Development of the inner German border
The border remained relatively easy to cross until it was abruptly closed by the GDR in 1952 in response to the large-scale emigration of East Germans to the West.
From the late 1960s, the border fortifications were greatly strengthened through the installation of new fences, detectors, watchtowers and booby-traps designed to prevent attempts to escape from East Germany.
It envisaged a line of control along the borders of the old states or provinces of Mecklenburg, Saxony, Anhalt and Thuringia, which had ceased to exist as separate entities when the Prussians unified Germany in 1871;[3] minor adjustments were made for practical reasons.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt disliked the idea of a U.S. occupation zone in the south, because its supply routes would depend on access through France, which it was feared would be unstable following its liberation.
Because of the unexpectedly rapid Allied advance in central Germany in the final weeks of the war, British and American troops occupied large areas of territory that had been assigned to the Soviet occupation zone.
The redeployment of Western troops at the start of July 1945 was an unpleasant surprise for many German refugees, who had fled west to escape the Soviet advance.
The council functioned from 30 August 1945 until it was suspended on 20 March 1948,[7] when cooperation between the Western Allies and the Soviets had broken down completely over the issue of Germany's political and economic future.
The Soviets responded in October 1949 with the establishment of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), a highly centralised communist dictatorship organised along Stalinist lines.
By contrast, the East German government defined the country as a legitimate state in its own right, not merely the "Soviet occupation zone" (sowjetische Besatzungszone) as West Germany referred to it.
It was portrayed as a capitalist, semi-fascist state that exploited its citizens, sought to regain the lost territories of the Third Reich, and stood opposed to the peaceful socialism of the GDR.
[14] In response, the Soviets persuaded the Allied Control Council to close all zonal borders on 30 June 1946 and introduce a system of interzonal passes.
[17] (The pre-war Grenzpolizei (German national border police service) had been abolished because of its wartime takeover by the Nazis and infiltration by the SS.
The number of Soviet soldiers on the boundary was increased and supplemented with border guards from the newly established East German Volkspolizei ("People's Police").
Refugees from the east, many of them Germans expelled from other countries in central and eastern Europe, were guided across the boundary by villagers in exchange for hefty fees.
[22] The number of border migrants remained high despite the increase in East German security measures; 675,000 people fled to West Germany between 1949 and 1952.
[25] The border remained largely unfortified for several years after the East and West German republics were established in 1949, although by this time the GDR had already blocked many unofficial crossing points with ditches and barricades.
This changed abruptly on 26 May 1952 when the GDR implemented a "special regime on the demarcation line", justified as a measure to keep out "spies, diversionists, terrorists and smugglers".
Because the border had previously been merely an administrative boundary, homes, businesses, industrial sites and municipal amenities had been constructed straddling it, and some were now literally split down the middle.
An open-cast coal mine at Schöningen was split in half, causing Western and Eastern engineers to race to cart away equipment before the other side could seize it.
Those expelled from the border region included foreigners and those who had a criminal record, had failed to register with the police or "who because of their position in or toward society pose[d] a threat".
By the end of September 1952, about 200 of the 277 streets which ran from the Western sectors to the East were closed to traffic and the remainder were subjected to constant police observation.
Railway traffic was routed around the Western sectors and all employees of nationalised factories had to pledge not to visit West Berlin on pain of dismissal.
The first phase, from 1967 to 1972, was initially seen as a strengthening of weak points in the existing system; subsequently, it became a general rolling programme of work along the entire length of the border.
Most significantly, on 21 December 1972 the two German states signed a treaty recognising each other's sovereignty and supporting each other's applications for UN membership (achieved in September 1973).
[40] In 1988, the increasingly unsustainable costs of maintaining the border led the GDR leadership to propose replacing them with a high-technology system codenamed Grenze 2000.
