The rumbling of heavy machinery tore through the early morning silence of East Berlin on August 13, 1961. Citizens woke to the sound of wrecking balls smashing buildings and jackhammers ripping up sidewalks near the dividing line between the eastern and western halves of the city. Armed troops lined the streets, taking up posts at every crossing point. By the next morning, a ring of Soviet soldiers surrounded the entire city, and the truth emerged: the government had decided the only way to stop its people from fleeing was to build a massive concrete barrier.
The Berlin Wall zigzagged through streets, ran across cemeteries, and followed canals. It was lined with hundreds of guard towers, and between two parallel concrete barriers lay a wide, terrifying area that became known as the death strip. The sand-covered ground was purposely placed to track footprints. Anti-vehicle trenches, beds of nails, broken glass, and rusted barbed wire filled the space.
This lethal stretch was designed to prevent East Germans from escaping to the West. Over the years, more barriers were added, and strict rules were enforced: anyone entering the area after dark would be shot without warning. The wall had been a long time coming. After World War II, the Allied powers divided Germany into two zones.
The Soviet Union occupied the East, turning it into a rigidly controlled communist state, while the United States, France, and Great Britain helped rebuild the West as a capitalist democracy. Berlin itself sat 200 miles inside East Germany, and half the city belonged to the West. Many East Germans didn’t respond well to the new communist way of life, so they crossed into West Berlin to settle or flee abroad. The East German government responded with repression, stripping its citizens of basic rights and freedoms, especially freedom of speech.
The state decided what was true, what was false, and what could be said at all. Even religion was forbidden. The communist government promoted state atheism, and while many people obliged, some practiced their faith secretly. Art, too, had to serve the state.
Though the constitution technically guaranteed freedom of culture, that was far from reality. The East German Communist Party watched over all areas of culture, banning any work that didn’t reflect state opinions. Artists painted in secret, hiding their work in apartments and showing it only to trusted friends and family. Books were also heavily censored.
Anything that opposed communism or supported capitalism was banned. Comics featuring Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge were considered immoral. Officials even checked children’s school bags to make sure they weren’t smuggling forbidden literature into school. Music came under regulation when rock became popular.
The government feared Western values corrupting the youth and rock’s tendency to criticize authority, so they demanded every new song promote socialist ideas. Lyrics had to be approved for anti-state tendencies. Bands had to carry a performance permission card, and those without it could be forced to separate or even be imprisoned. The media was forced to paint a pretty picture, even when it was untrue.
There could be no complaints about living standards, education, or pollution. Those who disobeyed the law faced prison, even for a first offense. The State Security Service, the Stasi, punished wrongdoers and also read people’s mail and tapped phone calls. They employed a vast network of unofficial informers who spied on citizens and reported back.
These informers were hired from all walks of life and had access to nearly every organization in the country. They were everywhere. Citizens had no idea who was working for the secret police and who was just an average neighbor. By the end of the regime, over 100,000 active informants were spying on East Germans.
People could face jail time for possessing banned items, for badmouthing the government, or for trying to flee. Life behind bars in a communist state was brutal. Inmates were often tortured, and those considered internal enemies were executed. Troublesome teens were sent to youth institutions surrounded by five-meter-high walls topped with barbed wire and broken glass, where living conditions were unbearable and mistreatment was common.
These young people were sent there to be re-educated to fit the mold. Many East Germans chose to obey the laws and keep the peace, but their lives were still difficult. The economy, already devastated by war, had only gotten worse after the division. Consumer goods were scarce in the East, and until the 1960s, people endured food shortages, relying on friends and family in the West to send them what they couldn’t get at home.
Loyalty to the government determined who got the good jobs, regardless of qualifications. Meanwhile, highways, railroads, sewage systems, and public buildings were neglected and fell into serious disrepair. The entire region began to fall apart. On June 26, 1953, tens of thousands of Berlin residents began demonstrating.
The protests spread into a widespread uprising, with over one million people in 600 locations across the country. What started peaceful quickly became violent, with arson and looting. Demonstrators seized local jails and demanded the release of political prisoners. The government was at risk of being overthrown, so they fought back with tanks.
Martial law was declared, and over 125 people were killed, with many more injured and over 10,000 detained. Many East Germans decided it was time to leave. Large numbers fled westward, some leaving the country entirely. This enraged the government and sent the economy into a nose dive, as most of those who left were contributing members of society.
