Border guards of the inner
German border:
(West German Bundesgrenzschutz personnel, civilians and an East German border guard on opposite sides of the border line at Herrnburg near Lübeck.)
The 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:
Following the end of the Second
World War, the East German side of the border was guarded initially by the
Border Troops (Pogranichnyie Voiska) of the Soviet NKVD (later the KGB). They
were supplemented from 1946 by a locally recruited paramilitary force, the
German Border Police (Deutsche Grenzpolizei or DGP), before the Soviets handed
over full control of the border to the East Germans in 1955/56. In 1961, the
DGP was converted into a military force within the National People's Army
(Nationale Volksarmee, NVA). The newly renamed Border Troops of the GDR
(Grenztruppen der DDR, commonly nicknamed the Grenzer) came under the NVA's Border
Command or Grenzkommando. They were responsible for securing and defending the
borders with West Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Baltic Sea and West
Berlin. At their peak, the Grenztruppen had up to 50,000 personnel. Around half
of the Grenztruppen were conscripts, a lower proportion than in other branches
of the East German armed forces. Many potential recruits were screened out as
potentially unreliable; for instance, actively religious individuals or those
with close relatives in West Germany. They were all subjected to close scrutiny
to assure their political reliability and were given intensive ideological
indoctrination. A special unit of the
Stasi secret police worked covertly within the Grenztruppen, posing as regular
border guards, between 1968 and 1985, to weed out potential defectors. One in ten officers and one in thirty enlisted
men were said to have been recruited by the Stasi as informers. The Stasi
regularly interviewed and maintained files on every guard. Stasi operatives
were directly responsible for some aspects of security; passport control
stations at crossings were manned by Stasi officers wearing Grenztruppen
uniforms. The Grenztruppen were closely
watched to ensure that they could not take advantage of their inside knowledge
to escape across the border. Patrols, watchtowers and observation posts were
always manned by two or three guards at a time. They were not allowed to go out
of each other's sight in any circumstances. If a guard attempted to escape, his
colleagues were under instructions to shoot him without hesitation or prior
warning; 2,500 did escape to the West,
5,500 more were caught and imprisoned for up to five years, and a number were
shot and killed or injured in the attempt. The work of the guards involved carrying out
repair work on the defences, monitoring the zone from watchtowers and bunkers
and patrolling the line several times a day. Border Reconnaissance
(Grenzaufklärungszug or GAK) soldiers, an elite reconnaissance force, carried
out patrols and intelligence-gathering on the western side of the fence.
Western visitors to the border were routinely photographed by the GAKs, who
also oversaw work detachments maintaining the fence. The workers would be
covered by machine guns to discourage them from attempting to escape.
West Germany:
A number of West German state
organisations were responsible for policing the western side of the border.
These included the Bundesgrenzschutz (BGS, Federal Border Protection), the
Bayerische Grenzpolizei (Bavarian Border Police) and the Bundeszollverwaltung
(Federal Customs Administration). West German Army units were not allowed to
approach the border without being accompanied by BGS personnel. The BGS, established in 1951, was responsible
for policing a zone 30 kilometres (19 mi) deep along the border. Its 20,000 personnel were equipped with
armoured cars, anti-tank guns, helicopters, trucks and jeeps. The BGS had
limited police powers within its zone of operations to tackle threats to the
peace of the border. Until 1972 in addition to volunteers, conscripts could be
drafted for the Compulsory Border Guard Service. The Bundeszollverwaltung (BZV) was responsible
for policing much of the inner German border and manning the West German
crossings. Its personnel lived with their families in communities along the
border and carried out regular policing tasks in a zone about 10 kilometres
(6.2 mi) deep along the border. They had the power to arrest and search
suspects in their area of operations with the exception of the section of
border in Bavaria. The BZV's remit
overlapped significantly with that of the BGS, which led to a degree of feuding
between the two agencies. The Bayerische
Grenzpolizei (BGP) was a border police force raised by the Bavarian government
to carry out policing duties along the inner German border's 390 kilometres
(240 mi) in Bavaria. By the late 1960s, the BGP had 600 men patrolling its
sector of the border, alongside the BZV, BGS and US Army. Its duties were very
similar to those of the BZV, leading to turf wars between the two agencies.
