Authors: Frederick Taylor
McCloy stayed over night at the
dacha
. Khrushchev was on friendly form the first day, clowning around, challenging McCloy to a game of badminton, taking him for a swim, and so on. Then, overnight, Khrushchev got round to reading the full Russian translation of Kennedy’s speech. Next day, he switched in that Jekyll-and-Hyde
way of his from genial host into angry warlord. He was, McCloy said, ‘really mad’.
Yet again, Khrushchev spelled out his ultimatum and pointed out that the war Kennedy seemed to want would be a thermonuclear one, perhaps leaving some of the USA and USSR standing but wiping Europe from the map. Civilisation would be destroyed. Kennedy would be ‘the last President of the United States’.
It was clear by now that Ulbricht’s campaign to seal off West Berlin from the East was reaching its climax. Moscow would have to make a decision regarding the possible measures involved, which could easily lead to physical confrontation with the Western forces in Berlin.
The SED’s strong man had been further encouraged in his sense of invulnerability by the visit of Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan, two days after the Vienna summit, to discuss future economic co-operation. Mikoyan, an old Bolshevik of pre-revolutionary vintage, forcefully underlined the Kremlin’s support for the GDR, which was, he said
the western-most outpost of the socialist camp. Therefore, many, very many look at the GDR. Our Marxist-Leninist theory must prove itself in the GDR. It must be demonstrated in the GDR that what the capitalists and renegades say is wrong…Marxism was born in Germany and it must prove its correctness and value here in a highly developed industrial state. We must do everything so that your development constantly and steadily goes forward. You cannot do this alone. The Soviet Union must and will help with this…
5
Secure in this support, the East German leadership began co tighten the screw.
A few days before Kennedy’s speech, SED propaganda chief Horst Sindermann sent out a circular instructing media to no longer use the term ‘desertion of the Republic’ (
Republikflucht
) to describe flight to the West. This term gave an unfortunate (if truthful) impression that people were leaving of their own volition, and therefore implied, if only indirectly, that the system in the GDR itself might be at fault for their
decision. Henceforth, those who went West were to be described as victims of Western ‘trade in human beings’ or of ‘head-hunting’ (Kopfjagd), implying that they had been dishonestly seduced, bribed, or even kidnapped into leaving the socialist state.
6
The hard thing to work out was whether this extreme rhetoric primarily reflected or fed the refugee exodus. Each month, it increased. In May 1961, 17,791 fled through West Berlin, 19,198 in June, and then 12,578 in the first two weeks of July alone. Entire factories and offices were emptied of their staff as more East Germans left while they still had the chance. Even with increasing patrols on the sector borders, plus random checks at crossing points and on public transport, only a tiny minority of attempted ‘illegal’ crossings into West Berlin were being foiled—according to
Stasi
estimates, between 1 April and 13 August 1961 only 15 per cent. People who had come from the provincial GDR were generally sent back to their place of residence. It was, however, an indication of the helplessness of the authorities—and the high level of determination among would-be refugees—that many never returned home, indicating that within a short time of being released they simply tried the border again, and this time crossed successfully.
7
No one was entirely certain what the GDR regime was going to do, but it was becoming increasingly likely that they would—must—do something.
In early June, according to Soviet records published since the end of the Cold War, Russian diplomats were hearing senior SED officials openly connect the imminent signing of the Soviet-East German peace treaty with the closure of the sector border in Berlin. Later that month, a report to Moscow from the Soviet embassy in East Berlin spoke of the GDR population’s fears that ‘this question will be resolved in the near future and that all paths for their exit to West Germany will be closed. Therefore some try to go to West Germany before it’s too late.’
