I know most of the people trying to get across the Berlin Wall were shot, but was the border between East and West Germany guarded all the way along? Would it have been possible for anyone to escape to the west through the forest under the cover of night?
It was guarded all along. There was a no-man’s land all along the inter-German border, dominated by numerous guard towers and a high barbed wire fence. There were only three points along the entire border where road traffic was allowed through (and maybe rail traffic* as well).
The Federal Republic considered East Germans citizens, so if they made it over there was no fuss or bother about immigration or work papers or any of that. Reminds me of that Jim Morrison line…“The West is the best…get here and we’ll do the rest”.
There was a famous case around 1978 where an Eastern family escaped by balloon.
I served with the 2nd ACR in West Germany from '86 to '88, and that included several rotations up to the Grenze, running patrols out of our Border Camp in Hof.
The East/West German border was heavily fenced in most areas, littered with mines, with plenty of observation towers armed with machineguns overlooking cleared zones-of-fire. Not to mention frequent patrols. Getting across was by no means easy; but it was also not unheard of.
Most successful crossing that I heard of took place in relatively sparsely populated areas, but “details” of successful crossing were typically withheld, as that would give the Godless Commie Bastards more specific info on how to tighten the border even further.
Not that the East Germans couldn’t figure out how to do that on their own, but you never give an “enemy” a freebie.
The Czech border was not as heavily defended (the border with West Germany; the border with Poland and East Germany was open), so some people would have tried to get through by crossing to Czechoslovakia first. The Czech border was one of the first to become undefended when the Soviet bloc was failing, so there was a flood of people coming out that way until the GDR itself fell.
My father escaped from East Berlin to West Berlin in 1956 by simply taking the subway (U-bahn) from one side to the other. The East Germans didn’t have the two sides completely separated yet.
Ed
Wasn’t there a case in the 80s where a group of brothers escaped in ultralight aircraft by putting Soviet insignia on them (the East German border guards being too scared to fire on something that might be a Soviet craft)?
I lived in Berlin during the years the Wall was up. I used to go over to East Berlin often - partly because I could exchange money on the black market and then hang out at the bars and eat at restaurants for pennies compared to what it cost to go out in West Berlin. I was young and always poor at the time, so it was the only way for me to afford to get out on the weekends. I met lots and lots of East Germans, partied at their homes, did bar-hopping, had affairs…I took some friends with me sometimes and one American friend actually married a woman from East Germany that he met at one of those weekend parties and was able to get her to the West - where she promptly divorced him once she got there. I have tons of great stories from back in those days.
Actually, quite a few people sneaked through, over and under the Wall in those days. I met many people in West Berlin who had made it across…in large TV boxes on the back of a truck, in the trunks of cars, in tunnels, going to nearby countries and paying someone to smuggle them in. Plus, the East Germans would send lots of people over to the West…drug addicts, thieves, convicts; the undesirables from their own country. However, many died trying and those that were not killed were sentenced to prison. It was not easy to escape, plus you had to be very careful as there were ears everywhere, and all phone lines were tapped. Often people would just disappear. I would go to parties and in hushed tones they would mention that so-and-so hadn’t been seen in weeks or months - did they escape or were they in prison? Few ever found out what happened.
Check out the film The Lives Of Others for a good view of what it was like back in those days, even for the famous artists and performers. Then there was Dean Reed - an American singer of modest talent who moved to East Berlin, took the party line and became a pop singer and source of propaganda for the East Germans. There were also some famous East Germans (Katarina Witt for example) who were able to go back and forth to the West, but still drummed up support for the East German regime - she is still hated by many Germans for what she did in those days, despite some creative re-writing of history on her part.
It wasn’t guarded at all, against civilians and so forth. There were the usual border guards, but IIRC so many people travelled across that I don’t believe they really checked people. This made it heaven for spies.
The downside was that the Reds could and did, at least in the early years from 46-50, travel aross and kidnap people. The Allies didn’t make much of a fuss over it, as the people were apparently German ex-Nazis or other suspicious characters, whom the Americans, British, and French were not terribly fond of. But ti slowly dropped off as the Cold War ratcheted up.
Even when the Wall went up, the border wasn’t totally sealed. Eventually, the West german government started buying out political prisoners, dissidents, and pensioners, who moved across. It’s been suggested by different people that this extended or diminished the life of East germany, by taking out exactly the people who could have reformed it… or by taking out the people who could have brought it down.
Other escape attempts included men pretending to be Soviet officers, people going across in coffins, and others hiding themselves inside their carseats. I’ve been to the Checkpoint Charlies museum, and it is pretty cool.
At the same time, I do recall a case where America’s superpower might did no good, much to our displeasure. A man was shot at the Wall, just feet from our border. We couldn’t get him without sparking an international incident. And the Soviets and East Germans did nothing. They just let him bleed. And American soldiers and German civilians watched, as suddenly the space of three feet became an infinite void, which even the two legendary industrial powers could not cross.
Even those who found a way to get across had another problem to contend with, that being that the East German authorities could and did punish the families of successful escapees. And they knew who those escapees were, because they knew who stopped showing up for work or school and who wasn’t noticed moving around the neighborhood by the Stasi informants for several days. Many people who desperately wanted to leave and would be willing to take the risk for themselves didn’t want to leave behind spouses, children, elderly parents, etc to whatever treatment the authorities decided was fitting. The hindrances at the border were psychological as well as physical…