Bye Germany, Hello Wall

After the conclusion of World War II, conflicts arose between the great powers of the world, especially the United States and the Soviet Union, who had differing aims, interests, and ideologies. The Cold War and the nuclear age had begun. The aim of Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, was the Sovietization of eastern Europe through three cautious phases. These phases were:

1. Red Army Control (1944-45)

2. The slow slicing away of non-Communist parties (1945-47)

3. The creation of one-party communist dictatorships (1947-49)

In the early phases of his attempted Sovietization of Europe, Stalin apparently tried not to provoke the United States so that it would follow through on Roosevelt's prediction at Yalta of the United States withdrawing its troops from Germany. This action would leave the Soviet Union as the dominant force in Europe. During phase three of this process, the United States showed that it was prepared to stay in Europe and challenge Communism.

Near the end of World War II, the Big Three (leaders of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union) met several times at Yalta and Potsdam to discuss the fate of Berlin. It was decided that because of the extensive war losses incurred by the Russians, the Soviet Union would gain possession of Berlin. At the end of the war, Germany was divided into four sectors between the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. The eastern half of Berlin was controlled by the Soviets. Berlin was located deep inside the Soviet zone of Germany. This fact would be an extremely hot issue during the Cold War. The Bradenburg Gate was the focal point between East and West Berlin.

At first, Western allies shut down German political activity in their zones and gave priority to the large-scale hunt for war criminals. These remaining Nazi leaders were put on trial at Nuremberg in 1945-46. By 1947 and 1948, Western allies encouraged the development of democratic self-government in their zones.

Stalin had other plans for the eastern zone of Germany. He put a group of communists there under the leadership of the ruthless Walter Ulbricht. Ulbricht, who served as president of East Germany from 1960 to 1973, created the Soviet Unity Party, or the SEP, with the aim of creating a united Communist Germany. Stalin was unsuccessful at applying SEP to other Communist parties in Europe.

Stalin provoked the Western allies with his gradual destruction of non-Communist forces and his insistence on receiving reparations from the western zones of Germany without delivering the food that he had pledged from the eastern zone of Germany. In 1946, the United States announced that its occupation force would remain in Germany indefinitely. Winston Churchill, who was now out of office, spoke of an iron curtain that had descended across Europe.

While Stalin continued his revolution by conquest in 1947 and 1948, the Western allies took steps against his policies and communism. The Truman Doctrine of March 12, 1947, created the policy that America's allies had to be free from the "darkness" of communism rather than simply strategically important in order to receive aid. In the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs, the United States State Department official George Kennan urged a policy of containment of Russian advancements on "a peaceful and stable world." The Marshall plan, another American policy, was created at this time as a plan for rebuilding war-torn Europe and preventing a third world war.

During the Berlin Airlift between June 1948 and May 1949, the Western allies delivered tons of food, coal, and gasoline via airplanes to the people of West Berlin because Soviet tanks had blocked the allies' access to Berlin. (See the section below on the Berlin Airlift.) The blockade led to the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization between the United States and western European democracies in May 1949. This blockade also led the allies to combine the western zones of Germany into the Federal Republic of Germany. The constitution, which was adopted on September 21, 1949, said that West Germany was only a temporary state, pending the reunification of Germany. In 1949, Konrad Adenauer became the first chancellor of West Germany. His party, the Christian Democracy Union was the majority party of urban and middle classes in Germany until 1966.

In response to the creation of West Germany, Ulbricht created the German Democratic Republic in the eastern zone with Stalin's permission on October 7, 1949. In 1955, the Warsaw Pact was formed as a reaction against NATO.

Some of the hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union ended with the death of Stalin in March 1953, but it did not completely subside. Later in the 1950s Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, Stalin's successor, recognized as an international border the 1945 boundary between the Western and Soviet occupation zones; this action consolidated Soviet control of East Germany and East-Central Europe.

