Berlin 1945

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The Berlin Wall A Photographic Memoir
Berlin 1945 80 of the citys buildings had
been destroyed.
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In 1945, Germany was divided into four zones, one
for each occupying power. Similarly, Berlin was
divided into four sectors. This Tripartite
Agreement The original three powers, the USA,
Russia and the UK, made room for liberated
France placed Berlin under the Aliied Control
Committee. Germany did not rule Berlin, nor could
German troops and airlines enter. Access by road
and air was guaranteed. It was meant to be a
temporary arrangement But the Soviets had no
inten-tion of relinquishing power and allowing
Germany to re-unite. They wanted to deny the
Allies access to Berlin and, by assuming power
over the Allied sectors, to drive the West
completely out of their zone. They blockaded
Berlin to try achieve this. The Berlin Airlift
thwarted this attempt. West Berlin was to become
a thorn in the flesh of the Soviet zone, since
its citizens could emigrate by simply entering
the Allied sectors and flying out to West Germany.
Occupied Germany1945
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Checkpoint Charlie
By 1949, the three western powers had formed the
BDR German Federal Republic, West Germany, out
of their zones. The Soviet zone had become the
DDR German Democratic Republic, East Germany.
The three western sectors had become West Berlin,
the Soviet sector, East Berlin. The temporary
division of Germany and Berlin was to last for
forty years. No-one, perhaps not even Walter
Ulbricht, could have foreseen the course that
events were to take during that era, though he
had surely already formulated plans by 1949. The
DDR broke all the Tripartite provisions for
Berlin they made it their capital, stationed
their troops there, and flew their own airline in
and out of Schönefeld airport in their
sector. Despite the different occupying forces,
the city remained a single entity until 13th
August, 1961. After this, West Berlin, sealed off
from the rest of the Soviet Zone, effectively
became an island in the middle of East Germany.
The Two Germanys1949-1989
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The Stalinallee, a street of massive blocks of
flats for workers, was a typically gigantic
socialist project of its time. In this DDR
propaganda photograph, citizens look down its
massive perspective with hope for a bright and
prosperous future. It was from this project that
workers rose up against the hard-line Stalinist
government of Walther Ulbricht after Stalins
death in March 1953. They had high hopes for
liberalisation in the DDR, but rebelled against
raised work-norms by 10 and repression.
Inset One of the posters of the time,
advertising the project. East Germany confidently
expected to overtake the prosperity of the West
within 10 years, and such projects were meant to
exhibit the bright and promising future of
socialism.
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Violent scenes in the Alexanderplatz as Russian
tanks roll in, to be fought by courageous
workers armies with sticks and stones! The
Soviet Union at one point thought they had lost
their zone, but to their utter surprise, the West
did nothing to intervene, and the DDR survived.
But by this time the hollowness of the DDR
governments claim to popular support had become
clear. 1953 proved that the SED owed its survival
to the power of the occupying Soviet forces.
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East Berliners flee Soviet tanks and troops. The
Soviets fired into the crowds, and strafed the
border zones to prevent escapes into West Berlin.
While the Red Army was putting down the uprising,
Ulbricht and the rest of the regime were cowering
under the protection of the Soviets, who despised
them for it. RIAS Radio in the American Sector
says that there is no leadership left in the
DDR, said the Soviet comander contemptuously in
their presence. Well, that seems just about
true. Bertholt Brecht, DDR author, who supported
the suppression of the uprising, later came to
regret it, and wrote the poem on the next slide
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The Solution After the uprising of 17 June The
Secretary of the Writers Union Had leaflets
distributed in the Stalinallee Stating that the
people Had forfeited the confidence of the
government And could win it back only with
redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier In that
case for the government To dissolve the
people and elect another? Berthold Brecht
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In the early days before the Wall, sector
boundaries were marked only by signboards such as
the one on the right which says You are now
entering the American sector. On the reverse
side it says You are now leaving the American
sector. Just within the Russian sector, the East
Germans have erected their own sign The end of
the democratic ! sector of Greater Berlin is
one metre away. Considering the record of the
Soviet Union compared with the USA, the sign is
ironic, to say the least.
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The massive, carefully-planned Operation Rose
began at midnight on Sunday 12th August, 1961. It
was only at dawn on Monday 13th, that its extent
became apparent. 1 The first visible sign in
the centre that the border had been sealed
barbed wire across the Potsdamer Platz, with
armed sentries placed every 2 metres to stop East
Germans escaping. 2 A Grenzer border guard
looks on as the barrier is erected. Does he
support it, or is he regretting it?
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Uncertainty is also written on the faces of these
two young sentries. What are they really
thinking? Even amongst supporters of the DDR, the
sheer finality of the division caused by the Wall
must have evoked some very mixed feelings.
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Monday 13th August 1961 West Berliners look on
as the first barrier is strengthened. The
feelings of both NVA soldiers and onlookers seem
to be profoundly mixed. Who is laughing and who
is mocking?
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Grenzer patrol the early barbed-wire wall. Of
all the uniformed forces in the DDR, they were
the most disliked, since it they who enforced the
borders of the DDR. If the DDR was a prison, then
they were effectively its warders. Their task was
to shoot-to-kill any DDR citizen who tried to
escape. Guards who refused or failed to shoot, or
who turned a blind eye, were subjected to some of
the most brutal punishments in the Eastern Bloc,
the most likely of which was a spell in the
punishment unit at Schwedt, near Brandenburg in
Prussia. Being sent down to Schwedt was the most
terrifying threat any NVA soldier could hear, and
was more than often enough to command abject
obedience. About 50 of border guards were
conscripts. The Grenzer in this photograph are
almost certainly conscripts.
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Sentries patrol the Wall with the aid of
guard-dogs. The dogs later turned out to be
nowhere as fierce as believed.
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Two sentries patrol a section of the Wall, 1963
a cemetery in no-mans-land. Is the fellow on the
left showing a friendlier face than usual or is
he just embarrassed at being caught unawares?
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A desolate, grey view of the tank-traps,
reinforcing the Wall that divided a city for
nearly forty years. West Berlin was a tiny island
in the middle of the DDR, but was so remote to
East Germans that it might as well have been on
another planet. Even today, the West still hunts
90-year-old Nazis. But the forty years of Soviet
oppression suffered by the citizens of the DDR
are all but forgotten outside of Germany itself.