Cold War Map Of Germany

Border crossings between Eastward and West Frg

Crossing points on the inner High german border, 1982^[i]

Crossing the inner German border remained possible throughout the Common cold War; information technology was never entirely sealed in the fashion of the border betwixt the ii Koreas, though there were astringent restrictions on the movement of Due east German language citizens.^[2] 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 links. This was mostly respected past the Soviets and Eastward Germans, albeit with periodic interruptions and harassment of travellers. Fifty-fifty during the Berlin Blockade of 1948, supplies could be brought in by air – the famous Berlin Airlift – and Centrolineal military convoys could pass through Due east Deutschland en route to Berlin.

The border could be crossed legally only through a limited number of air, road, runway and river routes. Travellers to and from Denmark, Sweden, Poland and Czechoslovakia could too pass through E Germany. Access rights for non-Germans were otherwise very restricted. Foreigners had to submit an itinerary to the E German language state tourist office up to nine weeks in advance, paying booking fees and registering with the local law on arrival, purchasing fuel only from specially approved petrol stations and spending a prescribed minimum of money each solar day.^[3] They were required to stay in state-endemic "Interhotels", where rooms cost five to ten times more the price of the (very few) ordinary East German language hotels.^[4] Given these restrictions, non surprisingly, East Frg did non develop much of a tourist manufacture; even as belatedly as May 1990, there were simply 45,000 hotel beds in the entire country.^[five] Westerners found crossing the inner German border to be a somewhat disturbing experience. Jan Morris wrote:

Travelling from west to east through [the inner German language border] was like entering a drab and disturbing dream, peopled by all the ogres of totalitarianism, a half-lit world of shabby resentments, where anything could be done to you, I used to feel, without everyone ever hearing of it, and your every pace was indomitable by watchful eyes and mechanisms.^{[half dozen]}

Each of the different ways of crossing the border had its own complications. Only aircraft of the three Western Allies were allowed to fly to or from W Berlin; noncombatant traffic was principally served past Air France, British European Airways (later British Airways) and Pan Am.^[7] River traffic was hugely important to the survival of West Berlin, conveying around v million tons of cargo a twelvemonth to the metropolis, but was subjected to numerous inspections and footling restrictions by the East German authorities.^[8] Rail traffic was excruciatingly slow; locomotives and train crews had to be inverse at the edge, the East High german Transport Constabulary (Trapos) carried out inspections using sniffer dogs to uncover stowaways, passports and visas had to be processed at border stations and the condition of the runway was then poor that trains were express to a maximum speed of 70 kilometres per hour (43 mph).^[ix] Route crossings were fairly straightforward merely deadening because of the extensive edge formalities and inspections. Drivers were required to stay on designated transit routes beyond Eastward Germany.^[10]

Crossing points [edit]

Vehicles queuing at the East German passport control at the Marienborn edge crossing betoken, 1989

The Westward German edge crossing facility at Herleshausen in 1985, looking west forth Bundesautobahn 4

Earlier 1952, the inner German border could exist crossed at well-nigh whatever point forth its length. The fortification of the border resulted in the severing of 32 railway lines, three autobahns, 31 main roads, eight primary roads, nigh 60 secondary roads and thousands of lanes and cart tracks.^[xi] The number of crossing points was reduced to three air corridors, 3 road corridors, two railway lines and ii river connections giving transit access to Berlin, plus a handful of boosted crossing points for freight traffic.^[12] The situation improved somewhat after the rapprochement betwixt the 2 German states in the 1970s. Additional edge crossings for so-called kleine Grenzverkehr – "minor border traffic", essentially for West German mean solar day trippers  – were opened at diverse locations along the border.

The crossings [edit]

East German stamps from the Marienborn crossing.