Western Allies:
The British Army conducted only
relatively infrequent patrols along its sector of the inner German border,
principally for training purposes and symbolic value. By the 1970s, it was
carrying out only one patrol a month, only rarely using helicopters or ground
surveillance radar and erecting no permanent observation posts. The British
border zone was divided into two sectors covering a total distance of about 650
kilometres (400 mi) along the border. Unlike the Americans, the British did not
assign specific units to border duty, but rotated the task between the
divisions of the British Army of the Rhine. The border was also patrolled in the British
sector by the British Frontier Service, the smallest of the Western border
surveillance organisations. Its personnel served as a liaison between British
military and political interests and the German agencies on the border. The BFS was disbanded in 1991 following
Germany's reunification.
The United States Army maintained
a substantial and continuous military presence at the inner German border
throughout the entire period from 1945 to after the end of the Cold War.
Regular American soldiers manned the border from the end of the war until they
were replaced in 1946 by the United States Constabulary, which was disbanded in
1952 after policing duties were transferred to the German authorities. It was
replaced by three dedicated armoured cavalry regiments assigned to provide a
permanent defence. The 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment based at Bamberg, 2nd
Armored Cavalry Regiment based at Nuremberg and the 14th Armored Cavalry
Regiment based at Fulda – later replaced by the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment –
monitored the border using observation posts, ground and air patrols,
countering intrusions and gathering intelligence on Warsaw Pact activities.
Cross-border contacts:
There was little informal contact
between the two sides; East German guards were under orders not to speak to
Westerners. After the initiation of
détente between East and West Germany in the 1970s, the two sides established
procedures for maintaining formal contacts through 14 direct telephone
connections or Grenzinformationspunkte (GIP, "border information
points"). They were used to resolve local problems affecting the border,
such as floods, forest fires or stray animals.
For many years, the two sides waged a propaganda battle across the
border using propaganda signs and canisters of leaflets fired or dropped into
each other's territory. West German leaflets sought to undermine the
willingness of East German guards to shoot at refugees attempting to cross the
border, while East German leaflets promoted the GDR's view of West Germany as a
militaristic regime intent on restoring Germany's 1937 borders. During the
1950s, West Germany sent millions of propaganda leaflets into East Germany each
year. In 1968 alone, over 4,000 projectiles containing some 450,000 leaflets
were fired from East Germany into the West. Another 600 waterproof East German
leaflet containers were recovered from cross-border rivers. The "leaflet war" was eventually
ended by mutual agreement in the early 1970s as part of the normalisation of
relations between the two German states.
Crossing the inner German border:
The inner German border was never
entirely sealed in the fashion of the border between the two Koreas and could
be crossed in either direction throughout the Cold War. The post-war agreements
on the governance of Berlin specified that the Western Allies were to have
access to the city via defined air, road, rail and river corridors. This was
mostly respected by the Soviets and East Germans, albeit with periodic
interruptions and harassment of travellers. Even during the Berlin Blockade of
1948, supplies could be brought in by air – the famous Berlin Airlift. Before
and after the blockade, Western civilian and military trains, road traffic and
barges routinely passed through East Germany en route to Berlin. The border could be crossed legally only
through a limited number of air, road, rail and river routes. Foreigners were
able to cross East German territory to or from West Berlin, Denmark, Sweden,
Poland and Czechoslovakia. However, they had only limited and very tightly
controlled access to the rest of East Germany and faced numerous restrictions
on travel, accommodation and expenditure. Lengthy inspections caused long
delays to traffic at the crossing points. Westerners found crossing the inner
German border to be a somewhat disturbing experience.
Crossing points:
Before 1952, the inner German
border could be crossed at almost any point along its length. The fortification
of the border resulted in the severing of 32 railway lines, three autobahns, 31
main roads, eight primary roads, about 60 secondary roads and thousands of
lanes and cart tracks. The number of crossing points was reduced to three air
corridors, three road corridors, two railway lines and two river connections
giving transit access to Berlin, plus a handful of additional crossing points
for freight traffic. The situation improved somewhat after the initiation of
détente in the 1970s. Additional crossings for so-called kleine Grenzverkehr –
"small border traffic", essentially meaning West German day trippers
– were opened at various locations along the border. By 1982, there were 19
border crossings: six roads, three autobahns, eight railway lines plus the Elbe
river and the Mittellandkanal. The largest was at Helmstedt-Marienborn on the
Hanover–Berlin autobahn (A 2), through which 34.6 million travellers passed
between 1985–89. Codenamed Checkpoint
Alpha, this was the first of three Allied checkpoints on the road to Berlin. The
others were Checkpoint Bravo, where the autobahn crossed from East Germany into
West Berlin, and most famous of all, Checkpoint Charlie, the only place where
non-Germans could cross from West to East Berlin. It was not possible to simply
drive through the gap in the fence that existed at crossing points, as the East
Germans installed high-impact vehicle barriers and mobile rolling barriers that
could (and did) kill drivers that attempted to ram them. Vehicles were
subjected to rigorous checks to uncover fugitives. Inspection pits and mirrors
allowed the undersides of vehicles to be scrutinised. Probes were used to
investigate the chassis and even the fuel tank, where a fugitive might be
concealed, and vehicles could be partially dismantled in on-site garages. At
Marienborn there was even a mortuary garage where coffins could be checked to
confirm that the occupants really were dead. Passengers were checked and often
interrogated about their travel plans and reasons for travelling. The system
used simple technology and was slow, relying largely on vast card indexes
recording travellers' details, but it was effective nonetheless; during the 28
years of operation of the Marienborn complex, no successful escapes were
recorded.
