessful negotiations led to a final break in the German question, which ultimately resulted in the construction of the Berlin Wall, dividing parts of the city. In addition to the tense international situation, the process was also spurred by the mass migration of Germans from the eastern to the western part. Soon, in August 1961, the city was divided by a high concrete fence. Over the subsequent years of its existence, the Berlin Wall was constantly strengthened, expanded, and received additional rows and guards.
Consequences
The standard of living in West Berlin was incomparably higher, which pushed many of its eastern residents to take dangerous adventures to overcome the barrier. Over the three decades of its existence, several dozen of the most bizarre, successful and not so successful attempts to cross it have been made: undermining, flying, pole vaulting, tricks with security, even ramming with a tank.
Conclusion
The destruction of the Berlin Wall took place already in November 1989, when the socialist camp was bursting at the seams, in which governments were falling everywhere. Today the wall has been dismantled into pieces. Only a small piece was left as a museum exhibit, which once divided the German people into East and West, Ossies and Wessies.
The anniversary of one of the most significant and symbolic events of the 20th century is celebrated in Germany. A quarter of a century ago, the Berlin Wall fell. Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the memorial complex and paid tribute to those killed while trying to overcome the concrete barrier.
For three decades, it separated two parts of the city and, as it seemed then, two worlds.
The flowers between the damp and gray blocks that once divided Berlin are a tribute to those who died trying to escape the totalitarian system. Angela Merkel knows what it means to live behind a wall. She grew up in the GDR. I myself did not believe that the reinforced concrete monster could one day disappear.
"The fall of the Berlin Wall showed us that dreams can become reality. Nothing should remain the same, no matter how high the barriers," said Angela Merkel.
The Berlin Wall stood for 28 years. At least 138 people died. Those who fled from the embrace of socialism were shot at. Their names are now immortalized on a memorial on Bernauer Strasse.
Hartmut Richter himself fled to the West in 1966, swimming across the Teltow Canal. Nine years later, he tried to take his sister to the West in the trunk of a car. He was arrested.
“I was sentenced to 15 years in prison. If I had served the entire term, I would have been released only in 1990. But I was released in 1980 because the German authorities bought me out,” says Hartmut Richter.
Another reality of the system is that the GDR sold its prisoners to its western neighbor for foreign currency. Berlin with a wall and Berlin without a wall are two completely different cities. The differences become especially noticeable when directly comparing photographs then and now. The wall that separated families, East and West, was built by order of the leadership of the GDR in 1961. They tried to make the border impenetrable. But they fled from the GDR in every possible way - both with the help of a balloon and by swimming. Only through the sewer passages under the city did 800 people move to the West. Others dug under the wall from the basements of houses. Burghart Feigel, who helped more than six hundred East Germans find their way to the West, shows the only entrance to the tunnel under the wall that remains in Berlin.
"The tunnels did not work for long, only 2-3 days, because they could be discovered. But during this time, a lot of people passed through them, even children. Other escape routes for children are difficult, but they, for example, could pass through the tunnel. Small children They were carried in meat sacks,” says Burghart Feigel.
These were real special operations. In total, 75 tunnels were made under the Berlin Wall. Joachim Rudolf, one of those who dug that underground passage, married a girl who crossed it to the West, still cannot forget the eyes of those who came out of the ground.
"All the problems we had were worth it - calluses on our hands, electric shocks when we connected electric pumps to pump out water, or when we sat on wet clay, and this wet clay floor was sometimes energized. For a while, everything it was forgotten. It was worth it,” says Joachim Rudolf.
Bad things are often forgotten. According to a survey conducted just before the celebrations, one in six Germans would not mind returning the wall. Surprisingly, just a few years ago there were fewer people who wanted to isolate themselves again. Moreover, not only East Germans, but also West Germans yearn for the border. By the way, they still pay the solidarity tax. Well, the former Ossies, the eastern ones, remember the good things that happened. Elke Matz, owner of a GDR goods store in Berlin, explains why ostalgia occurs.
“In the GDR there was cohesion, unity. In the West it was not like that. Everyone stuck together, helped each other, were friendly during the GDR. They were much closer, family-like. But the West Germans were real capitalists. Look, today everything belongs to the banks.” , notes Elke Matz, owner of the Intershop-2000 store.
But 25 years ago people wanted only one thing - freedom. The Soviet leadership also insisted on reforms. On November 9, on live television, residents of the GDR were informed of a new free procedure for traveling abroad. Hundreds of thousands of East Berliners came to checkpoints near the wall. The barriers were raised under pressure from the crowd. Soviet troops did not interfere in what was happening.
The wall was practically destroyed, but today, for the special occasion, it was recreated again, from glowing balloons. The light wall stretches for 15 kilometers. And at night, passengers on landing planes again see a divided Berlin.
Exactly at 9 pm Moscow time, all these 8 thousand luminous balls will rise into the sky. Attached to each will be a postcard with Germans' personal memories of the time when Germany was divided. So, after a quarter of a century, the Berlin Wall will be destroyed again.
Why? Because commies don’t like free people who know the “truth.” What other reasons could there be?
