Development of the inner German border
Encyclopedia
The development of the inner German border took place in a number of stages between 1945 and the mid-1980s. After its establishment in 1945 as the dividing line between the Western and Soviet occupation zones of Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, in 1949 the inner German border became the frontier between the Federal Republic of Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

 (FRG, West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic
German Democratic Republic
The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...

 (GDR, East Germany). The border remained relatively easy to cross until it was abruptly closed by the GDR in 1952 in response to the large-scale emigration of East Germans to the West. Barbed-wire fences and minefields were installed and draconian restrictions were placed on East German citizens living near the border. Thousands were expelled from their homes, with several thousand more fleeing to the West. From the late 1960s, the border fortifications were greatly strengthened through the installation of new fences, detectors, watchtowers and booby-traps designed to prevent attempts to escape from East Germany. The improved border defences succeeded in reducing the scale of unauthorised emigration to a trickle.

Origins

The inner German border owed its origins to the agreements reached at the Tehran Conference
Tehran Conference
The Tehran Conference was the meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill between November 28 and December 1, 1943, most of which was held at the Soviet Embassy in Tehran, Iran. It was the first World War II conference amongst the Big Three in which Stalin was present...

 in November–December 1943. The conference established the European Advisory Commission
European Advisory Commission
The formation of the European Advisory Commission was agreed on at the Moscow Conference on October 30, 1943 between the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, Anthony Eden, the United States, Cordell Hull, and the Soviet Union, Molotov, and confirmed at the Tehran Conference in November...

 (EAC) to outline proposals for the partition of a defeated Germany into British, American and Soviet occupation zones (a French occupation zone was established later). At the time, Germany was divided into the series of gaue – Nazi administrative subdivisions – that had succeeded the administrative divisions
Administrative division of Weimar Germany
Prior to World War I, the constituent states of the German Empire were 22 smaller monarchies, three city-states and the Imperial territory of Alsace-Lorraine. After the territorial losses of the Treaty of Versailles and the revolution of 1918, the remaining states continued as republics...

 of Weimar Germany.

The demarcation line was based on a British proposal of 15 January 1944. It envisaged a line of control along the borders of the old states or provinces of Mecklenburg
Mecklenburg-Schwerin
Mecklenburg-Schwerin was a duchy in northern Germany created in 1348, when Albert II of Mecklenburg and his younger brother John were raised to Dukes of Mecklenburg by King Charles IV...

, Saxony
Province of Saxony
The Province of Saxony was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia and later the Free State of Prussia from 1816 until 1945. Its capital was Magdeburg.-History:The province was created in 1816 out of the following territories:...

, Anhalt
Anhalt
Anhalt was a sovereign county in Germany, located between the Harz Mountains and the river Elbe in Middle Germany. It now forms part of the state of Saxony-Anhalt.- Dukes of Anhalt :...

 and Thuringia
Thuringia
The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....

, which had ceased to exist as separate entities when the Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...

ns unified Germany
Unification of Germany
The formal unification of Germany into a politically and administratively integrated nation state officially occurred on 18 January 1871 at the Versailles Palace's Hall of Mirrors in France. Princes of the German states gathered there to proclaim Wilhelm of Prussia as Emperor Wilhelm of the German...

 in 1871; minor adjustments were made for practical reasons. The British would occupy the north-west of Germany, the United States the south, and the Soviet Union the east. Berlin was to be a separate joint zone of occupation deep inside the Soviet zone. The rationale was to give the Soviets a powerful incentive to see the war through to the end. It would give the British an occupation zone that was physically close to the UK and on the coast, making it easier to resupply it from the UK. It was also hoped that the old domination of Prussia would be undermined.

