proceed. Announcements from loudspeakers blared that subway "traffic will be interrupted until further notice." 1
At the Brandenburg Gate, just inside the Soviet zone, the six large floodlights that illuminated the plaza from the Soviet side abruptly went dark, and in the dim streetlight a single truck sped between the gate's pillars to deposit a dozen machine gun-armed East German soldiers. Behind them
Page 72
came additional soldiers, carrying barricades, soon followed by an almost unending line of military trucks. From these the soldiers unloaded heavy eight-foot high concrete posts and rolls of barbed wire and wire fencing.
Bulldozers and heavy construction equipment appeared. Silently ignoring the insults hurled at them by the small crowd that had gathered on the West Berlin side, the soldiers began drilling holes in the ground. Soon they eased the concrete posts into place and attached the wire fencing to them. Behind this wire wall they then unrolled the bushels of barbed wire, creating a second, more deadly obstruction. As they worked, the line of military trucks kept rumbling into the plaza, with more soldiers quickly unloading more concrete posts and wire.
By dawn the East German soldiers had built a fence 2,500 feet long across the face of the Brandenburg Gate. On the radio the East German government announced:
In the face of the aggressive aspirations of the reactionary forces of [West Germany] and its NATO allies, the Warsaw Pact member states cannot but take necessary measures to guarantee their security and, primarily, the security of [East Germany] in the interests of the German peoples themselves.
They were therefore establishing controls
on the borders of West Berlin which will securely block the way to the subversive activity against the socialist camp countries. 2
This "subversive activity" referred to what in recent weeks had become an unceasing flood of East German refugees, fleeing to the West by entering East Berlin and taking the subway across. When rumors indicated that this escape route might soon be closed, the numbers of refugees skyrocketed to over 30,000 in July and almost 20,000 in the first twelve days of August. This exodus of East German citizens had made the communist state one of the only nations in the world with a declining population. In the twelve years since Frank Borman had seen those East German refugees in the Dachau
Page 73
camp, 2.8 million people, seventeen percent of the total East German population, had fled Khrushchev's socialist paradise. 3
Now that tide was to cease. Two weeks before, Walter Ulbrecht, East Germany's President and Communist Party chief, had come to Moscow demanding that Khrushchev and the Soviets help him stop the flow. Together the two rulers decided that the solution was ''the establishment of border control," as Khrushchev euphemistically called the construction of the Berlin Wall. 4 Khrushchev, like Stalin, still wished to see East Germany succeed as a communist state, and like Stalin, he had concluded that the only way to make this happen was to restrict the freedom of Germans to travel.
Controlling the movement of citizens was an important priority for Khrushchev's government. In the Soviet Union if a person wished to relocate from the town of their birth, authorization was required, and indicated on a citizen's passport. In the campaign to snuff out religion, now running at full speed, K.G.B. officers confiscated the passports of priests, and demanded that they leave the town and church to which they ministered. If a clergyman refused, the K.G.B. would arrest him and prosecute him for violating the passport regulations. At monasteries across the Soviet Union religious clerics were being arrested and jailed. One priest was condemned three different times, serving three and a half years of hard labor from 1962 to 1966. Each time he was released from prison he returned to his monastery, and each time the K.G.B. re-arrested him. 5
Now Khrushchev
At the Brandenburg Gate, just inside the Soviet zone, the six large floodlights that illuminated the plaza from the Soviet side abruptly went dark, and in the dim streetlight a single truck sped between the gate's pillars to deposit a dozen machine gun-armed East German soldiers. Behind them
Page 72
came additional soldiers, carrying barricades, soon followed by an almost unending line of military trucks. From these the soldiers unloaded heavy eight-foot high concrete posts and rolls of barbed wire and wire fencing.
Bulldozers and heavy construction equipment appeared. Silently ignoring the insults hurled at them by the small crowd that had gathered on the West Berlin side, the soldiers began drilling holes in the ground. Soon they eased the concrete posts into place and attached the wire fencing to them. Behind this wire wall they then unrolled the bushels of barbed wire, creating a second, more deadly obstruction. As they worked, the line of military trucks kept rumbling into the plaza, with more soldiers quickly unloading more concrete posts and wire.
By dawn the East German soldiers had built a fence 2,500 feet long across the face of the Brandenburg Gate. On the radio the East German government announced:
In the face of the aggressive aspirations of the reactionary forces of [West Germany] and its NATO allies, the Warsaw Pact member states cannot but take necessary measures to guarantee their security and, primarily, the security of [East Germany] in the interests of the German peoples themselves.
They were therefore establishing controls
on the borders of West Berlin which will securely block the way to the subversive activity against the socialist camp countries. 2
This "subversive activity" referred to what in recent weeks had become an unceasing flood of East German refugees, fleeing to the West by entering East Berlin and taking the subway across. When rumors indicated that this escape route might soon be closed, the numbers of refugees skyrocketed to over 30,000 in July and almost 20,000 in the first twelve days of August. This exodus of East German citizens had made the communist state one of the only nations in the world with a declining population. In the twelve years since Frank Borman had seen those East German refugees in the Dachau
Page 73
camp, 2.8 million people, seventeen percent of the total East German population, had fled Khrushchev's socialist paradise. 3
Now that tide was to cease. Two weeks before, Walter Ulbrecht, East Germany's President and Communist Party chief, had come to Moscow demanding that Khrushchev and the Soviets help him stop the flow. Together the two rulers decided that the solution was ''the establishment of border control," as Khrushchev euphemistically called the construction of the Berlin Wall. 4 Khrushchev, like Stalin, still wished to see East Germany succeed as a communist state, and like Stalin, he had concluded that the only way to make this happen was to restrict the freedom of Germans to travel.
Controlling the movement of citizens was an important priority for Khrushchev's government. In the Soviet Union if a person wished to relocate from the town of their birth, authorization was required, and indicated on a citizen's passport. In the campaign to snuff out religion, now running at full speed, K.G.B. officers confiscated the passports of priests, and demanded that they leave the town and church to which they ministered. If a clergyman refused, the K.G.B. would arrest him and prosecute him for violating the passport regulations. At monasteries across the Soviet Union religious clerics were being arrested and jailed. One priest was condemned three different times, serving three and a half years of hard labor from 1962 to 1966. Each time he was released from prison he returned to his monastery, and each time the K.G.B. re-arrested him. 5
Now Khrushchev
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