And so Joachim, who loves equations, who loves numbers that always behave as they’re meant to, Joachim turns his back to the border and the barbed wire and returns home, his first night sleeping in the newly divided city.
13
The Escapes
15 August 1961 (two days after the Wall), 3 p.m.
THE BORDER GUARD patrols the barbed wire, looking just like any other border guard, except he isn’t. He has something on his mind. Hans Conrad Schumann is just nineteen years old; he only arrived in East Berlin a few months ago from the countryside. There are lots of VoPos like him here, out-of-towners who don’t know the city. Walter Ulbricht thinks border guards from outside East Berlin are less likely to be soft on anyone who tries to escape – less chance they’ll sympathise with people they don’t know.
Standing in front of the barbed wire, Hans feels a long way from home. He comes from a family of sheep farmers and he is not a born- soldier or socialist, yet here he is, in a strange city, guarding a barrier he doesn’t believe in. His orders are to stop people escaping, because all along the barbed wire, people are trying to get over it. The day it went up, 800 people escaped. There were the construction workers building the barrier at gunpoint who – when left unguarded – took their chance, and jumped over. There were the brave teenagers who sidled up to the barrier looking for a weak spot in the fence, a hole perhaps, or an unguarded section, and wriggled through the barbed wire. And then there were the families who crept up to the barbed wire, threw suitcases over it, then leapt into West Berlin.
Hans knows his job is to stop escapees, but he finds himself rooting for them. Yesterday, he’d seen a little girl in East Berlin trying to squeeze through the barbed wire to be with her parents. They were standing a few metres away on the other side of the barrier, calling to their daughter with outstretched arms. VoPos had pulled the girl back, stopped her going to them. Now she might end up in an orphanage or with a foster family. Hans can’t bear to be part of it.
As Hans reaches the end of his section of barbed wire, he edges towards it, puts out his hand and pushes. To see if it’s rusting, he tells the other border guard on duty.
In West Berlin, a photographer is watching. The news networks in the West pay good money for photos of escapes and the photographer watches as Hans tests the barbed wire again, watches for an hour as Hans wanders towards the wire, then away again, playing out his indecision.
Then, at 4 p.m. exactly, Hans makes up his mind: flicking away his cigarette, he runs forward and leaps onto the barbed wire, arms outstretched as though in flight and—
SNAP
The photographer takes his shot, freezing Hans forever in mid-air as he hovers over the barbed wire, somewhere between East and West, creating one of the most iconic images of the Berlin Wall. Within hours, the photo is on the front pages of newspapers around the world, one caption reading:
THE GDR’S OWN TROOPS ARE RUNNING AWAY
Hans is the first border guard to escape, but not the last. Sixty-seven more will escape over the coming days. All along the barbed wire, people are squirming through, jumping to freedom, and they are the lucky ones, for right now, unknown to anyone except his closest advisors, Walter Ulbricht has a plan to turn this barbed wire into something else, something that will be almost impossible to escape over.
14
The Boy in Short Pants
PRESIDENT KENNEDY SITS back on the Marlin, the cabin cruiser gliding through the water at Hyannis Port in Cape Cod. The water is calm and so is he. Kennedy is here with his family to get away from everything, to revive himself after his first six months in Washington as president.
Around noon, the radio on the boat crackles into life: it’s Kennedy’s military advisor with an urgent message. It’s about Berlin, he tells Kennedy – the border has been sealed, you’ve got to come back.
Kennedy had been dreading something like this. When he became president seven months earlier, he was told by his advisors that Berlin was the place to watch, the place where a new world war could break out at any moment. The US and the Soviet Union were now locked into a new Cold War, each of them with nuclear weapons that could obliterate each other’s cities. Berlin was the flashpoint, the only place in the world where soldiers from each side faced one another, nuzzle to nuzzle. One wrong move could spark nuclear war.
Ten years ago, the world had seen how easily a divided country could fall into war. In 1950, North Korean soldiers (backed by the Soviet Union) began firing into South Korea (backed by the US). It led to a three-year war with millions killed. The fear was that Germany could be next.
Despite those warnings, in his first months in office, President Kennedy had mostly ignored Berlin, partly because he felt it was an unsolvable problem. The Soviet Union was now led by Nikita Khrushchev, who’d made it clear that he wanted British, American and French soldiers out of West Berlin. If Khrushchev sent Soviet soldiers into West Berlin to take it, Kennedy’s options were terrible: if he ordered Western forces to fight back, they would lose – there were only 12,000 of them in Germany, compared to 350,000 Soviet soldiers. The only war Kennedy could win was a nuclear one, but he did not want to start a nuclear war over Berlin. Kennedy’s choice was defeat or global destruction.