Well, first of all, before the wall was built in 1961, thousands of East Germans traveled daily to work in West Berlin and returned to East Berlin in the evening, many traveling back and forth for shopping and other reasons. So obviously they weren't being held in the east against their will. And why was it necessary to build a wall? There were two main reasons for this:
1) The West tormented the East with a powerful campaign to recruit professionals and experienced workers from among the East Germans who were educated at the expense of the communist government. This ultimately led to a serious crisis of employment and production in the East. Here, as an indicator, as the New York Times reported in 1963:
"West Berlin suffered economically from the wall, losing some 60,000 skilled workers who commuted daily from their homes in East Berlin to work in West Berlin."
It is worth noting that USA Today reported in 1999: “When the Berlin Wall came down (1989), East Germans imagined a free life in which consumer goods abounded and hardships disappeared. Ten years later, a staggering 51% said they were happier under communism.” Earlier polls would probably have shown more than 51% expressing similar sentiments, since within ten years many of those who remembered life in East Germany with fondness had already left; although even ten years later, in 2009, the Washington Post could write:
"Westerners (in Berlin) say they are fed up with their eastern citizens' desire to increase nostalgia for communist times."
It was in the years after the unification that a new Russian and Eastern European saying was born:
“Everything the communists said about communism was a lie, but everything they said about capitalism turned out to be true.”
It should also be noted that the division of Germany into two states in 1949 - which set the stage for 40 years of hostility and the Cold War - was an American decision, not a Soviet one.
2) In the 1950s, American Cold War apologists in West Germany orchestrated a brutal campaign of sabotage and overthrow against East Germany, designed to destroy the country's economy and administrative apparatus. The CIA and other US intelligence and military agencies recruited, equipped, trained and financed German activist groups and individuals in the West and East to carry out activities ranging from youth delinquency to terrorism; Anything that could make life difficult for the people of East Germany and weaken their support for the government, anything that would show the commies in a bad light, was used.
It was an outstanding enterprise. The US and its agents used explosives, arson, short circuits and other methods to destroy power plants, shipyards, docks, public buildings, gas stations, public transport, bridges and so on; they caused freight train derailments and serious injuries to workers; burned 12 freight train cars and compressed air hoses for the rest, used acids to destroy vital mechanisms in factories, poured sand into turbines in factories, killed 7,000 cows of a cooperative farm by poisoning them, added soap to powdered milk intended for Eastern Europe. German schools; when arrested, some were found to have a large amount of poisonous cantharidin, which they planned to poison cigarettes with in order to kill the leaders of East Germany; they planted stink bombs to disrupt political rallies, tried to disrupt the World Youth Festival in East Berlin by sending out fake invitations, fake promises of free accommodation and food, fake cancellation notices, and so on; attacked participants with explosives, firebombs and tire puncture devices; forged and distributed ration cards in huge quantities to cause confusion, shortages and discontent; sent out false tax receipts and all sorts of government directives and other documents to cause disorganization and inefficiency in industry and unions... all this and much more.
The Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, DC, conservative Cold Warriors, stated in one of their International Cold War History Project working papers:
“The open border in Berlin exposes the GDR (East Germany) to massive espionage and sabotage, and as two documents in the appendix show, its closure has provided greater security for the communist state.”
During the 1950s, the East Germans and the Soviet Union continually challenged the Soviets' former allies in the West and the United Nations for patterns of sabotage and espionage activities, and called for the closure of organizations in West Germany that they claimed were responsible and whose names and addresses were given. Their claims were turned a deaf ear. Inevitably, the East Germans began to restrict entry into the country from the West, which ultimately led to the construction of the infamous wall. However, after the wall was built, there was constant, albeit limited, legal immigration from east to west. In 1984, for example, East Germany allowed 40,000 people to leave. In 1985, East German newspapers claimed that more than 20,000 former citizens who had migrated to the West wanted to return home after losing their illusions about the capitalist system. The West German government said 14,300 East Germans had returned home in the previous 10 years.
And let's not forget that while East Germany was completely denazified, in West Germany, more than ten years after the war, the highest positions in the government, in the executive, legislative and judicial branches were occupied by a large number of former and “allegedly former” Nazis.
Finally, it must be recalled that Eastern Europe became communist because Hitler, with the approval of the West, used it as a highway to reach the Soviet Union and wipe out Bolshevism forever; and that the Russians lost about 40 million people in World Wars I and II simply because the West used these highways to invade Russia. It should not be surprising that after World War II the Soviet Union was determined to close this highway.
An additional and very interesting look at the anniversary of the Belin Wall can be seen in Victor Grossman’s article “Humpty Dumpty and the Fall of the Berlin Wall.” Grossman (born Steve Wechsler) defected from the US Army in Germany under the threat of the McCarthy era and became a journalist and author while living in the German Democratic Republic. He still lives in Berlin and occasionally writes for the Berlin Bulletin about events in Germany. His autobiography, Cross the River: A Memoir of the American Left, the Cold War, and Life in East Germany, was published by the University of Massachusetts. They say that he is the only holder of degrees in the world from Harvard University and the Karl Marx University in Leipzig.
