25 things you probably didn’t know about the Berlin Wall — RT News
Tags Anniversary , Conflict , NATO , Politics , Igor Ogorodnev , WWII , Germany , Violence
1. More than 3 million East   Germans escaped to West Germany between 1945 and 1961,   most of them through the 'loophole' of Berlin, as the   GDR gradually strengthened its borders and restricted travel for   its citizens. This was nearly a fifth of GDR’s population, and   predominantly the youngest, most dynamic and best-educated class.
Moscow was not pleased, and the future Soviet leader Yury   Andropov chided the GDR leadership for not being able to “speak the language of the intelligentsia.”
2.50,000 Berliners – known as   Grenzgängers – crossed each day to work in the West, receiving   larger salaries, while living in subsidized housing, and not   contributing to the Eastern economy. Yet that wasn’t the biggest   loophole. Due to its power to purchase a wider range of consumer   goods, the Western Deutsche mark was worth four to six   times as much as the Eastern Deutsche mark. But basic   goods, intentionally subsidized within the Socialist economy, and   the desirability of the Western currency made the difference even   more noticeable. This meant that not only Grenzgängers but also   ordinary West Berliners, could exchange their money on the black   market, and easily shop for what seemed like ludicrously cheap   Eastern goods, as long as they didn’t want to buy Adidas shoes,   or Volkswagen cars.
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3. But there was ideology too. Imagining West   Berlin in the middle of Communist heartland, would be comparable   to seeing half of Seoul transported to the middle of Pyongyang,   or half of London into Tehran. The comparison was astonishing and   illustrative of the strengths and weaknesses of each regime. The   very existence of a more prosperous and desirable city on their   doorstep chaffed at the East German leadership. It's perhaps more   surprising that the two parts of the city co-existed peacefully   for as long as they did, as the Cold War intensified. But an   ideological framing was still necessary. The Berlin Wall was   termed the Anti-Fascist Protective Rampart,   aimed at preventing enemies from entering Berlin.
"No one should think we are in love with the Wall; that is by   no means the case… The anti-fascist protective rampart was   necessary to stand up to the military adventurers," explained Walter Ulbricht, the following year. Of course, the   purported invaders were still allowed to enter East Berlin   throughout most of the Wall’s existence, while East Germans faced   the watchtowers, and the barbed wire.
4. On the other side, Willy Brandt, the   Social-Democratic mayor of Berlin, and soon to be chancellor,   christened the construction the 'Wall of Shame.' The term quickly caught on with the Western media.
5. While the world powers were tangled in myriad   geopolitical negotiations and ultimatums about the future of   Germany and the status of Berlin, the wall was conceived quietly,   with documents showing the exact plans were announced to GDR   senior party members less than a week in advance.
On August 13, 1961, people on both sides of   Berlin woke up to see the entire perimeter sealed off, with work   to erect a more permanent divide in full flow. Two despondent   crowds looked on, with those in the East realizing now there was   no escape, while those facing them from the West held placards   and shouted slogans to no effect.
6. Here are some quick stats about the Wall,   near the end of its lifetime in 1989. Total perimeter:   155km. Electric contact or signal fencing: 127.5km. Observation   towers: 302. Dog runs: 259. Bunkers: 20, guarded by more than   11,000 soldiers.
7. In fact the Wall was not built as a single   pre-conceived structure, but a series of four different   walls, starting with two wire fences, and then with two   concrete walls. The last of these, the iconic Grenzmauer 75, was   made up of the graffiti-adorned (on the Western side) concrete   blocks that are still commonly associated with the Berlin Wall.
Grenzmauer 75 was also strategically weakened in certain places,   in case the Soviets needed to drive their tanks through to the   Western side.
8. The so-called Death Strip, which was carved out from East Berlin, varied from 30 to 150   meters in width. Under the blinding floodlights, as well as   soldiers and dogs, there were several lines of inanimate   obstacles. Among them, signal wire, barbed wire, and a bed of   nails. Further along was a trench and anti-tank ‘hedgehog’ traps,   in anticipation of a wider conflict. There were also   frequently-raked sand strips, which helped the guards identify if   anyone – either an insider or a citizen - had attempted to cross   unnoticed.
9. Inside the Wall was also the ironically-named   19th-century Church of   Reconciliation. After the split, the building, whose   worshipers had predominantly come from West Berlin, ended up in   the Death Strip, leaving only the state atheist military guards   of East Berlin as its congregation. Deciding that the hulking,   empty building obscured sightlines from nearby watchtowers, GDR   authorities ordered the church to be dynamited in 1985.
After the fall of the Wall, a new, modernist building was   constructed in the old location, which has become one of the   landmarks of unified Berlin.
10. Gunter Litfin was the first person to be   shot while trying to cross from East to West, on August 24, 1961.   An apprentice tailor and a member of the center-right CDU,   illegal in the East, Litfin had already been working in West   Berlin, and even rented a flat there. But after his father died   earlier that year, he decided to postpone his full-time move to   support his family, as defectors were not allowed back. It was a   fatal mistake.