And so, in June 1961, Kennedy had gone to Vienna to meet Khrushchev, hoping he could charm him into dropping talk of nuclear war. The two men could not have been more different.
President Kennedy, or ‘the boy in short pants’ as his staff called him, was charismatic and well educated, but young and inexperienced. That summer, he’d been humiliated after approving an operation for a group of Cuban exiles to land at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro. The operation was a disaster: Castro’s army killed some, captured the rest, and Kennedy looked out of his depth.
Khrushchev, twenty years older than Kennedy, was his opposite. With no proper education, he’d worked his way up from coal mining into the Communist Party, bulldozing his way to the top. Pug-faced and gap-toothed, he was impulsive and unpredictable, with a mischievous sense of humour. Khrushchev knew how terrified the West was about what could happen in Berlin and he loved to rub it in. As he put it, Berlin was the ‘testicles of the West. Every time I want to make the West scream, I squeeze on Berlin.’ At cocktail parties and ballets, Khrushchev would sidle up to European diplomats and remind them how many missiles it would take to destroy their capitals. Then he’d watch them squirm as he described how Russia was churning out long-range missiles ‘like sausages on an assembly line’. Since testing their first atomic bomb in 1949, the Soviets had built up a huge nuclear arsenal, including twelve missiles in East Germany. At a push of the finger, Khrushchev could take out Paris and London; it was only a matter of time before Soviet missiles could reach New York.
Before Kennedy’s meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna, American intelligence agencies had commissioned psychiatrists to write a report about Khrushchev: just how crazy was this man with his nuclear weapons? The psychiatrists studied footage of Khrushchev, even analysed photos of his arteries to see if they could determine his blood pressure. In a classified report, the psychiatrists described Khrushchev’s mood swings, his depression and excessive drinking, concluding that he was a ‘chronic opportunist’, with good political timing, showmanship and a ‘touch of the gambler’s instinct’. Not the kind of man you’d want in charge of nuclear weapons.
The pressure was on Kennedy to talk Khrushchev down, come to some kind of agreement. In Vienna, Kennedy went straight to the point, talked about the dangers of slipping into nuclear war. They were just one hour in when Khrushchev ‘went berserk’ (Kennedy’s words). Shouting at Kennedy, Khrushchev jumped up and down, slamming his hands on the table, threatening Kennedy with war. The Soviet leader clearly felt invincible with his growing stockpile of nuclear weapons; he wasn’t going to be constrained by this new boy-president.
Kennedy was shocked. It was the first time a Soviet leader had threatened an American president like this. Reeli
ng, he pushed back, told Khrushchev that he would not abandon Berlin. But then, Kennedy added something that gave Khrushchev the edge: Kennedy told him that he didn’t want to go to war over Berlin, that Khrushchev must not meddle in West Berlin, but – and this was the crucial part – he could do what he liked in East Berlin. At the climax of this game of poker, Kennedy had lowered his cards and shown Khrushchev his hand.
Some historians say Kennedy gave in too easily, others say he was cornered and didn’t have a choice. Either way, Kennedy himself thought he’d done badly. As he later put it, Khrushchev ‘beat the hell out of’ me, it was the ‘roughest thing in my life’. The young president felt humiliated, and worse, he came away convinced that Khrushchev might just be mad enough to start a nuclear war. When he returned to Washington, Kennedy even wept on his brother Bobby’s shoulder at the thought of it. He was no longer bored by Berlin. He was obsessed by it.
Like a newly infatuated lover, Kennedy doodled the word ‘Berlin’ repeatedly during White House meetings on a yellow notepad. He read every Berlin report he could find (earning him a new nickname, the ‘Berlin Desk Officer’), and he’d invite White House staff to boating weekends where they’d discuss Berlin as they splashed in the sea.
All that work culminated in a speech, given by Kennedy on 25 July, less than three weeks before Walter Ulbricht installed the barbed wire. In that speech, the president restated his controversial position: if Khrushchev meddled in West Berlin, the US would retaliate, but he could do what he liked in the East. A few days later, one of Kennedy’s most senior officials went on American radio, questioning why the Soviet Union hadn’t already closed the border to stop people leaving East Germany. ‘I think they have the right to do it at any time,’ he said.
It seems that Khrushchev was listening. For a long time he’d been undecided about this wall idea that Walter Ulbricht had been pestering him about. With Kennedy making it clear that he could do what he wanted in East Berlin, Khrushchev gave Ulbricht the green light.
