Berlin border closed
The Observer, 13 August 1961
The East-West Berlin border was closed early to-day. Lorryloads of troops were seen taking up positions along the border near the Brandenburg Gate, the main East-West Berlin crossing point.
The quietness of East Berlin’s deserted streets was shattered in the early hours by the screaming of police sirens as police cars, motorcycles and lorry loads of police sped through the city. The action came shortly after publication of a declaration by the Communist Warsaw Treaty Powers that effective guard and controls must be put into force round the borders of West Berlin because of a “perfidious agitation campaign” by the West.
The declaration made it clear these measures were directed at stopping the flow of refugees from East to West through West Berlin. The flow of refugees has recently been over 1,000 daily.
Some routes clear
The declaration, published by the East German news agency ADN, said the “prospective measures” to be taken would not affect traffic on “existing connection routes” between West Germany and West Berlin.
The governments of the Warsaw Pact States appealed to the East German government and to all workers with the proposal “to introduce such an order on the West Berlin border that the way is stopped for the agitation campaign against the German Democratic Republic and a trustworthy guard and effective control be guaranteed around the whole territory of West Berlin. The statement indicated that East Germany would shortly, force all East Germans to obtain special permits to enter the city.
Demonstrators defy armed policemen
From Adam Kellett Long
Berlin, 13 August
Tonight I saw East German police lob smoke and teargas bombs into a crowd of youths who had been mocking and shouting at them at a point half a mile from the border with West Berlin.
No one was hurt in this, the most serious incident so far since the border between the East and West sectors was sealed off. The jack-booted police had driven the crowd, about 300 strong, from the border, but the youths were still defying their levelled rifles. Suddenly the police major in charge shouted “Fire”. The bombs flew into the crowd, sending the youths scattering into nearby streets.
Earlier today I became the first person to drive an East Berlin car through the police cordons since the border controls began shortly after midnight. The clampdown was in full swing.
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The great wall of Ulbricht
From Patrick O’Donovan
The Observer, 20 August 1961
Berlin, 19 August
Like bees working on a wound in their hive, the East Berliners are sealing in their city. They are building a high wall of concrete blocks that will twist for 24 miles through Berlin, across avenues and along sidestreets, to mark the frontier of the cold war.
There are houses in ruins that straddle the border. Refugees in the last few days have treated them as undergraduates do their college roofs and gardens – as postern gates to freedom or pleasure; their doors and windows are being closed with bricks. Methodically, firmly, the curtain is coming down.
Of course nothing is being decided here. The real decisions will be taken elsewhere, but there are plenty of gestures. The Russian commandant, Colonel Andrei Solovyev, has rejected the protest note from the western Commandants: and Walter Ulbricht has declared the wall will stay as long as West Germany is “a hotbed of revenge-seekers and militarists.”
East German’s seek no man’s land: almost all crossings in Berlin stopped
From Michael Wall
24 August 1961
Troops of the Allied garrisons in Berlin were this afternoon ordered to take up positions on the sector boundary between West and East Berlin, supported by tanks, infantry patrols are now keeping a close watch on the boundary.
The Allied move was ordered by the Allied commandants after the East German regime announced during the night that it demanded a “no man’s land” of 100 yards depth on either side of the sector boundary and warned West Berliners to move out of the area for their own safety.
Preventing escapes
The demand that all West Berliners should move away from the vicinity of the frontier is obviously an attempt to prevent escapes from East Berlin, for in the last few nights several have managed to jump out of windows from houses just within the Eastern side of the frontier and slip across to houses just within the western side of the boundary. The East Germans are now evacuating all who live in houses on the border and they clearly intend that the West Berlin Senate should order all West Berliners living along the boundary also to leave their homes.
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