Litfin was profoundly shocked when he realized that his life, job   and house had been sealed off. Like many in the first few weeks   after the construction began, he simply hoped to break through   with a well-timed run through what he thought was a   poorly-guarded part of the barrier. But when he attempted to   climb through some railway tracks, he was spotted by the   transport police, and after repeated warning shots, killed by a   bullet to the head.
The Eastern authorities initially hushed up the death, and then,   after rumors began to spread, claimed that Litfin was a   homosexual nicknamed “Dolly”, who was fleeing due to his “criminal acts.”
For the West, he also became a symbolic figure – an innocent   victim of the “GDR’s man hunters.” And one of 136   people, who died crossing the Wall, with the last crashing in a   self-made balloon less than a year before the wall came   down.
11. The guards on the Wall were themselves not   averse to taking the few necessary steps to the Promised Land,   when no one was looking. In the first two years of its existence,   before walls and locks needing several people to open them were   installed, more than 1,300 GDR uniformed men   defected.
This was undoubtedly a propaganda coup for the West, as iconic   photos, like that of 19-year-old Conrad Schumann hurdling the   barbed wire, gun still slung across the shoulders, flooded the   media on a daily basis.
Gradually, as well as installing sophisticated security   mechanisms, GDR officials began to entrusting only the most loyal   soldiers with the responsibility of guarding the Death   Strip.
12. In total, about 5,000 people are thought to have   escaped through the Berlin Wall during its existence, out of an   estimated 10,000 who tried.
For years, stories of daring escapes became a fixture in the   Western media, part black comedy, part triumph of human ingenuity   and perseverance. There was Horst Klein, an acrobat who dangled   off a disused high-tension cable as he made his way to the West   inch-by-inch. Heinz Meixner famously cut out his windshield and   ducked underneath the drop bar at Checkpoint Charlie, as his car   raced away with his mother in the trunk. The ultimate symbols of   escape were Hans Strelczyk and Gunter Wetzel, who constructed a   functional balloon to fly themselves to freedom in 1979.
These, however, were the low-odds, or one-off scenarios, for the   truly desperate risk-takers. Most of the successful defectors   probably used bribes, forged documents or connections to sneak   out of the East through Checkpoint Charlie – more Argo than The Great Escape.
13. Despite his Cold War credentials, John F.   Kennedy’s reaction to the Wall was muted at best, and he batted   away the more gung-ho suggestions that Western troops should   bring down the Wall from their side.
“We could have sent tanks over and knocked the Wall down.   What then? They build another one back a hundred yards? We knock   that down, then we go to war?” his inner circle later   reported him as saying.
If anything, Kennedy was relieved that the Wall meant that the   Soviet Union no longer had any designs on Berlin, something that   had seemed a possibility, since the USSR possessed a huge   numerical advantage, and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev earlier   demanded that the West move its troops out of the city.
“Why would Khrushchev put up a wall if he really intended to   seize West Berlin? There wouldn’t be any need of a Wall if he   occupied the whole city. This is his way out of his predicament. It’s not a very nice solution, but a Wall is a hell of a   lot better than a war,” said JFK, according to   biographers’ interviews with his aides.
14. Yet Kennedy keenly realized the importance   of the Wall as a vivid propaganda tool that starkly contrasted   life in the East and West – perhaps an even better one than the   divided, but open, Berlin had been.
A triumphant visit to the city, two years after the barrier went   up, also led to the impassioned rhetoric of one of his most   iconic speeches, delivered in front of several hundred thousand   people.
“Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was 'civis   romanus sum' [I am a Roman citizen]. Today, in the world of   freedom, the proudest boast is 'Ich bin ein Berliner!'... All   free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and   therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words 'Ich   bin ein Berliner!'" boomed the US President in   front of a crowd that later renamed the square where the speech   was made after JFK.
15. The Berlin Wall was also the backdrop for perhaps the most   iconic speech of another US President, Ronald Reagan, on the   occasion of the city’s 750th anniversary.
“We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom   and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can   only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the   Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance   dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary   Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the   Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come   here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr.   Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” said Reagan.
The speech wasn’t given its due significance at the time, and is   known more for symbolizing the direction of the Cold War, rather   than for any effect it had on the Soviets, who were bemused by   its hectoring tone, at a time when they were already making   concessions.
16. In fact, by 1989 the fall of the wall itself   was as much a symbol of changes that were already happening, as a   practical step in the reunification of Germany and the end of the   Cold War.
The Berlin Wall largely stopped serving its function as   soon as the first leak sprung in the Iron Curtain in Hungary   earlier that year, when it opened its borders with Austria, first   symbolically and then literally. Like captains of a   sinking ship with unsealed compartments, the East German leaders   tried to prevent their fellow citizens from leaving through a   series of plugs to legal loopholes that only demonstrated their   growing impotence. Longtime GDR leader Erich Hoenecker was forced   out in October, and in November there had been 500,000-strong   demonstrations in Berlin. Egon Krenz, the makeshift leader,   ordered for the farce to be stopped, and for Germans to be   allowed through.
