Inner German border
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Inner German border was the frontier between the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, West Germany) from 1949 to 1990. Not including the similar but physically separate Berlin Wall, the border was 1,393 kilometres (866 mi) long and ran from the Baltic Sea to Czechoslovakia.
It was formally established on 1 July 1945 as the boundary between the Western and Soviet occupation zones of former Nazi Germany. On the eastern side, it was made one of the world's most heavily fortified frontiers, defined by a continuous line of high metal fences and walls, barbed wire, alarms, anti-vehicle ditches, watchtowers, automatic booby traps, and minefields. It was patrolled by 50,000 armed East German guards who faced tens of thousands of West German, British, and US guards and soldiers. In the hinterlands behind the border were more than a million North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and Warsaw Pact troops.
The border was a physical manifestation of Sir Winston Churchill's metaphorical Iron Curtain that separated the Soviet and Western blocs during the Cold War. It marked the boundary between two economic systems – capitalism and socialism. Built by East Germany in phases from 1952 to the late 1980s, the fortifications were constructed to stop the large-scale emigration of East German citizens to the West, about 1,000 of whom are said to have died trying to cross it during its 45-year existence. It caused widespread economic and social disruption on both sides; East Germans living in the region suffered especially draconian restrictions.
The better-known Berlin Wall was a physically separate, less elaborate, and much shorter border barrier surrounding West Berlin, more than Template:Convert to the east of the inner German border. Berlin, which was entirely within the Soviet zone, had been similarly divided by the four powers after World War II, thus creating an exclave surrounded by East Germany that was closely aligned with (but not formally part of) West Germany.
On 9 November 1989, the East German government announced the opening of the Berlin Wall and the inner German border. Over the following days, millions of East Germans poured into the West to visit. Hundreds of thousands moved permanently to the West in the following months as more crossings were opened, and ties between long-divided communities were re-established as border controls became little more than a cursory formality. The inner German border was not completely abandoned until 1 July 1990, exactly 45 years to the day since its establishment, and only three months before German reunification formally ended Germany's division.
Little remains of the inner German border's fortifications. Its route has been declared part of the European Green Belt linking national parks and nature reserves along the course of the old Iron Curtain from the Arctic Circle to the Black Sea. Several museums and memorials along the old border commemorate the division and reunification of Germany and, in some places, preserve elements of the fortifications.
See also
- Erlebach - historic village destroyed by East Germany as it lay too close to the border
- Berlin border crossings
- Czechoslovakian border fortifications during the Cold War
- Korean Demilitarized Zone
