BARBED WIRE SUNDAY
It was in the early hours of Sunday, August 13, 1961, when citizens living in the heart of Berlin were awakened to the sound of large trucks gathering. Those peeking through their windows would see soldiers unloading concrete barriers, tearing up roadways and unspooling barbed wire across their streets, severing East from West overnight.
By sunrise, distraught families were screaming to one another across the newly erected barriers, many of them now separated by a boundary which just a day earlier could have been crossed as easily as crossing the street. Once citizens realized what was happening, many attempted to run across to the west, but were stopped in their tracks by Soviet soldiers and police. In just a few short hours, East Germany had slammed shut anyone’s access to the west. In the years to follow, the strands of barbed wire would grow to become concrete walls, guard towers, and kill zones.
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After WWII, Berlin sat in the middle of Soviet-controlled East Germany, but the city’s western half remained relatively free, as it was overseen by the western allies. The citizens of the beleaguered city, devastated from the fighting during WWII, quickly noticed the stark contrast of reconstruction between the east and west: The western portion enjoyed a quick growth in industry, jobs and homes. In short: a wealth of opportunity that simply didn’t exist in Soviet-controlled East Germany.
Thus, for 12 years, desperate East Germans fled to Berlin, where they could cross over into the western-controlled portion of the city, and escape to West Germany. It is estimated that over 3.5 million fled East Germany - a fifth of the population - draining not just everyday laborers, but also intellect in the form of doctors, scientists and engineers. The trend did not slow down as the escalating Cold War entered 1960, which is when Moscow began to realize East Germany was at risk of collapsing as a state, which would deplete Soviet influence in Europe. Allowing people to leave was beginning to expose communism’s weaknesses to the world, which they feared could lead to its overall failure. Thus, the barbed wire wasn’t defense; it was a prison wall to keep the citizens of East Germany in.
What began as barbed wire loosely strung across Berlin early that morning in 1961 grew into what is known today as the Berlin Wall: a ~100-mile long scar of concrete walls, watch towers, trenches and barbed wire surrounding West Berlin, designed to keep their own people from escaping. While a few would successfully cross it in the years that followed, an estimated 140 were killed trying to breach it.
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Barbed Wire Sunday effectively froze the Cold War in place: the West protested but didn’t fight, and the East survived by caging its people. For years to come, both sides feared a conflict over the divided city, which would drag the entire world once more into war.
But over the years, the Berlin Wall became a symbol of the Soviet Union’s flaws. After all, if communism guaranteed prosperity, why prevent the people from leaving it? 28 years later, both the Berlin Wall and Soviet Union would crumble; not from swarms of fighting soldiers and tanks, but through the sledgehammers of the people.