The United States envisaged a very different division of Germany, with a large American zone in the north, a smaller zone for the Soviets in the east (the American and Soviet zones meeting at Berlin) and a smaller zone for the British in the south. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...

 disliked the idea of a U.S. occupation zone in the south, because its supply routes would depend on access through France, which it was feared would be unstable following its liberation. To forestall anticipated American objections, the British proposal was presented directly to the EAC without the prior agreement of the Americans. The Russians immediately accepted the proposal and left the U.S. with little choice but to accept it. The final division of Germany was thus mainly along the lines of the British proposal, with the Americans given the North Sea
North Sea
In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...

 port-cities of Bremen
Bremen
The City Municipality of Bremen is a Hanseatic city in northwestern Germany. A commercial and industrial city with a major port on the river Weser, Bremen is part of the Bremen-Oldenburg metropolitan area . Bremen is the second most populous city in North Germany and tenth in Germany.Bremen is...

 and Bremerhaven
Bremerhaven
Bremerhaven is a city at the seaport of the free city-state of Bremen, a state of the Federal Republic of Germany. It forms an enclave in the state of Lower Saxony and is located at the mouth of the River Weser on its eastern bank, opposite the town of Nordenham...

 as an enclave within the British zone to ease President Roosevelt's concerns about supply routes.

The division of Germany came into effect on 1 July 1945. Because of the unexpectedly rapid Allied advance in central Germany in the final weeks of the war, British and American troops occupied large areas of territory that had been assigned to the Soviet occupation zone. This included a broad area of what was to become the western parts of East Germany, as well as parts of Czechoslovakia and Austria. The redeployment of Western troops at the start of July 1945 was an unpleasant surprise for many German refugees, who had fled west to escape the Russian advance. A fresh wave of refugees headed further west as the Americans and British withdrew and Soviet troops entered the areas allocated to the Soviet occupation zone.
Following Germany's unconditional surrender in May 1945, the Allied Control Council
Allied Control Council
The Allied Control Council or Allied Control Authority, known in the German language as the Alliierter Kontrollrat and also referred to as the Four Powers , was a military occupation governing body of the Allied Occupation Zones in Germany after the end of World War II in Europe...

 (ACC) was formed under the terms of the Declaration on the Defeat of Germany, signed in Berlin on 5 June 1945. The council was "the highest authority for matters concerning the whole of Germany", on which the four powers – France, the UK, the U.S., and the USSR – were each represented by their supreme commander in Germany. The council functioned from 30 August 1945 until it was suspended on 20 March 1948, when cooperation between the Western Allies and the Soviets had broken down completely over the issue of Germany's political and economic future. In May 1949, the three western occupation zones were merged to form the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), a democratically governed federal state with a market economy. The Soviets responded in October 1949 with the establishment of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), a highly centralised communist dictatorship organised along Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...

 lines. The former demarcation lines between the western and eastern zones had now become a de facto international frontier – the inner German border.

From the outset, West Germany did not accept the legitimacy of the East German state, and for many years regarded the East German government as an illegal organisation intent on depriving Germans of their constitutional rights. It had not been freely or fairly elected, and the creation of East Germany itself was a fait accompli by the East German Communists and their Soviet allies. This had important consequences for the inner German border. West Germany regarded German citizenship and rights as unitary, applying equally to East and West German citizens alike. An East German who escaped or was released to the West automatically entered into full enjoyment of those rights, including West German citizenship and social benefits. A would-be immigrant from another country who could get to East Germany could not be barred from entering West Germany across the internal border, which had great significance in later decades. West German laws were deemed to be applicable in the East; violations of human rights in East Germany could be prosecuted in the West. East Germans thus had a powerful incentive to move to the West, where they would enjoy greater freedom and economic prospects.

By contrast, the East German government defined the country as a legitimate state in its own right, not merely the "Soviet occupation zone" (sowjetische Besatzungszone) as West Germany referred to it. In the terminology of the GDR's rulers, West Germany was enemy territory (feindliches Ausland). It was portrayed as a capitalist, semi-fascist state that exploited its citizens, sought to regain the lost territories of the Third Reich, and stood opposed to the peaceful socialism of the GDR.

1945–52: the "Green Border"

In the early days of the occupation, the Allies maintained controls on the traffic between the zones
Interzonal traffic
The term inter-zonal traffic was used to describe the cross-border traffic between the four designated garrison zones in Germany between 1945 and 1973 that were created in 1945 by the victors of the Second World War.- History :...

 within Germany as well as movements over Germany's international frontiers. The aim was to manage the flow of refugees and prevent the escape of former Nazi officials and intelligence officers. Travel restrictions in the western zones were gradually lifted as the western German economy improved. In the Soviet zone, however, the poverty and lack of personal freedom led to significant westward emigration. Between October 1945 and June 1946, 1.6 million Germans left the Soviet zone for the west. In response, the Soviets persuaded the Allied Control Council to close all zonal borders on 30 June 1946 and introduce a system of interzonal passes.

