Development of the inner German border
The development of the inner German border took place in a number of stages between 1945 and the mid-1980s. After its establishment in 1945 as the dividing line between the Western and Soviet occupation zones of Germany, in 1949 the inner German border became the frontier between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. 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. Barbed-wire fences and minefields were installed and draconian restrictions were placed on East German citizens living near the border. Thousands were expelled from their homes, with several thousand more fleeing 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. The improved border defences succeeded in reducing the scale of unauthorised emigration to a trickle.
Origins
The inner German border owed its origins to the agreements reached at the Tehran Conference in November–December 1943. The conference established the European Advisory Commission to outline proposals for the partition of a defeated Germany into British, American and Soviet occupation zones. At the time, Germany was divided into the series of gaue – Nazi administrative subdivisions – that had succeeded the administrative divisions of Weimar Germany.The demarcation line was based on a British proposal of 15 January 1944. 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; minor adjustments were made for practical reasons. The British would occupy the north-west of Germany, the United States the south, and the Soviet Union the east. Berlin was to be a separate joint zone of occupation deep inside the Soviet zone. The rationale was to give the Soviets a powerful incentive to see the war through to the end. It would give the British an occupation zone that was physically close to the UK and on the coast, making it easier to resupply it from the UK. It was also hoped that the old domination of Prussia would be undermined.
The United States envisaged a very different division of Germany, with a large American zone in the north, a smaller zone for the Soviets in the east and a smaller zone for the British in the south. 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. One version of events, has it that to forestall anticipated American objections, the British proposal was presented directly to the EAC without the prior agreement of the Americans. The Soviets immediately accepted the proposal and left the U.S. with little choice but to accept it. The final division of Germany was thus mainly along the lines of the British proposal, with the Americans given the North Sea port-cities of Bremen and Bremerhaven as an enclave within the British zone to ease President Roosevelt's concerns about supply routes.
The division of Germany came into effect on 1 July 1945. 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. This included a broad area of what was to become the western parts of East Germany, as well as parts of Czechoslovakia and Austria. 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. A fresh wave of refugees headed further west as the Americans and British withdrew and Soviet troops entered the areas allocated to the Soviet occupation zone.
Following Germany's unconditional surrender in May 1945, the Allied Control Council was formed under the terms of the Declaration on the Defeat of Germany, signed in Berlin on 5 June 1945. The council was "the highest authority for matters concerning the whole of Germany", on which the four powers - France, the UK, the U.S., and the USSR - were each represented by their supreme commander in Germany. The council functioned from 30 August 1945 until it was suspended on 20 March 1948, when cooperation between the Western Allies and the Soviets had broken down completely over the issue of Germany's political and economic future. In May 1949, the three western occupation zones were merged to form the Federal Republic of Germany, a democratically governed federal state with a market economy. The Soviets responded in October 1949 with the establishment of the German Democratic Republic, a highly centralised communist dictatorship organised along Stalinist lines. The former demarcation lines between the western and eastern zones had now become a de facto international frontier – the inner German border.
From the outset, West Germany did not accept the legitimacy of the East German state, and for many years regarded the East German government as an illegal organisation intent on depriving Germans of their constitutional rights. It had not been freely or fairly elected, and the creation of East Germany itself was a fait accompli by the East German Communists and their Soviet allies. This had important consequences for the inner German border. West Germany regarded German citizenship and rights as unitary, applying equally to East and West German citizens alike. An East German who escaped or was released to the West automatically entered into full enjoyment of those rights, including West German citizenship and social benefits. A would-be immigrant from another country who could get to East Germany could not be barred from entering West Germany across the internal border, which had great significance in later decades. West German laws were deemed to be applicable in the East; violations of human rights in East Germany could be prosecuted in the West. East Germans thus had a powerful incentive to move to the West, where they would enjoy greater freedom and economic prospects.
By contrast, the East German government defined the country as a legitimate state in its own right, not merely the "Soviet occupation zone" as West Germany referred to it. In the terminology of the GDR's rulers, West Germany was enemy territory. 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.
1945–52: the "Green Border"
In the early days of the occupation, the Allies maintained controls on the traffic between the zones within Germany as well as movements over Germany's international frontiers. The aim was to manage the flow of refugees and prevent the escape of former Nazi officials and intelligence officers. Travel restrictions in the western zones were gradually lifted as the western German economy improved. In the Soviet zone, however, the poverty and lack of personal freedom led to significant westward emigration. Between October 1945 and June 1946, 1.6 million Germans left the Soviet zone for the west. 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.The interzonal and international borders were initially controlled directly by the Allies. The situation was initially somewhat anarchic immediately after the war, with large numbers of refugees still in transit. On a number of occasions, Soviet and American troops mounted unauthorised expeditions into each other's zones to loot and kidnap, and there were incidents of unauthorised shooting across the demarcation line. It became apparent that the Allies by themselves could not effectively seal off the borders and interzonal boundaries. From the first quarter of 1946, newly trained German police forces under the control of the individual German states took on the task of patrolling the borders alongside Allied troops.
The east–west interzonal border became steadily more tense as the relationship between the Western Allies and the Soviets broke down. From September 1947 an increasingly strict control regime was imposed on the eastern boundary. The number of Soviet soldiers on the boundary was increased and supplemented with border guards from the newly established East German Volkspolizei. The West Germans also stepped up border security with the establishment in 1952 of the Bundesgrenzschutz or BGS, of 20,000 men. Allied troops retained responsibility for the military security of the border.
The boundary line was nonetheless still fairly easy to cross. Local inhabitants could cross to maintain fields on the other side, or even to live on one side and work on the other. Those who were unable to obtain passes could usually bribe the border guards or sneak across. 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. Other locals on both sides smuggled goods across to supplement their meagre incomes. 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.
There were major differences between how the Western and Eastern sides tackled illegal border crossings. Until the GDR officially acknowledged the inner German border as a "state border", those who were caught trying to cross it illegally could not be punished under passport control legislation; instead they were punished for crimes against the economy, principally sabotage. The Western side did not attempt to punish unauthorised crossings by civilians.