The Berlin Airlift

The Cold War tensions intensified when the Soviet Union incorporated East Berlin and demanded that the Allies vacate West Berlin. To emphasize their beliefs, the Soviets blockaded all the ground-based routes into East Berlin. The days went by and the food and fuel supply situation became critical. West Berlin called for help. The American Commander of West Berlin, General Lucius D. Clay, called for additional troops to protect the Allies' interests, but his request was denied. In order to prevent being forced to surrender West Berlin to the Soviets, he ordered supplies to be air-dropped into West Berlin from the Rhein-Main Air Base in Frankfurt, Germany. This series of air drops came to be known as the Berlin Airlift. According to Ann and John Tusa, during the Berlin Airlift, over 2,325,808 tons of supplies were flown into West Berlin. This operation convinced the Soviets to lift the blockade and West Berlin remained an independent territory in East Germany. On May 12, 1949, the first train and cars were allowed back into and out of West Berlin; the blockade was officially over.

Post-World-War-II Economics in East and West Germany

Soviet demands on East Germany after the war created economic hardship. This was caused by war reparation payments, the fact that East Germany had to bear the cost of aligning its industrial apparatus with Soviet needs and plans, forced repression of private trade, forced collectivization of agriculture, and the fact that the USSR controlled vital facilities such as uranium mines in East Germany. By the time of the Berlin Wall's construction, the economy was greatly suffering. People fled the country to seek better economic opportunities. Ulbricht could not run his factories at normal levels and the agricultural situation was deteriorating. The basic strength of the regime based on technical skill, costly investment of resources, and German will-to-work was wavering. He could not stabilize his labor force because of the refugee flow.

Much of the refugee flow was to West Germany. At first, this country had experienced economic problems. In the 1950s, however, it became one of the most prosperous and economically powerful in the world under the direction of Ludwig Erhard, the minister for economic affairs. The government had employed monetary and fiscal measures to keep public expenditures, wages, and taxes on business down to encourage economic growth.

One major area of trouble was the value of each country's currency. Because the West German currency was backed by the Allies, it was worth twice the value of the East German Deutschmark.

Post-World-War-II Interpersonal Transactions between East and West Berlin

Despite the possibility for continued personal contacts, there was a decline of interactions between East and West Berliners between 1950 and 1961. Ernst Renan attributed this decline to the idea that, over time, the residents of a particular political system build up patterns of expectations, demands, and identifications relevant to that system but not so relevant to others.

Political Events Leading to the Construction of the Wall

Because of dissatisfaction with the economic and political conditions many people left East Germany. Between January and August of 1961, 160,000 people fled East Germany. The East German government tried to prevent this refugee flow. In June 1961, Kennedy and Khrushchev met in Vienna without any noticeable results. At a June 15 international press conference Ulbricht said, "No one has any intention of constructing a wall." Less that two months later, on August 13, the Wall was erected, closing a major avenue of escape from East Germany. By August 23, West Berlin citizens were no longer allowed to enter East Berlin. East German propaganda called the Wall an "anti-fascist protection wall."

The Wall

The Wall began to be constructed upon orders from Khrushchev in the early morning hours of Sunday, August 13, 1961. Under the leadership of Erich Honecker, the GDR blocked East Berlin from West Berlin by barbed wire and antitank obstacles. Streets were torn up and the subway and railway between East and West Berlin was interrupted. Inhabitants of East Berlin were no longer allowed to enter West Berlin.

In the following days, the provisional barriers were replaced by a solid concrete wall four meters tall with a concrete tube on top. The total length of the Wall was 166 km. The border cut through 192 streets.

"Checkpoint Charlie" Photo courtesy of Matthew Zens.

On the east side of the Wall, there was a trench to prevent vehicles from breaking through, a patrol track, a corridor with watchdogs, watchtowers, bunkers, a second wall, and two closely guarded crossing points including the famous "Checkpoint Charlie." Also on the east side was an illuminated control area, which was also called the death area. Refugees entering this area were shot without warning. A few East Germans were able to escape through tunnels, but between 400 and 800 people lost their lives attempting to escape. The first death, that of 18-year-old Peter Fechter, occurred on August 17, 1962. He bled to death after being shot down by East Berlin border police while he was attempting to escape over the Wall. The last death, that of Chris Gueffrory, occurred on February 2, 1989.