The interzonal and international borders were initially controlled directly by the Allies. The situation was initially somewhat anarchic immediately after the war, with large numbers of refugees still in transit. On a number of occasions, Soviet and American troops mounted unauthorised expeditions into each others' zones to loot and kidnap, and there were incidents of unauthorised shooting across the demarcation line. It became apparent that the Allies by themselves could not effectively seal off the borders and interzonal boundaries. From the first quarter of 1946, newly trained German police forces under the control of the individual German states
States of Germany
Germany is made up of sixteen which are partly sovereign constituent states of the Federal Republic of Germany. Land literally translates as "country", and constitutionally speaking, they are constituent countries...

 took on the task of patrolling the borders alongside Allied troops. (The pre-war Grenzpolizei (German national border police service) had been abolished because of its wartime takeover by the Nazis and infiltration by the SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...

.)
The east–west interzonal border became steadily more tense as the relationship between the Western Allies and the Soviets broke down. From September 1947 an increasingly strict control regime was imposed on the eastern boundary. The number of Soviet soldiers on the boundary was increased and supplemented with border guards from the newly established East German Volkspolizei
Volkspolizei
The Volkspolizei , or VP, were the national police of the German Democratic Republic . The Volkspolizei were responsible for most law enforcement in East Germany, but its organisation and structure were such that it could be considered a paramilitary force as well...

("People's Police"). The West Germans also stepped up border security with the establishment in 1952 of the Bundesgrenzschutz
Bundesgrenzschutz
Bundesgrenzschutz was the first federal police organization in Western Germany after World War II permitted by the Allied occupation authorities. In July 2005, the BGS was renamed Bundespolizei to reflect its transition to a multi-faceted police agency.It was established in 1951...

or BGS (Federal Border Guard), of 20,000 men. Allied troops (the British in the north, the Americans in the south) retained responsibility for the military security of the border.

The boundary line was nonetheless still fairly easy to cross. Local inhabitants could cross to maintain fields on the other side, or even to live on one side and work on the other. Those who were unable to obtain passes could usually bribe the border guards or sneak across. Refugees from the east, many of them Germans expelled from other countries in central and eastern Europe
Expulsion of Germans after World War II
The later stages of World War II, and the period after the end of that war, saw the forced migration of millions of German nationals and ethnic Germans from various European states and territories, mostly into the areas which would become post-war Germany and post-war Austria...

, were guided across the boundary by villagers in exchange for hefty fees. Other locals on both sides smuggled goods across to supplement their meagre incomes. The number of border migrants remained high despite the increase in East German security measures, with 675,000 people fleeing to West Germany between 1949 and 1952.

There were major differences in how the Western and Eastern sides tackled illegal border crossings. Until the GDR officially acknowledged the inner German border as a "state border", those who were caught trying to cross it illegally could not be punished under passport control legislation; instead they were punished for crimes against the economy, principally sabotage. The Western side did not attempt to punish unauthorised crossings by civilians.

1952–67: the "Special Regime"

The border remained largely unfortified for several years after the East and West German republics were established in 1949, although by this time the GDR had already blocked many unofficial crossing points with ditches and barricades. This changed abruptly on 26 May 1952 when the GDR implemented a "special regime on the demarcation line", justified as a measure to keep out "spies, diversionists, terrorists and smugglers". In reality, though, the decision to fortify was taken because the GDR was haemorrhaging citizens at the rate of 10,000–20,000 a month, many of them from the skilled, educated and professional classes. The exodus threatened the viability of East Germany's already beleaguered economy. This was also of concern to the Soviets, who proposed a system of passes for visits of West Berlin residents to the territory of East Berlin and advised the East Germans to significantly improve their border defences.