8
Almost everything the regime did in these months seemed calculated to increase people’s fears, and thereby to exacerbate the refugee problem. On 15 June, Ulbricht appeared at a press conference in East Berlin. Exceptionally, his aides had gone out of their way to invite the Western press corps. Ulbricht used the opportunity to make it clear that once the peace treaty had been signed, and the four-power status of Berlin
nullified, the SED regime would assume control over all air as well as land routes to and from Berlin. This step would in itself, if carried through successfully, close down the escape route for the thousands of refugees being flown out of West Berlin to West Germany using the Allied air corridors.
Annmarie Doherr of the
Frankfurter Rundschau
, a West German newspaper, asked the East German leader: ‘Does the formation of a Free City in your opinion mean that the state boundary will be erected at the Brandenburg Gate?’
I understand by your question {Ulbricht declared} that there are men in West Germany who wish that we would mobilise the construction workers of the GDR in order to build a wall. I don’t know of any such intention. The construction workers of our country are principally occupied with home-building and their strength is completely consumed by this task. No one has the intention of building a wall.
The problem was, no one at the press conference had suggested that any such intention existed. The person who reveals their guilt by denying culpability for a crime not yet discovered is a staple figure of detective fiction.
There is no evidence that Khrushchev had yet assented to a physical barrier being erected between East and West Berlin. So, was this a mistake on Ulbricht’s part? Unlikely. The former Berlin correspondent of NBC, Norman Gelb, pointed out:
Ulbricht could not act against the wishes of the Kremlin. But he could influence events and attitudes. His presence at the press conference and his comments implying that West Berlin would soon be his do with as he pleased were calculated to raise the level of tension already building in the city, and they did.
9
For Ulbricht such pronouncements always served a dual purpose: to influence his own side (be it the East German public or the big men in Moscow), and also to undermine confidence inside the Western sectors. He was fond of reminding West Berliners of the fragility of their
position; it weakened their morale and also helped encourage the capital flight from the city that would in the long term make it economically unviable, whether the West kept its troops there or not.
But what was the leader’s message to his own people? The Western press did not make a big issue out of his curious remarks. But on the day after their leader’s surprisingly frank press conference, the number of refugees entering West Berlin rose sharply. Easterners knew how to read the runes.
Was Ulbricht now deliberately encouraging people to leave the GDR? Was he attempting to ensure that the Soviets would have no choice but to support the measures—any measures—needed to stem the life blood pouring from the open wound in their enfeebled German client state? There is no proof of this, but neither is there much doubt, for anyone who observed the trajectory of Ulbricht’s career over more than thirty years, that he was quite capable of such Machiavellian doublethink.
Almost immediately after the press conference, Ulbricht opened a campaign to call the Warsaw Pact members together. His suggestion was that they discuss the coming peace treaty and the practical measures (including the ‘solution’ of the Berlin problem) this would entail. He discussed this with Pervukhin, the Soviet ambassador, and formally wrote to Khrushchev on 24 June, suggesting a meeting in Moscow on 20-1 July. He also mentioned measures against ‘border-crossers’, workers who lived in East Berlin but worked for hard West marks in West Berlin. Such actions, he insisted, would be necessary
before
the peace treaty. In this small way, Ulbricht explicitly detached the treaty question from the security question. An interesting development. Prescient, as it turned out.
The Soviet Presidium met on 29 June and considered their German ally’s request. They set the meeting for 3 August in Moscow. The ‘border-crosser’ question could also be considered then, the Russian comrades insisted.
With the Vienna summit a failure—no longer could Khrushchev counsel waiting on the meeting with Kennedy—and the GDR’s refugee problem spiralling out of control, it was obvious the Moscow meeting would not be just a talking-shop.
At the moment, East German refugees who got to West Berlin could not travel by road or rail to West Germany without the risk of being arrested for ‘desertion’. But they could safely be flown to West Germany from Tegel or Tempelhof.