Border crossing regulations:
West Germans were able to cross
the border relatively freely to visit relatives, but had to go through numerous
bureaucratic formalities. East Germans were subjected to far stricter
restrictions. It was not until November 1964 that they were allowed to visit
the West at all, and even then only pensioners were allowed. This gave rise to a
joke that only in East Germany did people look forward to old age. Younger East Germans were not allowed to
travel to the West until 1972, though few did so until the mid-1980s. They had
to apply for an exit visa and passport, pay a substantial fee, obtain
permission from their employer and undergo an interrogation from the police. The
odds were against successful applications, and only approximately 40,000 a year
were approved. Refusal was often arbitrary, dependent on the goodwill of local
officials. Members of the Party elite
and cultural ambassadors were frequently given permission to travel, as were
essential transport workers. However, they were not permitted to take their
families with them. Until the late 1980s, ordinary East Germans were only
permitted to travel to the West on "urgent family business", such as
the marriage, serious illness or death of a close relative. In February 1986,
the regime relaxed the definition of "urgent family business", which prompted
a massive increase in the number of East German citizens able to travel to the
West. The relaxation of the restrictions was reported to have been motivated by
a desire on the part of the East German leadership to reduce their citizens'
desire to travel and shrink the number applying to emigrate. In practice,
however, it had exactly the opposite effect.
Emigrating from East Germany:
There was no formal legal basis
under which a citizen could emigrate from East Germany. In 1975, however, East
Germany signed up to the Helsinki Accords, a pan-European treaty to improve
relations between the countries of Europe. An increasing number of East German citizens
sought to use the Accords' provision on freedom of movement to secure exit
visas. By the late 1980s, over 100,000 applications for visas were being
submitted annually with around 15,000–25,000 being granted. The GDR's government nonetheless remained
opposed to emigration and sought to dissuade would-be émigrés. The process of
applying for an exit permit was deliberately made slow, demeaning, frustrating
and often fruitless. Applicants were marginalised, demoted or sacked from their
jobs, excluded from universities and subjected to ostracism. They faced the
threat of having their children taken into state custody on the grounds that
they were unfit to bring up children.[122] The law was used to punish those who
continued to apply for emigration; over 10,000 applicants were arrested by the
Stasi between the 1970s and 1989.
Ransoms and "humanitarian
releases":
East German citizens could also
emigrate through the semi-secret route of being ransomed by the West German
government in a process termed Freikauf (literally the buying of freedom). Between
1964 and 1989, 33,755 political prisoners were ransomed. A further 2,087
prisoners were released to the West under an amnesty in 1972. Another 215,000
people, including 2,000 children cut off from their parents, were allowed to
leave East Germany to rejoin their families. In exchange, West Germany paid
over 3.4 billion DM – nearly $2.3 billion at 1990 prices – in goods and hard
currency. Those ransomed were valued on a sliding scale, ranging from around
1,875 DM for a manual worker to around 11,250 DM for a doctor. The
justification, according to East Germany, was that this was compensation for
the money invested by the state in the prisoner's training. For a while,
payments were made in kind using goods that were in short supply in East Germany,
such as oranges, bananas, coffee and medical drugs. The average prisoner was
worth around 4,000 DM worth of goods. The scheme was highly controversial in
the West. Freikauf was denounced by many as human trafficking, but was defended
by others as an "act of pure humanitarianism"; the West German
government budgeted money for Freikauf under the euphemistic heading of
"support of special aid measures of an all-German character."