International Effects of the Construction of the Wall and the Cold War on an International Scale

United States President John F. Kennedy and other Western leaders did not respond strongly to the construction of the Wall because essentials of American policy regarding Berlin were not affected: presence of allied troops, free access to Berlin, and the right of self-determination of the West Berliners. Kennedy did call up United States reserve forces as a warning to Khrushchev.

Soon after, Khrushchev violated various agreements he had made by ordering nuclear tests. The Soviets strove for nuclear superiority. In 1965, the defense budget was 10% of the gross national product; by 1980, it was 25%. In 1970, the USSR surpassed the United States in number of intercontinental missiles. At the height of the cold war, both sides had stockpiled enough nuclear weapons to kill every man, woman, and child on the planet twelve times. In 1962, there was increased tension between the United States and the Soviet Union as the result of Khrushchev placing nuclear weapons in Cuba.

His withdrawal and the United States's distraction in Vietnam provided relaxation of tension and the end of the United States's containment policy. The United States's struggles with Vietnam led the USSR to seek a Soviet empire. After Vietnam, the two superpowers attempted to make treaties for arms control.

Eventually, the Soviet empire began to collapse under economic downturn, Western pressure, Eastern European unrest, ecological catastrophe, and the demoralization of Soviet rulers. By 1982, the Soviet's status as a superpower was threatened. Under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union eventually admitted its failures and dependency on the West. In the mid-1980s Gorbachev instituted policies of glasnost, or openness; perstroika, or economic restructuring; and democratization in Russia.

Economic Effects of the Construction of the Wall and the Cold War in East and West Germany

By practically eliminating the refugee flow, the Wall was successful in creating a more stable workforce in East Germany. The production of East German factories increased. Material conditions improved with more adequate food and equipment. More effort was made to induce young men to take a constructive part in the expansion of industry and to look for opportunities for advancement. East Germany became the second largest producer in the Soviet bloc and the most important trading partner of the Soviet Union; it furnished more than one-third of the machinery and equipment imported by the USSR. It struggled in obtaining other international economic ties, however.

Except for short-term turbulence, the Berlin Wall had no significant impact on the labor force or gross national product of West Germany. It did, however, have an effect on West Berlin's work force by loss of the 60,000 commuters and numerous migrators from East Germany. Eventually, the West Germany economy became the largest in Western Europe and the fourth largest in the world.

By the 1980s, economic relations between East and West Germany had improved.

Effects of the Construction of the Wall on Interpersonal Transactions in East and West Berlin

The pattern of decreasing interaction between citizens of East and West Berlin continued with the construction of the Wall. At first, however, there was increased contact through letters and other allowed forms of communication as the result of initial outrage at the Wall and the East German authorities who wanted to keep East and West Berliners apart.

The period between 1961 and 1971 was a time of almost total separation of East and West Berliners. The numbers of people taking advantage of the few available opportunities for contact, such as special holiday and emergency permits and mail, decreased during this decade. The Quadripartite Agreement of September 1971 and another agreement on December 20, 1971, allowed the opportunity for more visits of West Berlin citizens to East Berlin. There was an initial rush to take advantage of these agreements, but visits eventually declined.

The Cold War and the Political Situations in East and West Germany

In 1969 Willy Brandt, leader of the Social Democratic Party, took control of West Germany. West Germany had thus achieved an orderly alternation of two large coherent parties. By the late 1960s West Germany had abandoned Adenauer's rigid policy of not recognizing Ulbricht's rule in East Germany. This policy was replaced by Brandt's Ostpolitick, which sought to lessen tensions and looked forward to the reunification of Germany. Helmut Kohl, a Christian Democrat, was the chancellor of West Germany at the time of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany.

Erich Honecker succeeded Ulbricht as president of East Germany. He adopted a policy attempting to shield the regime from Western temptations. At the same time, economic ties between East and West Germany improved despite deterioration of relations between the United States and the USSR. On November 9, 1972, East and West Germany signed an agreement recognizing each other as sovereign states.