The Berlin Wall (I): Locking up a city

This year, Germany and much of the world will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was a symbolic event that is today widely recognised as the turning point of the tumultuous final years of the East Bloc and the initiation of the downfall of Soviet Communism. Merely three years after the Wall fell, the Soviet Union was no more, and in the countries of central and eastern Europe, Communism had vanished.

For one last time, on the night of the 9th to 10th November 1989, all eyes turned to the city that had been the flashpoint of the epic struggle between east and west for four long decades: Berlin, the old and new capital of Germany.

In many ways, the historical development of Germany has nearly always been projected on this city, which is situated in the centre of the otherwise immensely rural province of Brandenburg. It witnessed rapid growth and industrialisation following the founding of the German Empire in 1871; it was the site of merciless street battles between Communists and Nazis in the opening and closing stages of the Weimar Republic; it saw the worst of the War when it was nearly levelled by Allied bombing and Soviet invasion; and like the rest of Germany, it was divided after the War.

Although occupied by the Soviets and situated in the heart of the Soviet zone of occupation – the later German Democratic Republic (GDR) – Berlin was divided in the same manner as the rest of Germany. The eastern boroughs – East Berlin – were now the Soviet sector of the city, the south-western ones the American sector, the centre-western ones the British sector and the north-western ones the French sector; the latter three constituted West Berlin. The city of Berlin in its entirety, meaning all four sectors, was considered an individual entity within Germany. This also meant that officially, the Soviet sector was not a part of the Soviet zone of Occupation of Germany, and hence also officially not part of the German Democratic Republic (although this fact was later disregarded when East Berlin became the capital of the GDR), even though it directly bordered, nay, lay inside it. This fact is quite significant because it meant two things: First, the citizens of Berlin could freely move within the city limits, and in fact many people lived in East Berlin and worked in West Berlin and vice versa. Second, because the Soviet sector directly bordered the city, East Germans could freely pass and leave the city. The result was devastating: Between 1949 and 1961, five million East Germans fled the GDR through West Berlin.

Moreover, Communist authorities, both Soviet and East German, were not pleased by the fact that the three western powers, and the United States mostly, had military presence in the middle of a Communist country. Let’s keep in mind that Berlin was a fully-occupied city: each of the four occupation powers had troops and military infrastructure inside, including barracks and airbases.

Things became dangerous when in 1948, the western powers introduced a new currency in their zones of occupation (i.e. Western Germany), including their sectors in Berlin, the Deutschmark. It became apparent that the western Allies intended to stay where they were and create a capitalist West Berlin. The Soviets felt that there was only one thing that should be done: Drive them out. And so they locked up the city. The idea was simple and near-brilliant. By blocking the roads to Western Germany, the citizens of West Berlin were forced to buy goods in East Berlin and the surrounding areas. But the Soviets underestimated two things: The resistance of the West Berliners, and the determination of the western Allies.

There was no sympathy for the Soviets among those who lived under western occupation. Never would they support their system, and most West Berliners chose to sit it out. On 9th September 1948, Berlin’s Social Democrat mayor, Ernst Reuter, stepped up in front of the burnt-out ruin of the Reichstag building, facing hundreds of thousands of Berliners, pleading: “People of the world, look upon this city”, and not forget Berlin.

They did not. The western Allies, mostly the United States and Great Britain, immediately initiated an airlift to carry supplies to the city. Most American planes landed at Tempelhof Airport, both Berlin’s commercial airport and the American air base in the city. British planes landed at their own airbase at Gatow; the French rush-expanded the Tegel airfield in a whopping 90 days, although they provided very little direct air support themselves. In addition, planes and pilots from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa were involved.

Lasting nearly a year, the airlift was a massive success. At its high point, planes landed and lifted off every three minutes at Tempelhof. On 12th May 1949, Communist authorities gave up and re-opened all access routes to Berlin. That morning, many West Berliners were irritated from waking up to silence, and not the roaring motors of the legendary Douglas planes that were lovingly dubbed candy bombers.

But the Communists did not give up. Ten years later, in 1958, Khrushchev threatened to lock up West Berlin again, if it was not turned into a sovereign Free City without Allied occupation (with the obvious intention of reuniting it with East Berlin and turning it into a part of the GDR). Again, the western Allies stood up against it, and the plan failed.
By that time, millions of East Germans had fled the country through West Berlin, and the GDR was slowly but steadily drained of its life blood. Extreme situations, the East German government felt, required extreme measures.