By 1982, there were 19 border crossings: six roads, three autobahns, eight railway lines plus the Elbe river and the Mittellandkanal.^[1]

Route crossing (East/West checkpoints, from north to s)

• Selmsdorf/Schlutup
• Zarrentin/Gudow
  • Located on Bundesautobahn 24 betwixt W Berlin and Hamburg.
• Horst/Lauenburg
• Salzwedel/Bergen
• Marienborn/Helmstedt
  • Largest crossing, on Bundesautobahn 2 between Hanover and West Berlin. Used as main transit checkpoint for those going to or coming from W Berlin.
• Worbis/Duderstadt
• Wartha/Herleshausen
• Meiningen/Eussenhausen
• Eisfeld/Rottenbach
• Hirschberg/Rudolphstein

Railway crossing

• Herrnburg/Lübeck
• Schwanheide/Büchen
• Oebisfelde/Wolfsburg
• Marienborn/Helmstedt
• Ellrich/Walkenried
• Gerstungen/Bebra
• Probstzella/Ludwigsstadt
• Gutenfurst/Hof

H2o crossing

• Cumlose/Schnackenburg
• Ruhen/Buchhorst

The largest crossing indicate or Grenzübergangsstelle (GÜSt) betwixt East and Westward Germany was at Marienborn on the Hanover–Berlin autobahn. It was originally a set up of unproblematic huts straddling the border, where British and Soviet military police checked travellers between the eastern and western zones. In 1971–72 the Due east High german government expanded information technology into a 35 hectares (86 acres) circuitous through which 34.6 one thousand thousand travellers passed between 1985 and 1989. The British, French and Americans worked alongside the W High german Bundesgrenzschutz and Customs to maintain a corresponding checkpoint near Helmstedt. Codenamed Checkpoint Alpha, this was the first of iii Allied checkpoints on the road to Berlin.^[13] The others were Checkpoint Bravo, where the autobahn crossed from East Germany into West Berlin, and nigh famous of all, Checkpoint Charlie, the only place where non-Germans could cross by road or foot from West to East Berlin.^[14]

Stasi undercover constabulary officers interviewed travellers inbound or leaving E Federal republic of germany in this room at the Marienborn border crossing bespeak

On the other side of the edge at Marienborn, over i,000 East German language officials worked around the clock to process travellers. A large proportion of the staff were officers of the Stasi, the much-feared secret police force, although they wore the uniforms of the regular Grenztruppen. The real Grenztruppen were as well present to provide military backup, as were East German customs officers and Soviet military machine officials who were responsible for inspecting Allied military vehicles entering East Germany. The main functions of the staff at Marienborn and other border crossing points were to combat smuggling, to "defend the country border" – by which was meant preventing escapes from E Germany – and to stop any items accounted politically or socially unacceptable from inbound or leaving the country.^[13] A wide variety of items were forbidden to be imported or exported. Western magazines and newspapers, recorded materials, films, radios and medicines were amongst the more than predictable prohibited items, though it was unclear why items such as eels and asparagus could not be brought beyond the border.^[15]

The prevention of escapes was a cardinal priority at crossing points such every bit Marienborn. It was not possible to simply bulldoze through the gap in the border argue that existed at crossing points, as the East Germans installed high-bear on vehicle barriers mounted at chest height. These could (and did) kill drivers who attempted to ram through them. As a last resort, massive rolling barriers (Kraftfahrzeugschnellsperre) 11 metres (36 ft) long and weighing vi tons apiece could be catapulted across the carriageway using hydraulic rams. They were capable of stopping a l-ton truck travelling at 80 kilometres per hour (50 mph). The guards at border crossings were, every bit elsewhere, authorised to use weapons to terminate escape attempts.^[sixteen]

Vehicles were subjected to rigorous checks to uncover escapees. Inspection pits and mirrors allowed the undersides of vehicles to be scrutinised. Probes were used to investigate the chassis and fifty-fifty the fuel tank, where an escapee might be curtained, and vehicles could be partially dismantled in on-site garages. At Marienborn there was fifty-fifty a mortuary garage where coffins could be checked to confirm that the occupants really were expressionless.^[13] From the tardily 1970s, Due east Federal republic of germany likewise installed concealed gamma-ray detectors ("gamma guns") at edge crossings which used radioactive caesium-137 sources to notice people concealed inside vehicles. The discovery of this exercise caused a wellness scare subsequently reunification. A subsequent investigation by federal government found that these involuntary screenings did not event in "a harmful dose" despite violating basic radiation prophylactic protocols.^[17]