Over the next few years, an estimated four million East Germans moved west. The government had to do something drastic, and so the Berlin Wall was built. On the other side, West Germans called it the “Wall of Shame” for its restriction on freedom of movement. The wall cut off East Germans from jobs and families in West Berlin.
West Berlin became an isolated exclave in a hostile land, and many of its citizens protested. President John F. Kennedy and UK sources ultimately considered the wall an end to military conflict over Berlin, which meant they basically supported it. For the Communist Bloc, the wall proved to be a public relations disaster.
Western powers portrayed it as a symbol of communist tyranny, particularly after border guards shot and killed citizens who tried to escape. These fatalities were later treated as acts of murder. After all the negative attention, the German government loosened the reins a bit. After 1963, West Germans were allowed to visit East Germany for Christmas with a visa.
But East Germans were not so lucky. For most of the wall’s duration, they were not allowed into West Germany at all, except for serious family matters or specific employment reasons. Watching their western neighbors enjoy freedoms only made matters worse. Defectors became prevalent again, so the East German government beefed up the shooting orders.
Guards were instructed that people attempting to cross were criminals and needed to be shot, including women and children, because the government believed defectors were using them to avoid death while fleeing. In desperation, people tried everything. Some climbed the wall and barbed wire. Others jumped from apartment windows, drove vehicles into the wall, dug tunnels, and even built hot air balloons to fly over.
Some made it, including 29 people who successfully dug an undiscovered tunnel underneath the wall. In 1987, David Bowie, who had once lived and recorded in West Berlin, played a concert close to the wall for East Germans to hear. It promoted an anti-wall sentiment. Thousands gathered as close as they could, and the event ended in a violent riot in East Berlin.
That protest became the first in a series. In 1989, David Hasselhoff was the headlining performer for the Freedom Tour Live Concert, attended by over 500,000 people on both sides of the wall. During the concert, crew members pulled people up from both sides to stand and celebrate on top of the wall. In the late 1980s, the East German economy began to crash again.
Citizens knew about life on the other side, and the government was losing control. Neighboring communist states started to fall. In April 1989, Poland’s communist government abandoned its monopoly of power. In June of that year, Hungary began dismantling the electrified fence along its border with Austria.
Change was on the horizon, and the East German government was quickly losing its grip. They began letting people leave by train through East Germany. Those who couldn’t leave protested, chanting things like, “We want out. ” But then the tone shifted.
Some protesters began chanting a different phrase: “We are staying here. ”
They realized that uprooting their lives wasn’t the only way to end communism. Instead of just protesting for the right to leave, they protested for the right to live in a free East Germany. This started the peaceful revolution of 1989.
As crowds grew, the long-time communist leader, Erich Honecker, admitted defeat and resigned on October 18, 1989. He was replaced by Egon Krenz that same day. On November 4th, half a million people gathered at Alexanderplatz to demand political change. The army was given permission to use force, but it made no difference.
More and more people kept gathering. Krenz decided to let people leave directly through East Germany and West Germany. A government spokesperson was tasked with announcing the new regulations, but he was not given all the information. At the end of the press conference, he read from a small note, basically saying the wall was opening and freedom was only steps away.
A reporter asked when the regulations would take effect. The spokesperson was caught off guard. His note didn’t have that information. Instead of asking for clarification, he guessed.
He said, “As far as I know, it takes effect immediately, without delay. ”
That was not the plan at all. Krenz had wanted the new regulations to take effect the following day, so border guards could be prepared. Instead, this uninformed spokesperson opened the wall immediately.
Chaos ensued. As soon as the media broke the news, East Germans rushed to the wall, gathering at all six checkpoints, demanding the gates be opened. The public was informed before the border guards. The guards panicked.
Finally, on November 9th at 10:45 p. m. , they received permission to open the gates and let people pass freely without checking passports. Not long after, Western and Eastern German youth began climbing the wall, celebrating their newfound freedom and uniting with neighbors.
Today, little is left of the Berlin Wall. Most of it was destroyed, with fragments sold around the world or placed in museums. For many years after reunification, people talked about cultural differences between East and West Germans, and some even felt the wall should still separate them. The official narrative over the past 35 years has been of unification as a great German success story.
It took a few decades for people to fully adjust, but by 2019, most East Germans finally felt happy about their personal lives—a huge increase from only 15% in 1991.
