The Cold War: A MILITARY History (60 page)

It was widely realized, even in the West, that the GDR would have to do something to halt this outflow of people, but when it came the action caused considerable surprise and dismay. At 0230 hours precisely on 13 August 1961 East German troops and workmen began to build the ‘Berlin Wall’, which was not only to separate the two parts of the city for the next twenty-eight years, but was also to become the very symbol of the Cold War. The
S-bahn
(overground railway) and
U-bahn
(underground railway) were closed, but, significantly, no move was made to interfere with the military rights of access to West Berlin. Initially, thirteen crossing points were left open between West and East Berlin, although these were later reduced: first to twelve and later to seven.

The Western commandants protested, but soon West Berlin was ringed by more than 160 km of wall. US vice-president Lyndon Johnson visited the city to boost morale, the US sent a 1,500-strong battlegroup along the southern autobahn, while the British dispatched reinforcements on a slightly smaller scale, including eighteen armoured personnel carriers and eighteen reconnaissance vehicles. On 22 October the East German
Volkspolizei
attempted to prevent the US deputy commandant from going into East Berlin and, although that particular incident was resolved, the situation escalated during the next few days and US tanks were deployed to the main East–West crossing point, Checkpoint Charlie. The Soviets countered by deploying their own tanks, and the two groups of tanks confronted each other (with, as always, the world’s press looking on) at a range of 100 m for two days. In December President Kennedy called up 300,000 US reservists, while on 13 December 1961 the Operation Free Style force in West Germany was put on forty-eight-hours notice to deploy to the border, although it was not in fact used.

The escapes continued, albeit on a very much reduced scale. As each method was discovered, the GDR took steps to prevent a recurrence, where-upon the next escapers tried an even more ingenious technique. The Berlin Wall eventually included 290 watchtowers, 136 bunkers, 105 km of trenches, 257 km of dog runs and 122 km of fencing with warning devices, all of which required a garrison of no less than 14,000 East German troops.
⁵

In March 1962 the Soviets tried a new tactic in the three air corridors by attempting to reserve so much time for their own flights that there was no capacity left for use by Western aircraft. Even more seriously, they also jammed the air-safety radio frequencies and, on one night, dropped chaff in
the
corridors to jam the radars. After high-level protests these practices ceased.

There were also incidents on the ground. On 12 March 1962 East German guards shot at a car from the British mission and the British driver was wounded and taken to an East German hospital, where he was operated on. Eventually the Soviet commander-in-chief, Marshal Ivan Konev, apologized, and the soldier was returned to West Berlin. On 20 March 1962 a car from the US mission was shot at, also by East German troops, although nobody was wounded on this occasion, and the occupants were released after being detained for several hours.

In 1963 the Canadian entertainer Hughie Green, who was due to record a TV show in Berlin, decided to fly to the city in his personal aircraft, a twin-engined Cessna 310. His agreed route took him along the southern corridor from Stuttgart to Gatow, but as soon as he was in the corridor he was buzzed by a succession of Soviet jet fighters. These flew very close to his aircraft, rocked their wings, and lowered their undercarriages ordering him to land, and eventually fired warning shots on six separate occasions. Green, a very experienced Second World War pilot, maintained his course and eventually landed safely in Berlin.

Two incidents in 1964 were potentially very serious. The first took place on 10 March, when a US RB-66
^fn13
electronic-surveillance aircraft was shot down over East Germany. This was followed on 28 June by the shooting down of a US North American T-39 aircraft,
^fn14
which had strayed just outside the southern corridor. Both types of aircraft were employed on electronic monitoring missions, but the events were eventually resolved by diplomatic action.

In 1965 the Soviets took exception to sessions of the Bundestag being held in Berlin, and staged manoeuvres by both Soviet and East German troops to show their displeasure. The autobahns were closed to traffic, and Soviet air-force fighters created sonic booms over West Berlin, aimed at the Kongresshalle where the sessions were taking place.