Passengers, also, were checked thoroughly with an inspection of their papers and frequently an interrogation about their travel plans and reasons for travelling. The system was slow and low-technology, 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.^[18]

Edge crossing regulations [edit]

A visa to enter the GDR, July 1989

West and East Germans were treated very differently when entering or leaving East Deutschland. West Germans were able to cantankerous the border relatively freely to visit relatives, though they had to get through numerous bureaucratic formalities imposed by the East German government. These included applying in advance for permission, registering with the local constabulary on arrival, remaining inside a specified area for a specified menses and obtaining an exit visa from the police on deviation.

East Germans were subjected to far more stringent restrictions. The East German constitution of 1949 granted citizens a theoretical right to leave the state, though it was inappreciably respected in practice. Even this limited right was removed in the constitution of 1968 which bars citizens' freedom of movement to the surface area within the country borders.^[19] It was not until November 1964 that they were allowed to visit the West at all, and even then merely pensioners were allowed. This gave rising to a joke that only in Due east Frg did people look forward to old historic period.^[20] East German pensioners were able to visit the West for up to iv weeks in a yr, but were not permitted to take more than a token 10 East German marks with them, requiring them to depend on the support of relatives, churches and the West German government. As they were retired, they were seen by the Eastward German government every bit economically unimportant and no great loss if they defected. The vast majority, though, chose to return abode at the finish of their stay.^[21]

Not until 1972 were younger East Germans permitted to travel to the West, though few did so until the mid-1980s. They were rarely permitted to take their own car but had to become past railroad train or coach instead. A lengthy process had to be endured to annals with the constabulary for a passport and exit visa and to undergo shut questioning about their reasons for wanting to travel. An awarding to travel had to exist submitted well in accelerate of the planned departure. They also had to submit an application and undergo a personal evaluation at their workplace. Their employer would then submit a statement and various forms to the law. Applicants were left in the night about the success of their application until the twenty-four hours before their departure. They were required to go once more to the police and present various items of paperwork before obtaining a passport and visa, for which a 60 DM fee was charged – a substantial fraction of an East German language's monthly salary.^[22]

The odds were confronting successful applications, as only around 40,000 a year were approved^{[ clarification needed ]}. Refusal was quite often arbitrary, depending on the goodwill of local officials.^[23] A few categories of citizens were permitted relatively gratuitous travel. Members of the Party elite and cultural ambassadors such as sportspeople, singers, picture show directors and writers were frequently given permission to travel, as were essential transport workers such as barge crewmen, railway workers and truck drivers. Yet, they were not permitted to take their families with them.^[24]

Until the tardily 1980s, ordinary E Germans were only permitted to travel to the Due west on "urgent family concern" such as the union, serious illness or death of a close relative. In February 1986, the regime relaxed the definition of "urgent family business concern", though it still required travellers to leave behind "collateral" (in effect, a hostage) such as a spouse, kid or other shut relative. This massively increased the number of citizens able to travel to the West.^[25] The number of legal East German border-crossers rose from 66,000 in 1985 to 573,000 in 1986, 1.2 1000000 in 1987 and 2.two one thousand thousand in 1988. The "pensioner traffic" increased profoundly as well, from i.half dozen million a yr in 1985 to 3.8 million in 1987.^[26] And more than 99.v% of the edge-crossers returned abode.^[27] The relaxation of the border restrictions was said to take been motivated by a desire on the role of the East German language leadership to reduce their citizens' desire to travel and shrink the number applying to emigrate. In practise, however, it had exactly the reverse effect. An April 1988 commodity in The Washington Post wondered prophetically whether the policy would lead to East Germany "fac[ing] the prospect that the freer travel policy could be destabilizing by whetting desires for additional liberties."^[25]

