Posted by Brandenburg Historica on 11th Nov 2016
In the wee hours of 13 August 1961, the government of the
German Democratic Republic (GDR) quietly began to build a barbed-wire and
concrete-block Antifascistischer Schutzwall or so-called “antifascist bulwark” along
the dividing lines between East Germany and the surrounded city of West Berlin.
Officially, the purpose of the Wall was to prevent “fascists” entering East
Germany; but its immediate and practical effect was to stanch the torrent of
humanity pouring from the increasingly repressive and unsustainable GDR to West
Berlin and West Germany. Legally and militarily, the Allied powers occupying
West Berlin could do nothing, as the edifice being constructed stood well within the
bounds of the GDR's own territory. They (and the people of both Germanies) had
no alternative but to get used to it. Endlessly refined, improved and expanded
over the ensuing decades, the Berlin Wall stood fixed and unperturbed in mute
testimony to the "achievements" of Communism -- until the
fateful day of 9 November 1989.
On that day, following weeks of mass demonstrations by restive East German
citizens who were increasingly emboldened by the success of anti-Communists in
Hungary and Poland; weeks that had seen the openly voiced refusal of the East German army and police to fire upon these demonstrators; and weeks that had seen the forced resignation of hard-line
Socialist Unity Party (SED) leader Erich Honecker and his replacement by an ostensibly more "liberal" leadership; an official of the GDR's new
government convened a press conference to discuss the pending relaxation of
some - but only some - travel restrictions for GDR citizens. When asked by a reporter when
these new regulations would take effect, the regime's spokesman (Gunther
Schabowski by name) tentatively announced - and with some bewilderment -
"immediately, as far as I know." The people of the GDR were
listening, and they took him at his word.
That night, ecstatic crowds swarmed the crossing points reserved for GDR
citizens that led into West Berlin. Thousands strolled freely
through the Antifascistischer Schutzwall to the other side as befuddled border guards,
without orders to the contrary, stood by and let them pass. Other GDR
citizens had bigger and more far-reaching ideas that night; they brought hammers and
pick-axes along and began to feverishly chip away at the masonry of
the wall itself. The GDR's once-feared border guards, realizing what
miracle the people had wrought, got into the spirit of the moment themselves, grabbed some ladders and were soon atop the Wall shaking hands with smiling policemen from West Berlin. Less than a year
later, for the ultimate good or ill of both Germanies, the GDR disappeared,
swallowed whole as it were by the Western-aligned German Federal
Republic.
In the end, it was the human element and the long-suppressed will of a put-upon
populace that prevailed over a bureaucratic, monolithic state and its fearsome
internal security forces, whose rank-and-file eventually remembered that they too were part of "the people" and chose to stand alongside their countrymen - and not their rulers - at the decisive moment. Leaders who go blissfully along as if they can ignore
or defy the will of their own people forever are advised to remember the fate of East
Germany.