17. Mikhail Gorbachev, the target of Ronald   Reagan’s calls, was, by all reports, peacefully sleeping in   Moscow, when the wall fell. Gorbachev himself had witnessed the   Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968, and had no   intention of invading Eastern Europe. He had already warned   Hoenecker he was not in step with the times.
During a visit to West Germany earlier that year, the Soviet   leader also declared that every nation can "freely choose its   own political and social system" and that Moscow would "respect for the right of all peoples to   self-determination."
Additionally, Gorbachev and US leaders held talks that summer, in   which the West promised economic support to economically-troubled   Moscow, if the Soviet Union did not interfere with the breakdown   of Eastern Europe.
18. The Berlin Wall ceased to exist by accident.   Günter Schabowski, the spokesman for the collapsing German   regime, announced a liberalization of the travel regime – people   would no longer have to give a reason to leave - in a press   conference at 6:53pm on November 9, 1989. When   asked when the regulations would come into force, he uttered “Immediately!”
Later that evening, the GDR government would attempt to   backtrack, and call for people to form an orderly line at the   migration office the following morning. By then it was too late.
The media on the Western side, which had broadcast Schabowski’s   press conference live, jumped on a literal interpretation of the   news, as did thousands of people on either side of the border.
19. While most of the checkpoints were taken   down by Easterners, there were as many Westerners on the other   side, also defying the overwhelmed and befuddled border guards.
To avoid the crush, the officials began to gradually let people   in, before losing control, and simply opening the gates.
After sitting inactive for 28 years, troops stationed at the Wall   were put on full alert, but no one gave the order to   shoot – likely unenforceable – and they stood down later   in the night, with some joining the revelers.
20. David Hasselhoff did not bring down the   Berlin Wall, nor was he even there on that night, despite what   may or may not have been a half-joking lament by the Baywatch   star, when years later he complained that he had not been   included in the history museum at Checkpoint Charlie.
The singer did capture the mood of the West German public with   his hit, Looking for Freedom, in the summer of 1989. But   for all of his self-aggrandizing blather, Hasselhoff’s iconic   performance on the Wall in an LED-covered jacket happened only in   December that year. The part-German star remained a popular   performer in his ancestral homeland throughout the 1990s.
21. While the exuberance of the fall of the Wall   and the prospects of Western economic wealth could have been   expected to spur on new matrimonial unions and produce a baby   boom, that was not the case. Exactly nine months after the Berlin   Wall was freely traversed, birthrates in East Germany   fell by 40 percent and did not recover until 1994, as   people underwent a personal and economic transition that   predictably failed to match the euphoria of the first few hours.
This was a seismic shift for the sheltered and largely   indoctrinated East German population.
22. Within hours of the Wall’s opening, and for   the whole of the following year, Mauerspechte,   or Wall-peckers, appeared with hammers and chisels, trying to   chip away a piece of history for themselves. The wall may have   been covered by mostly sloppy graffiti, and its inner chunks may   have been indistinguishable from any industrial-site debris, but   in its death, it endowed tens of thousands with a physical piece   of history.
Symbolic slabs have been given to some of the world’s top museums   and universities, sometimes covered in art painted on after the   fall, but before the demolition, and frequently behind glass,   with a respectful plaque nearby. Perhaps the most playful use of   the Wall segments is in the men’s toilets at the Main Street   Station Casino in Las Vegas.
23. Today, only several small stretches   of the Wall remain at the original Berlin sites. One has   been turned into one of the world’s biggest street art   exhibitions. Another tells the history of the wall in signposts.   A symbolic trail of cobblestones also runs through the path of   the wall, though it is not continuous, and has been built over in   many places over the past two-and-a-half decades.
A German group wants to rebuild a whole segment of the Wall,   including the Death Strip, as a historical attraction, in the   vein of Auschwitz, but plans have not so far come to fruition.
24. Aware of the gradual disappearance of the   wall as a tangible artifact, for the 25th anniversary,   two German artists, the Bauder brothers, have decided to recreate the Wall with 8,000 illuminated   balloons, lined up along its landmark segments. On   November 9, these will be simultaneously released into the night   sky, to mark the liberation of East Germans.
“We place ourselves in solidarity with those who have raised   their voices for freedom, democracy, and human rights back then   as well as now. And we take a look at the contemporary world in   which Berlin, after 25 years, has become a place of creativity,   openness to the future and other countries,” Klaus Wowereit,   mayor of Berlin, said of the symbolism of the celebration.
25. In a survey conducted last month, three-quarters of East Germans said the fall of the wall   had improved their lives, with only 15 percent insisting that   life had been better before. Among younger people, who   may be prone to nostalgia for a time they didn’t experience   first-hand, an astonishing 96 percent believed that life had   improved. In contrast, only half of West Germans feel   they have benefitted from the reunification.
Incidentally, as a symptom of complacency, ignorance or maybe   security, another survey showed that half of Germans cannot name   the date when the Wall was put up, and a third of young people   did not understand the significance of the date, even when it was   told to them.
Igor Ogorodnev, RT