Even if Due east Germans got a visa to cross the border, they were however subject to East German regime restrictions on the western side. Groups visiting West Deutschland were required to leave behind all of their identification, without which they could not prove their entitlement to West High german citizenship. Private members were forbidden from walking alone or collecting the 100 DM "welcome money" that the West German government gave to all East German visitors. The group every bit a whole was responsible for making certain none of its members defected. They could all expect punishment if someone did "take off". Such rules provided a powerful incentive to keep potential defectors in line.^[28]

Ordinary East Germans strongly resented the travel restrictions. Most holidays had to exist spent at abode or in land-run vacation resorts. Husbands and wives oft had to take dissever holidays considering of the difficulty in getting approval for leave from employers. Those who could travel were just free to go to "fraternal Socialist states" – Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Soviet Matrimony (though Poland was taken off the list after 1981 to prevent the spread of the Solidarity merchandise unionism "infection"). Fifty-fifty and then, they had to pay high prices to stay in second-class accommodation and were oftentimes shocked past the poor living conditions, especially in the Soviet Union, which Gdr propaganda had promoted as "the nigh modern and progressive state in the earth."^[29]

Emigrating from E Germany [edit]

Crossing the border by runway at Oebisfelde railway station, Apr 1990

The Gdr did non encourage emigration, perhaps non surprisingly considering that the inner High german edge fortifications and Berlin Wall had been erected specifically to stop emigration. At that place was no formal legal ground under which a citizen could emigrate from the country. In 1975, however, Due east Germany signed up to the Helsinki Accords, a pan-European treaty to improve relations between the countries of Europe. The Accords were regarded by the East German government as being hugely of import. Gdr leader Erich Honecker commented that the Accords "fixed" the "territorial and political outcomes" of the Second World War, in result ratifying the partition of Germany.^[xxx]

Nevertheless, the Accords besides included a provision on liberty of motion that was to pb to the government's authority being increasingly undermined. As East High german citizens learned about this provision – which was non publicised by the German democratic republic's state-controlled media – an increasing number sought to use information technology to emigrate. They practical for exit visas, citing Helsinki in their applications. The numbers were relatively small at kickoff, averaging around 7,200 first-time applications and the granting of 4,600 exit visas annually during the late 1970s. Past the late 1980s numbers had snowballed to over 100,000 applications with around 15,000–25,000 get out visas being granted annually.^{[31] [32]} Legal emigration posed a dilemma for the regime; although it provided a condom valve of sorts and allowed East Germany to portray itself equally adhering to the Helsinki norms, information technology ran the risk of the East German population coming to need a general right to emigrate.^[31] A Central Committee report prepared in 1988 warned that even Party members were not sufficiently motivated to oppose emigration:

The necessary delivery to preventing attempts to emigrate is not yet nowadays in many Party branches, workplaces and [FDGB] collectives, or amongst citizens. The required prevailing atmosphere of opposition to these phenomena has not yet been achieved. Fifty-fifty Political party members, FDGB functionaries or brigade leaders sometimes state that they fail to understand why these citizens are non permitted to emigrate.^[31]

The regime sought to dissuade would-be émigrés through a diverseness of measures. The process of applying for an exit permit was deliberately intended to be slow, demeaning and frustrating, with a low run a risk of success. Applicants were pushed to the margins of society. They were demoted or sacked from their jobs, excluded from universities and subjected to ostracism.^[33] If the applicants were parents, they could face the threat of having their children taken into state custody on the grounds that they were unfit to bring up children.^[34] The heavily politicised Eastward German law lawmaking was used to punish those who connected to employ for emigration despite repeated rejections. Those who repeatedly submitted emigration applications faced charges of "impeding ... the state and social activeness". If they sought assistance from contacts in the West, such equally relatives or West German state bodies, they were guilty of "illegal contact" or "traitorous information transfer or activities equally an agent." Criticising the political system was a crime of "public disparagement". Over 10,000 applicants were arrested by the Stasi between the 1970s and 1989 on such charges.^[35]