Similar problems recurred in 1969, when the FRG decided to hold a session of the Bundesversammlung in Berlin.
^fn15
Again the Soviets closed the autobahns for several days, deploying a division of troops along the British autobahn, but when the British ran a low-level probe the Soviets allowed it
to
pass and the crisis was over. The West Germans persisted, and Dr Gustav Heinemann was duly elected president on 5 March, although no further presidential elections were held in West Berlin while the Cold War lasted. There was further interference with traffic along the autobahn during 1971, as well as attempts to close the air corridors, which were countered by flying probes under the control of the Jack Pine air headquarters.

One of the final serious incidents occurred on 24 March 1985, when Major Arthur Nicholson, a member of the US mission, was shot dead by a Soviet soldier while attemping to discover details of the then new Soviet T-80 tank at the Ludwigslust training range near Berlin. The incident took place at a time when global US–USSR relations were particularly good, and the case was dealt with quietly and caused very little public friction.

THE BERLIN ACCORD

In 1971 the Federal German government prompted the four wartime Allies into seeking to achieve an agreement on the status of Berlin, and this resulted in a series of meetings culminating in the ‘Berlin Accord’ of early September 1971. So tortuous were the negotiations that the document avoided actually specifying what was meant by Berlin, referring only to ‘the area in question’, although, since the Soviets refused to discuss East Berlin, the accord actually dealt only with West Berlin. Despite this, both sides gained something. All renounced the use of force in trying to solve Berlin’s problems, while the Western powers acknowledged that Berlin was not only not part of the FRG, but remained under Four Power occupation; they also agreed that Federal bodies would not meet there.
^fn16
In return, the Soviets dropped their assertion that West Berlin lay within the GDR and agreed that the West German government could represent West Berliners internationally. A number of minor problems were also dealt with, and the accord, having been signed by the Four Powers, was then turned over to both German states for implementation, which, not by chance, gave East Germany equal status with West Germany, which had long been a Soviet goal.

THE END

After the Berlin Accord had been signed, life in the city and the corridors followed a much more even path until January 1989, when twenty people,
frustrated
in their desire to emigrate to the West, occupied the West German mission in East Berlin. These left after obtaining a promise that their applications would be processed by the GDR authorities, but in August another and much larger group occupied the building. Again they were persuaded to leave, and the would-be emigrants turned their attention to escape routes through Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

On 7 October, when the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, attended the GDR’s fortieth-anniversary celebrations in East Berlin, there were a number of freedom demonstrations in major cities in East Germany. Unrest in the GDR gathered strength, causing the Western commandants to feel considerable concern, especially in the late summer and autumn of 1989, as the activities of dissident East Germans were something over which they had no control, and they reviewed their plans.

Erich Honecker, the long-time Communist Party leader, was removed from office on 18 October and was replaced by Egon Krenz, who on 24 October also became state president and military commander-in-chief. The problems persisted, however, with some 150,000 demonstrators marching in Leipzig on 23 October, but, significantly, without any interference by the East German security forces. Two days later the demonstrations spread to Dresden, Erfurt, Gera and Rostock, and Krenz spoke on the telephone to West German chancellor Helmut Kohl about possible relaxations in the cross-border controls.

The political temperature in the GDR steadily rose, Krenz visited Moscow and Warsaw, and on 4 November a crowd of some 1 million demonstrated in East Berlin. The Western commandants in West Berlin were concerned at the situation and opened their emergency operations centres, although there was little they could do other than dispatch patrols to monitor what was happening on the other side of the Wall.

The focus of attention switched rapidly between the GDR, the FRG, and Moscow, but it was fitting that the crucial event took place in Berlin. On 9 November the Communist Party leader in East Berlin gave a radio and television interview in which he gave the impression that any GDR citizen could now go to the border and obtain an exit visa, thus avoiding the lengthy bureaucratic procedures which had caused so much frustration in the past. A huge crowd immediately formed and headed for the checkpoints at the Wall, where the bemused guards, lacking clear orders, opened the gates, allowing the East Berliners to flood into the West. Some 3 million were estimated to have visited the FRG and West Berlin over that weekend, and there were long delays on the Helmstedt–Berlin autobahn as it was flooded with the East Germans’ infamous slow-moving Trabant cars.