The introduction of the "special regime" was carried out as abruptly as the construction of the Berlin Wall nine years later. A ploughed strip 10 m (32.8 ft) wide was created along the entire length of the inner German border. An adjoining "protective strip" (Schutzstreifen) 500 m (1,640 ft) wide was placed under severe restrictions. A "restricted zone" (Sperrzone) a further 5 km (3.1 mi) wide was created in which only those holding a special permit could live or work. Trees and brush were cut down along the border to clear lines of sight for the border guards and eliminate cover for would-be border crossers. Houses adjoining the border were torn down, bridges were closed and barbed-wire fencing was put up in many places. Tight restrictions were placed on farmers, who were permitted to work their fields along the border only in daylight hours and under the watch of armed border guards. The guards were authorised to use "weapons ... in case of failure to observe the orders of border patrols".
The sudden closure of the border caused acute disruption for communities on both sides. Because the border had previously been merely an administrative boundary, homes, businesses, industrial sites and municipal amenities had been constructed straddling it, and some were now literally split down the middle. In Oebisfelde
Oebisfelde
Oebisfelde is a village and a former municipality in the Börde district in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Since 1 January 2010, it is part of the town Oebisfelde-Weferlingen. It is accessed by Bundesstraße 188.- Geography :...

, residents could no longer access the shallow end of their swimming pool; in Buddenstedt
Büddenstedt
Büddenstedt is a municipality in the district of Helmstedt, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated approx. 6 km south of Helmstedt....

, the border ran just behind the goal posts of a football field, putting the goalkeeper at risk of being shot by the border guards. An open-cast coal mine at Schöningen
Schöningen
Schöningen is a town of about 13,000 inhabitants in the district of Helmstedt, Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located near the border with Saxony-Anhalt, on the southeastern rim of the Elm hill range...

 was split in half, causing Western and Eastern engineers to race to cart away equipment before the other side could seize it. Workers on both sides found themselves cut off from their homes and jobs. Farmers with land on the other side of the border effectively lost it, as they could no longer reach it. In Philippsthal
Philippsthal (Werra)
Philippsthal is a market community in Hersfeld-Rotenburg district in eastern Hesse, Germany, right at the boundary with Thuringia.-Location:Philippsthal lies between the outliers of the Rhön and the Thuringian Forest on the river Werra...

, a house containing a printing shop was split in two by the border, which ran through the middle of the building. The doors leading to the East German portion of the building were bricked up and blocked until 1976. The disruption on the eastern side of the border was far worse. Some 8,369 civilians living in the Sperrgebiet were forcibly resettled in the GDR interior in a programme codenamed "Operation Vermin" (Aktion Ungeziefer). Those expelled from the border region included foreigners and those who had a criminal record, had failed to register with the police or "who because of their position in or toward society pose[d] a threat". Another 3,000 residents, realising that they were about to be expelled from their homes, fled to the West. By the end of 1952, the inner German border was virtually sealed.

The border between East and West Berlin was also significantly tightened, although it was not fully closed at this stage. By the end of September 1952, about 200 of the 277 streets which ran from the Western sectors to the East were closed to traffic and the remainder were subjected to constant police observation. Railway traffic was routed around the Western sectors and all employees of nationalised factories had to pledge not to visit West Berlin on pain of dismissal. However, even with these restrictions the border in Berlin remained considerably easier to cross than the main inner German border; consequently, Berlin became the main route by which East Germans left for the West. The outflow of people remained considerable despite the new restrictions. Between 1949 and the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, an estimated 3.5 million East Germans – a sixth of East Germany's entire population – emigrated to the West. Events such as the crushing of the 1953 uprising
Uprising of 1953 in East Germany
The Uprising of 1953 in East Germany started with a strike by East Berlin construction workers on June 16. It turned into a widespread anti-Stalinist uprising against the German Democratic Republic government the next day....

 and the shortages caused by the introduction of collectivisation resulted in major increases in refugee numbers. In August 1961, the Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...

 was built, finally putting an end to the stream of refugees.

A further expansion of the border regime in July 1962 made the GDR's entire Baltic coast a border zone. A 500 metres (1,640.4 ft) wide strip on the eastern side of the Bay of Mecklenburg
Bay of Mecklenburg
The Bay of Mecklenburg , also known as the Mecklenburg Bay or Mecklenburg Bight, is a long narrow basin making up the southwestern finger-like arm of the Baltic Sea, between the shores of Germany to the south and the Danish islands of Lolland, Falster, and Møn to the north, the shores of Jutland to...

 was added to the tightly controlled protective strip, while restrictions were imposed on coastal activities that might have been useful to would-be escapees. The use of boats at night was curtailed and they were required to moor only in designated areas. Camping and visitor accommodation in the coastal zone required official permission, and residents of the coastal zone required special passes to live there.