Such repressive handling may well take reduced the number of people who were willing to apply for an go out visa; even so, information technology also provoked the creation of a small merely vocal pro-reform movement willing to direct and publicly challenge the regime.^[36] The regime establish it difficult to deal with such people; as 1 historian comments, "the calibration and spontaneity of demonstrative actions, and the obstinate commitment of the applicants, repeatedly forced the [E High german] power apparatus to make concessions on travel and emigration issues in order to preclude ... massive, uncontrolled eruptions." This was to take important consequences at the end of the 1980s. A study for the Primal Commission's security section noted: "The emigration problem is confronting us with a fundamental problem of the German democratic republic's evolution. Feel shows that the electric current repertoire of solutions (improved travel possibilities, expatriation of applicants, etc.) have not brought the desired results, simply rather the opposite." The agitation for emigration, the report concluded presciently, "threatens to undermine beliefs in the correctness of the Party's policies."^[37]

Ransoms and "humanitarian releases" [edit]

In addition to the emigration programme, E German citizens could also emigrate through the semi-secret route of being ransomed to the West German regime. Between 1964 and 1989, 33,755 political prisoners were ransomed. A further two,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 substitution, West Germany paid over 3.iv billion DM – near $2.3 billion at 1990 prices – in goods and hard currency.^[38] The annual ransom fees became such a fixture, and so essential to the running of the East German economy, that the East German language government accounted for the ransoms as a fixed detail in the GDR's state budget.^[39] Those who were ransomed would exist taken to a detention middle in Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz) before being driven beyond the border in coaches and officially expelled by the German democratic republic authorities.^[40]

Every bit the two governments did not take any formal relations when the ransoms commencement began, they were bundled betwixt two lawyers, Due east German Wolfgang Vogel and W German Jürgen Stange. The initially secret arrangement was revealed by Rainer Barzel, the Federal Government minister for All-German Affairs at the time, who wrote in his memoirs (published in 1978): "The price for the prisoners was determined on an private basis. It was fixed according to the prisoner'due south human and political weight. Those serving life sentences cost more." The prices ranged from around 1,875 DM for a worker to around 11,250 DM for a doctor; the justification, co-ordinate to Eastward Frg, was that this was bounty for the coin invested by the state in the prisoner'south training. For a while, payments were made in kind using goods that were in short supply in Eastward Federal republic of germany, such every bit oranges, bananas, coffee and medical drugs. The average prisoner was worth around 4,000 DM worth of goods.^[41] Ultimately the ransoms became simple cash payments, funded by a shadowy network of agencies and rich individuals that included the federal government, the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the fervently anti-communist millionaire publisher Axel Springer. The scheme was highly controversial in the West. It was denounced by many as human trafficking but was defended by others every bit an "act of pure humanitarianism".^[42]

See also [edit]

• Edge guards of the inner German border
• Escape attempts and victims of the inner German border
• Development of the inner German edge
• Fortifications of the inner German edge

Notes [edit]