Escape attempts and victims of
the inner German border:
Between 1950 and 1988, around 4
million East Germans migrated to the West; 3.454 million left between 1950 and
the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. After the border was fortified and
the Berlin Wall constructed, the number of illegal crossings fell dramatically
and continued to fall as the defences were improved over the subsequent
decades. However, escapees were never more than a small minority of the total
number of emigrants from East Germany. During the 1980s, only about 1% of those
who left East Germany did so by escaping across the border. Far more people
left the country after being granted official permits, by fleeing through third
countries or by being ransomed by the West German government. The vast majority
of refugees were motivated by economic concerns and sought to improve their
living conditions and opportunities by migrating to the West. Events such as
the crushing of the 1953 uprising, the imposition of collectivisation and East
Germany's final economic crisis in the late 1980s prompted surges in the number
of escape attempts. Attempts to flee across the border were carefully studied
and recorded by the GDR authorities to identify possible weak points. These
were addressed by strengthening the fortifications in vulnerable areas. At the
end of the 1970s, a study was carried out by the East German army to review
attempted "border breaches" (Grenzdurchbrüche). It found that 4,956
people had attempted to escape across the border between 1 December 1974 and 30
November 1979. Of those, 3,984 people (80.4%) were arrested by the Volkspolizei
in the Sperrzone, the outer restricted zone. 205 people (4.1%) were caught at
the signal fence. Within the inner security zone, the Schutzstreifen, a further
743 people (15%) were arrested by the guards. 48 people (1%) were stopped –
i.e. killed or injured – by landmines and 43 people (0.9%) by SM-70 directional
mines on the fence. A further 67 people (1.35%) were intercepted at the fence
(shot and/or arrested). A total of 229 people – just 4.6% of attempted
escapees, representing less than one in twenty – made it across the fence. Of
these, the largest number (129, or 55% of successful escapees) succeeded in
making it across the fence in unmined sectors. 89 people (39% of escapees)
managed to cross both the minefields and the fence, but just 12 people (6% of
the total) succeeded in getting past the SM-70s booby-trap mines on the fences.
Escape attempts were severely punished by the GDR. From 1953, the regime
described the act of escaping as Republikflucht (literally "flight from
the Republic"), by analogy with the existing military term Fahnenflucht
("desertion"). A successful escapee was not a Flüchtling
("refugee") but a Republikflüchtiger ("Republic deserter").
Those who attempted to escape were called Sperrbrecher (literally
"blockade runners" but more loosely translated as "border
violators"). Those who helped
escapees were not Fluchthelfer ("escape helpers"), the Western term,
but Menschenhändler ("human traffickers").[131] Such ideologically
coloured language enabled the regime to portray border crossers as little
better than traitors and criminals. Republikflucht became a crime in 1957,
punishable by heavy fines and up to three years' imprisonment. Any act
associated with an escape attempt – including helping an escapee – was subject
to this legislation. Those caught in the act were often tried for espionage as
well and given proportionately harsher sentences. More than 75,000 people – an
average of more than seven people a day – were imprisoned for attempting to
escape across the border, serving an average of one to two years' imprisonment.
Border guards who attempted to escape were treated much more harshly and were
on average imprisoned for five years.
Escape methods:
Escapees used a variety of
methods. The great majority crossed on foot, though some took more unusual
routes. One of the most spectacular was the balloon escape in September 1979 of
eight people from two families in a home-made hot-air balloon. Their flight
involved an ascent to more than 2,500 metres (8,200 ft) before landing near the
West German town of Naila. The incident inspired the film Night Crossing. Other escapees relied more on physical
strength and endurance. An escapee on August 26, 1987 used meat hooks to scale
the fences, while in 1971 a doctor swam 45 kilometres (28 mi) across the Baltic
Sea from Rostock almost to the Danish island of Lolland, before he was picked
up by a West German yacht. Another escapee used an air mattress to escape
across the Baltic on September 2, 1987. Mass escapes were rare. One of the few
that succeeded took place on 2 October 1961, when 53 people from the border
village of Böseckendorf – a quarter of the village's population – escaped en
masse, followed by another 13 inhabitants in February 1963. An unusual mass
escape occurred in September 1964 when 14 East Germans, including 11 children,
were smuggled across the border in a refrigerated truck. They were able to
escape detection by being concealed under the carcasses of slaughtered pigs
being transported to the West. The traffic was not one-way; thousands of people
migrated each year from West Germany to the east, motivated by reasons such as
marital problems, family estrangement and homesickness. A number of Allied military personnel,
including British, French, German and American troops, also defected. By the
end of the Cold War, as many as 300 United States citizens were thought to have
defected across the Iron Curtain for a variety of reasons – whether to escape criminal charges, for
political reasons or because (as the St. Petersburg Times put it)
"girl-hungry GIs [were tempted] with seductive sirens, who usually desert
the love-lorn soldier once he is across the border". The fate of such
defectors varied considerably. Some were sent straight to labour camps on
charges of espionage. Others committed suicide, while a few were able to find
wives and work on the eastern side of the border.