1967–89: the "Modern Frontier"

Towards the end of the 1960s, the GDR decided to upgrade the border to establish what East German leader Walter Ulbricht
Walter Ulbricht
Walter Ulbricht was a German communist politician. As First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1950 to 1971 , he played a leading role in the creation of the Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany and later in the early development and...

 termed the "modern frontier" (die moderne Grenze). The redeveloped border system took advantage of the knowledge that had been obtained in building and maintaining the Berlin Wall: the border defences were systematically upgraded to make it far harder to cross; barbed-wire fences were replaced with harder-to-climb steel mesh; directional anti-personnel mines and anti-vehicle ditches were introduced to block the movement of people and vehicles; tripwires and electric signals were introduced to make it easier for the border guards to detect escapees; all-weather patrol roads were built to enable rapid access to any point along the border; and wooden guard towers were replaced with prefabricated concrete towers and observation bunkers.

Construction of the new border system started in September 1967. The first phase, from 1967 to 1972, was initially seen as a strengthening of weak points in the existing system; subsequently, it became a general rolling programme of work along the entire length of the border. Nearly 1300 kilometres (808 mi) of new fencing was built, usually further back from the geographical border line than the old barbed-wire fences had been. The entire system was expected to be completed by 1975, but it continued well into the 1980s. The new border system had an immediate effect in reducing the number of escapes. During the mid-1960s, an average of about 1,000 people a year had made it across the border. Ten years later, that figure had fallen to about 120 per year.

At the same time, tensions between the two German states eased with the inauguration of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt
Willy Brandt
Willy Brandt, born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm , was a German politician, Mayor of West Berlin 1957–1966, Chancellor of West Germany 1969–1974, and leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany 1964–1987....

's Ostpolitik
Ostpolitik
Neue Ostpolitik , or Ostpolitik for short, refers to the normalization of relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and Eastern Europe, particularly the German Democratic Republic beginning in 1969...

. The Brandt government sought to normalise relations between West Germany and its eastern neighbours, and produced a series of treaties and agreements. Most significantly, on 21 December 1972 the two German states signed a treaty recognising each other's sovereignty and supporting each other's applications for UN membership (achieved in September 1973). Reunification remained a theoretical objective for West Germany, but in practice the issue was put to one side by the West and was abandoned entirely by the East. The agreement had significant implications for the border. The two Germanys established a border commission (Grenzkommission) which met from 1973 to the mid-1980s to resolve practical problems related to the border. The normalisation of relations also led to a slight relaxation in the regulations for crossing the border legally, although the border fortifications were as rigorously maintained as ever.

In 1988, the increasingly unsustainable costs of maintaining the border led the GDR leadership to propose replacing them with a high-technology system codenamed Grenze 2000. Drawing on technology used by the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

 during the Soviet-Afghan War, it would have replaced the border fences with a network of signal tripwires, seismic detectors to detect footsteps, infrared beams, microwave detectors and other electronic sensors. It was never implemented, not least because of the high costs of construction, which were estimated at 257 million East German marks.

See also

  • Border guards of the inner German border
    Border guards of the inner German border
    The border guards of the inner German border comprised tens of thousands of military, paramilitary and civilian personnel from both East and West Germany, as well as from the United Kingdom, the United States and initially the Soviet Union.-East Germany:...

  • Crossing the inner German border
    Crossing the inner German border
    Crossing the inner German border remained possible throughout the Cold War; it was never entirely sealed in the fashion of the border between the two Koreas, though there were severe restrictions on the movement of East German citizens...

  • Escape attempts and victims of the inner German border
    Escape attempts and victims of the inner German border
    There were numerous escape attempts and victims of the inner German border during its 45 years of existence from 1945 to 1990.-Refugee flows and escape attempts:...

  • Fortifications of the inner German border
    Fortifications of the inner German border
    The fortifications of the inner German border comprised a complex system of interlocking fortifications and security zones long and several kilometres deep, running from the Baltic Sea to Czechoslovakia...

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