As Soviet Ambassador Pervukhin saw it, once a peace treaty had been signed and control of access had been handed over to the East Germans, the goal would be to have all external air traffic from West Berlin channelled through the East Berlin airport at Schönefeld, effectively giving the East control of who was permitted to leave by air. Refugees from the GDR would be marooned in West Berlin, since to leave West Berlin by any means, now including air as well, they would have to cross GDR territory and be subject to arrest. Few East Germans would want to be stuck in West Berlin indefinitely, and neither would the half-city be able to cope with such a long-term influx. Refugee problem solved, and possibly West Berlin so weakened that it would fall into the East’s lap.
This ambitious plan was Pervukhin’s preference. It involved the successful signing of a peace treaty between the USSR and the GDR, very much his business as a diplomat, so perhaps it was natural that he would prefer it. The physical sealing of the sector borders, though it would be swift and decisive and so could not be ruled out, in his opinion presented vast problems from a technical point of view alone as well as risks of military conflict.
Pervukhin was under intense pressure, and whichever plan he might personally prefer, it was this pressure that he was passing on to Khrushchev. Ulbricht had warned him that ‘the situation in the GDR was growing visibly worse. The growing flood of refugees was increasingly disorganising the entire life of the Republic. Soon it must lead to an explosion.’ If something was not done, then East Germany’s collapse was ‘inevitable’.
10
Ulbricht’s Cassandra-like predictions were passed on to Khrushchev, who had evidently realised the matter was now urgent. According to his son, Sergei, in early July, while at his
dacha
in the Crimea, Khrushchev asked his commander-in-chief in Germany, General Ivan Yakubovski, to do a feasibility study on the closing of the border between the Western and Eastern sectors. Khrushchev studied a map of Berlin specially sent
from Moscow. He also consulted with Foreign Minister Gromyko and his deputy, Vladimir Semenov, an old Germany hand.
Some time during those few days, the most powerful man in the Soviet imperium made up his mind. He had, perhaps, himself continued to hope that his insistent promotion of a separate peace treaty, accompanied by the usual measure of bluster, would persuade or intimidate the West into agreeing to changes in the status of West Berlin, such that the island half-city would no longer act as a magnet for East German refugees. Now Khrushchev saw that, if this happened at all, it would probably be the result of a long-term process, and time was of the essence. If the GDR was to be saved, something had to happen quickly.
According to Soviet diplomat Yuli Kvitsinsky (later ambassador to West Germany and Deputy Foreign Minister under Gorbachev), then a junior official at the embassy of the USSR in East Berlin, on 6 July he was called to Pervukhin’s office.
The ambassador informed Kvitsinsky crisply: ‘We have a yes from Moscow’.
Young Kvitsinsky was charged with finding Ulbricht. He tracked his quarry down to the People’s Chamber, the GDR parliament. The ambassador and his assistant raced over to the nearby Luisenstrasse, where they were shown into Ulbricht’s presence. Pervukhin told the SED boss the news. The Kremlin had plumped for the quick, labour-intensive solution: the sealing-off of the sector border in Berlin. Ulbricht simply nodded and asked the ambassador to thank Khrushchev.
11
As the ambassador stood opposite him in the People’s Chamber building, Ulbricht then launched into an explanation of exactly how the border closure could be achieved: with barbed wire and fencing, which would have to be brought into Berlin in secret. And the main border-crossing rail stations like the Friedrichstrasse would have to be instantly walled off—in the case of the Friedrichstrasse, with glass. Oh, and a Sunday would be best, a summer Sunday when Berliners would be picnicking in the forests or at the lake. By the time they returned home in the evening, it would all be over…
The ambassador was surprised at the unnerving depth of detail in Ulbricht’s description of the proposed operation. He was, after all, personally pessimistic about the feasibility of sealing off the Berlin
border. Khrushchev had not followed Pervukhin’s alternative suggestion—possibly because he saw the plan as too long-term and dependent on international developments, certainly because he felt it was dangerous to give Ulbricht total control over access to Berlin—but there was no question the ambassador’s dispatches had played a vital role in directing him towards the drastic action that the East was soon to take.