Order to fire:
From 1945 onwards, unauthorised
crossers of the inner German border risked being shot by Soviet or East German
guards. The use of deadly force was termed the Schießbefehl ("order to
fire" or "command to shoot"). It was formally in force as early
as 1948, when regulations concerning the use of firearms on the border were
promulgated. A regulation issued to East German police on 27 May 1952
stipulated that "failure to obey the orders of the Border Patrol will be
met by the use of arms". From the 1960s through to the end of the 1980s,
the border guards were given daily verbal orders (Vergatterung) to "track
down, arrest or annihilate violators". The GDR formally codified its
regulations on the use of deadly force in March 1982, when the State Border Law
mandated that firearms were to be used as the "maximum measure in the use
of force" against individuals who "publicly attempt to break through
the state border". The GDR's
leadership explicitly endorsed the use of deadly force. General Heinz Hoffmann,
the GDR defence minister, declared in August 1966 that "anyone who does
not respect our border will feel the bullet". In 1974, Erich Honecker, as
Chairman of the GDR's National Defence Council, ordered: "Firearms are to
be ruthlessly used in the event of attempts to break through the border, and
the comrades who have successfully used their firearms are to be
commended." The Schießbefehl was, not surprisingly, very controversial in
the West and was singled out for criticism by the West Germans. The GDR
authorities occasionally suspended the Schießbefehl on occasions when it would
have been politically inconvenient to have to explain dead refugees, such as
during a visit to the GDR by the French foreign minister in 1985.[145] It was
also a problem for many of the East German guards and was the motivating factor
behind a number of escapes, when guards facing a crisis of conscience defected
because of their unwillingness to shoot fellow citizens.
Deaths on the border:
It is still not certain how many
people died on the inner German border or who they all were, as the GDR treated
such information as a closely guarded secret. But estimates have risen steadily
since unification, as evidence has been gathered from East German records. As
of 2009, unofficial estimates are up to 1,100 people, though officially
released figures give a count from 270 up to 421 deaths. There were many ways to die on the inner
German border. Numerous escapees were shot by the border guards, while others
were killed by mines and booby-traps. A substantial number drowned while trying
to cross the Baltic and the Elbe river. Not all of those killed on the border
were attempting to escape. On 13 October 1961, Westfälische Rundschau
journalist Kurt Lichtenstein was shot on the border near the village of
Zicherie after he attempted to speak with East German farm workers. His death
aroused condemnation across the political spectrum in West Germany. The incident prompted students from
Braunschweig to erect a sign on the border protesting the killing. An Italian
truck driver and member of the Italian Communist Party, Benito Corghi, was shot
at a crossing point in August 1976; the GDR government was severely embarrassed
and, unusually, offered an apology. In
one notorious shooting on 1 May 1976, a former East German political prisoner,
Michael Gartenschläger, who had fled to the West some years before, was
ambushed and killed by a Stasi commando squad on the border near Büchen. The
Stasi reported that he had been "liquidated by security forces of the
GDR". Twenty-five East German border guards died after being shot from the
Western side of the border or were killed by resisting escapees or (often
accidentally) by their own colleagues. The East German government described
them as "victims of armed assaults and imperialist provocations against
the state border of the GDR" and alleged that "bandits" in the
West took potshots at guards doing their duty – a version of events that was
uncorroborated by Western accounts of border incidents. The two sides commemorated their dead in very
different ways. Various mostly unofficial memorials were set up on the western
side by people seeking to commemorate victims of the border. West Germans such
as Michael Gartenschläger and Kurt Lichtenstein were commemorated with signs
and memorials, some of which were supported by the government. The death of
East German Heinz-Josef Große in 1982 was commemorated annually by
demonstrations on the Western side of the border.[155] After the policy of
détente was initiated in the 1970s, this became politically inconvenient and
state support for border memorials largely ceased. The taboo in East Germany surrounding escapees
meant that the great majority of deaths went unpublicised and uncommemorated.
However, the deaths of border guards were used for GDR propaganda, which
portrayed them as "martyrs". Four stone memorials were erected in
East Berlin to mark their deaths. The regime named schools, barracks and other
public facilities after the dead guards and used their memorials as places of
pilgrimage to signify that (as a slogan put it) "their deaths are our
commitment" to maintaining the border. After 1989 the memorials were
vandalised, neglected and ultimately removed.
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