Translated material
Wall
By the end of the 50s, it became completely clear that it would not be possible to unite two Germanys and two Berlins into a single state. The fundamental decision to strictly close the sector separation line was made in 1961. On the night of August 13, GDR troops blocked West Berlin along the perimeter and began to erect temporary barriers. At first, cinder blocks and barbed wire were used for the barrier, but gradually a full-fledged concrete wall was erected along the entire length of this intra-city border. The total length of the barriers was about 165 km, of which 45 passed through city blocks inside the city.
The wall was constantly patrolled by special units subordinate to the GDR police. The border guards were armed with small arms and had at their disposal trained service dogs, modern tracking equipment, and alarm systems. In addition, the guards had the right to shoot to kill if the border violators did not stop after warning shots. All these measures turned the wall into a very effective means of protecting the GDR from the demographic crisis.
However, it was still not possible to tightly close the border between East and West. In particular, because it is apparently impossible to create a full-fledged right-of-way in a big city (unless, of course, you demolish entire blocks). And ordinary passers-by were sometimes separated from the “realm of freedom and democracy” by only a few tens of meters. This created the illusion that it was relatively easy to overcome the cordon. In addition, part of the border between Berlin did not run on land, but along waterways - canals, rivers and lakes, where it was much more difficult to build reliable barriers.
East Germans began fleeing to besieged West Berlin almost immediately after the blockade and construction of the wall began. As many years of practice have shown, the fugitives' chances of success were approximately 50 to 50. About five thousand people were able to get over the wall, about the same number were caught, about two hundred people were killed by the police (data on the number of victims given in sources vary greatly, but it is possible consider that the total number of deaths, including accidents, is unlikely to exceed 250 people).
Defectors used a variety of methods to overcome the wall. Most often they tried to simply climb over the barriers or throw themselves into the canal and quickly swim to the West Berlin shore. There were also attempts to ram checkpoints with cars and even escapes that were impressive in their audacity using homemade balloons. But the most famous, perhaps, were the Berlin tunnels dug under the barriers, some of them stretching for several tens of meters.
One of these holes, for example, began at a cemetery, where fugitives came under the guise of inconsolable relatives visiting the graves of loved ones. Having made sure that there were no prying eyes nearby, the man dived into the tunnel and after a while came out on the territory of West Berlin. About fifty defectors were transported through this hole, but the brilliant idea was ruined by an accident: a young woman walking with a stroller fell into the hole. After this incident, the tunnel was filled up.
However, there were other, no less impressive, ways to escape from the socialist camp into the world of capital. An elderly German woman, Ida Sieckmann, was one of the first to try to make a “leap to the West.” Apparently, she decided to give herself an impressive gift: her unsuccessful escape happened on the eve of her 59th birthday. The house on Bernauer Strasse, where Frau Sieckmann lived, stood on the very border, and the windows of her apartment on the third floor looked directly onto the West Berlin street. Before the jump, the fugitive threw several feather beds onto the sidewalk under the window, but this did not help: the woman died to death on August 22, 1961. This was far from an isolated case: the border between the Soviet and allied sectors passed through a densely built area, and the temptation to rush to the West attracted many Berliners, including those who were not very physically prepared. In the same year, 1961, under similar circumstances, two more fugitives, including 80-year-old Olga Zegler, crashed in the area of the same Bernauer Strasse.
The West Berlin side did not interfere in border conflicts, and if the fugitive managed to reach his cherished goal, it provided him with protection. True, sometimes tragic incidents occurred in the area of the wall, which could become the beginning of a small military conflict between the West and the East. So, on May 23, 1962, during the escape of 14-year-old schoolboy Wilfried Thews, GDR border guard soldier Peter Goering died. The police found Teus in the area of the Spandau Canal and opened fire on him (thus violating the order prohibiting shooting at children and women). The student was wounded, but was able to reach the opposite bank. When the bullets began to reach West Berlin, local guards returned fire, mortally wounding Goering. Later, West Berlin authorities announced that a ricochet was to blame, but in the GDR the incident was considered a deliberate act, and the deceased policeman was declared a national hero.
Sometimes tragicomic incidents happened. In September 1986, a certain Rainer Liebeke decided, together with a friend, to get to West Berlin by swimming from Potsdam. To do this, they had to swim across Lake Zakrov at night. However, in the summer, shortly before his escape, Liebeke fell off his motorcycle and broke his collarbone. But the thirst to be free was so great that he set out on a dangerous swim even with an untreated injury. Naturally, he never swam to the coveted shore; his body was caught from the water only a few weeks later.
The wall's final victim is usually identified as 21-year-old waiter Chris Gueffroy, who died on February 5, 1989, just months before the border opened. This fugitive was shot by security, and his escape partner was seriously wounded. However, just a month later, in March, another unlucky emigrant died - a certain Winfried Freudenberg. He tried to fly across the border in a homemade hot air balloon. To do this, he got a job at a power plant, where he had the opportunity to fill a cylinder with gas. Freudenberg managed to inflate his hot air balloon and escape right from under the nose of the approaching police squad, however, having flown over the wall, the fugitive crashed during an unsuccessful landing.
The day the Berlin Wall fell was November 9, 1989, when the GDR authorities decided to remove security from this border. These days became a great holiday for the Germans, who celebrated the reunification of their nation and country. Now the barriers in Berlin have been dismantled, and after the GDR joined the Federal Republic of Germany, the city again became the unified capital of the German state.