1. ^ ^{a b} Based on the list in the appendix to §18 of the regulation implementing the Police on the Country Border of the German Democratic Republic of 25 March 1982
2. ^ Buchholz, p. 57
3. ^ Fowle, Farnsworth (8 February 1981). "Dresden's Salvaged Treasures". The New York Times.
4. ^ Gleye, p. 135
5. ^ Kiefer, Francine S. (11 May 1990). "Tourists Flood Into East Frg". The Christian Science Monitor.
6. ^ Morris, Jan (1997). Fifty years of Europe: an album . New York City: Villard. p. 71. ISBN978-0-679-41610-4.
7. ^ Shears, p. 142
8. ^ Shears, pp. 138–139
9. ^ Shears, p. 131–137
10. ^ Shears, p. 141
11. ^ Shears, p. 18
12. ^ Rottman, p. 40
13. ^ ^{a b c} Display materials, Gedenkstätte Deutsche Teilung Marienborn
14. ^ "History hits the wall – Tourists warm to Berlin's Common cold War". The Sunday Telegraph. London. thirty May 2004.
15. ^ Shears, p. 144
16. ^ Brandish materials, Grenzlandmuseum Eichsfeld
17. ^ Hertle, p. 129
18. ^ Cowell, Alan (12 September 1996). "Beside the Autobahn, a Cold-State of war Memory Lane". The New York Times.
19. ^ Bailey, p. 31
20. ^ Shears, p. 15
21. ^ Shears, p. 146
22. ^ "The formalities to be carried out by citizens of the GDR wishing to enter the Federal Commonwealth." Grenzmuseum Eichsfeld
23. ^ Childs (2001), p. 29
24. ^ Bailey, p. 32
25. ^ ^{a b} McCartney, Robert J. (16 April 1988). "East. Deutschland Relaxes Curbs on Working Citizens' Visits to West". The Washington Post.
26. ^ Childs, David (1989). "The SED faces the challenges of Ostpolitik and Glasnost". In Childs, David; Baylis, Thomas A.; Rueschemeyer, Marilyn (eds.). Due east Germany in comparative perspective . London: Routledge. p. 5. ISBN978-0-415-00496-one.
27. ^ Comas, José (8 March 1985). "Polémica en Alemania Oriental sobre si se autoriza la vuelta de los que emigraron a la RFA". El País.
28. ^ Gleye, Paul (1991). Backside the wall: an American in East Germany, 1988–89. Carbondale, Illinois: SIU Press. p. 137. ISBN978-0-8093-1743-1.
29. ^ Childs (2001), p. xxx
30. ^ McAdams, James A. (1985). E Federal republic of germany and détente: edifice authority after the wall . Cambridge: Cambridge Academy Press. p. 148. ISBN9780521268356.
31. ^ ^{a b c} Dale, p. 87
32. ^ Hertle, p. 124
33. ^ Dale, pp. 87–88
34. ^ Childs (2001), p. 44
35. ^ Hertle, pp. 123–124
36. ^ Dale, p. 88
37. ^ Dale, p. 89
38. ^ Hertle, p. 117
39. ^ Pohl, Manfred (2000). "Goodbye to a Model? German Experiences with Unification and Its Implications for Korean Strategies". In Radtke, Kurt Werner; Feddema, Raymond (eds.). Comprehensive security in Asia: views from Asia and the West on a changing security environment . Leiden: BRILL. p. 338. ISBN978-90-04-11202-5.
40. ^ Hertle, p. 118
41. ^ Buschschluter, Siegfried (eleven October 1981). "Merchandise in homo beings costs Bonn dearest". Guardian Weekly.
42. ^ Shackley, Theodore; Finney, Richard A (2005). Spymaster: my life in the CIA. Dulles, Virginia: Brassey'southward. pp. 100–101. ISBN978-1-57488-915-4.

References [edit]

• Berdahl, Daphne (1999). Where the earth ended: re-unification and identity in the German borderland. Berkeley, California: University of California Printing. ISBN0-520-21477-iii.
• Buchholz, Hanns (1994). "The Inner-High german Edge". In Grundy-Warr, Carl (ed.). Eurasia: Earth Boundaries Book iii. World Boundaries (ed. Blake, Gerald H.). London: Routledge. ISBN0-415-08834-8.
• Cramer, Michael (2008). German language-German language Border Trail. Rodingersdorf: Esterbauer. ISBN978-iii-85000-254-7.
• Faringdon, Hugh (1986). Confrontation: the Strategic Geography of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Books. ISBN0-7102-0676-iii.
• Jarausch, Konrad Hugo (1994). The rush to German unity. New York City: Oxford University Press US. ISBN978-0-19-508577-viii.
• Rottman, Gordon L. (2008). The Berlin Wall and the Intra-High german border 1961–89. Fortress 69. Oxford: Osprey. ISBN978-1-84603-193-9.
• Schweitzer, Carl Christoph (1995). Politics and government in Germany, 1944–1994: basic documents. Providence, Rhode Island: Berghahn Books. ISBN978-1-57181-855-3.
• Shears, David (1970). The Ugly Frontier. London: Chatto & Windus. OCLC 94402.
• Stacy, William E. (1984). The states Ground forces Border Operations in Germany. US Ground forces Armed services History Office. OCLC 53275935. Archived from the original on 2010-eleven-06. Retrieved 2009-10-24 .

Cold War Map Of Germany,

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_inner_German_border_during_the_Cold_War

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