The momentum of change then increased rapidly, and it was soon agreed that reunification would take place. The threat to the Western garrisons in
West
Berlin was over, and the formal ending of the Live Oak mission came on 2 October 1990.

LIFE IN BERLIN

Life in Berlin between 1945 and 1989 could never have been described as ‘normal’, but this is not a social history and only a couple of features can be mentioned to illustrate the extraordinary
modus vivendi
which was reached there, despite all the stresses of the Cold War.

First, one of the curious features of life in Berlin was that the members of all four garrisons were always allowed into each other’s sectors. This was of little consequence between the Americans, British and French, but it also meant that members of these three Western garrisons regularly visited East Berlin in uniform, either for sightseeing or to attend events such as the opera. They also went shopping in the East – an activity that was made more attractive by obtaining East German marks at seven times the normal exchange rate. The Soviet armed forces enjoyed similar rights in West Berlin, although these were exercised much less frequently, with small parties of troops being closely supervised by political ‘minders’ to prevent any contacts with Westerners or defection.

Another curious feature was that for many years the Federal German government met a significant part of the costs of the three Western garrisons through the ‘Berlin Occupation Costs Budget’, usually simply known as the ‘Berlin Budget’. Towards the end this amounted to DM1,300 million a year, which was distributed as follows: USA – DM600 million; UK – DM400 million; France – DM300 million. Under this arrangement the Western garrisons met their own salaries and financial allowances, as well as the costs of ‘warlike equipment’ such as weapons and ammunition, but the Berlin Budget funded infrastructure costs, ranging from vehicles and radio equipment to typewriters and paper. As some 90 per cent of the Berlin Budget was spent in West Berlin and the Federal Republic, however, it was essentially recycled within the German economy.
⁶

FORTY-FOUR YEARS IN THE FRONT LINE

The tensions caused by the very existence of West Berlin – a bastion of Western democracy and capitalism deep inside a Communist state – were very real, and it was considered, not unrealistically, that if conflict was ever to break out between the Soviet Union and NATO it would be over (or in some way related to) Berlin. The city enjoyed a unique status throughout the Cold War, not least because it was the one place where the French never
for
one moment left the Western Allies’ forum but continued to play a full part in all planning, discussions, command arrangements and reactions to crises. Nor were there any arguments about the French troops serving as an integral part of the probes, where, depending on the situation, they could find themselves under US or British command.

The soldiers and airmen on both sides in Berlin, on the corridors and in West Germany did their level best to keep matters under control. Naturally, they responded to the orders from their superiors, but they also did all they could to ensure that the ‘other side’ was never left without room for manoeuvre, so that problems could be resolved without serious loss of face. Thus, when Western soldiers sometimes unintentionally strayed into East Berlin or the GDR (e.g. by falling asleep on a train), they would be detained, their parent force would be informed, and then the chastened individuals would be quietly returned after a two- or three-day interval.
^fn17
In a much more serious incident on 5 April 1948 a Soviet fighter aircraft collided with a BEA Viking transport aircraft which was coming in to land at the British military airfield at Gatow. Fourteen people, including the Soviet pilot, were killed. The British and Americans were preparing to provide fighter escorts for all transport flights, when Marshal Sokolovskiy informed the British commandant that no interference had been intended. Thus it was presumed that the incident was either a genuine accident (the airspace over Berlin tended to be crowded) or was the result of a miscalculation by the Russian pilot, and the proposed countermeasures were cancelled.

Perhaps the tensest period was in October 1961, when the US and Soviet tanks faced each other at Checkpoint Charlie. One false move by a junior officer or a soldier on either side could have resulted in an extremely rapid escalation of the situation, but it never happened. Again, this speaks very highly for the troops of both sides.