Now, sitting on the boat as it takes him back to his family cottage at Hyannis Port, Kennedy has to make a decision. How does he respond to the barbed-wire barrier? Neither he nor his advisors had any idea that the East Germans were about to build it; they’re already thirteen hours behind the information that has been speeding through the news wires.
And Kennedy’s allies aren’t much help: British prime minister Harold MacMillan was shooting grouse in Yorkshire when he found out about the barbed wire, and the French president, General Charles de Gaulle, was on holiday at his country house. Despite the mass of informants in Berlin, the spy capital of the world, no one in the West (not even the West Germans) knew that East Germany was about to build the barrier. It was one of the biggest intelligence failures of the Cold War.
This was partly down to the meticulous planning of Walter Ulbricht. He’d made sure there were no telephone calls or cables about the barrier. Photos had emerged of concrete and barbed wire stockpiled near the border, but American intelligence agents didn’t know what it meant. Some suggested it could be building material for a wall, but analysts dismissed the idea – it was just too far-fetched.
Now the barbed wire had gone up, the British, French and Americans were caught off guard and none of them knew what to do.
Back at his house on Cape Cod, President Kennedy talks to his Secretary of State, Dean Rusk. The two men are calm. After all, the Russians haven’t interfered in West Berlin. No need for a dramatic response.
In Berlin, everyone is waiting for a reaction from the West. Berliners know their best hopes lie with the US, the only country that can take on the Soviet Union. But so far—
Silence.
Walter Ulbricht is watching too, waiting to see if American tanks will show up. They don’t. But he can’t begin the next stage of his plan just yet. It is too dangerous. He must wait.
The next day, there is still no response from Kennedy, nor the day after that. Three days later, West Berlin newspapers run headlines saying: ‘THE WEST DOES NOTHING!’ From Kennedy – still nothing. That day, three-quarters of a million West Berliners gather at City Hall holding posters saying:
‘WHERE ARE THE AMERICANS?’
It is a good question. Now back in Washington, Kennedy is still working out what to do. The barbed wire had taken him by surprise, but in meetings with advisors, instead of being concerned, he’s relieved. Kennedy’s biggest fear over Berlin was being forced into a decision that could lead to nuclear war. The barbed wire is provocative, but it has followed the border exactly, not straying into West Berlin, which means Kennedy doesn’t have to retaliate. He’d made it clear to Khrushchev where the red line was and he is grateful that the Soviet leader hadn’t crossed it – for a president worrying about nuclear war, a barbed-wire fence was small fry. Or, as Kennedy put it, ‘a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war’. Plus, argued some of his advisors, the barbed wire was a propaganda victory for the capitalist West – it showed better than anything how desperate people were to escape communism.
But in Berlin, people see it differently. The deafening silence from the US smells of defeat. Defeat for the West.
Willy Brandt, mayor of West Berlin, writes an angry letter to Kennedy, criticising him for undermining morale and boosting the East German government with his silence. Then, at City Hall, Willy Brandt delivers a powerful speech to thousands of West Berliners, describing the wall as die Schandmauer – ‘the Wall of Shame’ – saying ‘Berlin expects more than words. Berlin expects political action!’
Some Berliners even send black umbrellas to the White House, a reference to the umbrella that Chamberlain carried after appeasing Hitler – a symbol of weakness.
Eventually, Kennedy asks an advisor to trawl through State Department files to look for ideas. His advisor finds a promising-looking file with the title ‘Division of Berlin’. It’s empty. ‘Why,’ President Kennedy asks, ‘with all those contingency plans, do you never have one for what actually happens?’
Back in Berlin, Walter Ulbricht is still waiting. By Thursday 17 August, five days after what Berliners now call ‘barbed-wire Sunday’, Ulbricht knows he’s waited long enough. If Kennedy hasn’t done anything by now, he never will.
Late that evening, Walter Ulbricht sends construction crews to the border with tens of thousands of concrete slabs. Using giant cranes, the workers hoist ten-foot-prefabricated concrete blocks from trucks, then lower them to the border, where builders plaster them together with mortar that slowly drips down the sides.
Watching them build this new concrete wall are thousands of American soldiers. They stand there, silently, impotently, under orders to do nothing. The construction workers lay slab after slab, many of them horrified by what they’re doing. For they are building the walls of their own prison.
Eventually, one of the East German construction workers takes a risk and calls over to an American Military Police Officer. ‘Lieutenant!’ he says, ‘Look how slowly I’m working! What are you waiting for?’ An East German police officer joins in, telling the American that his gun isn’t loaded. The two East Germans want the Americans to stop them. The American soldier passes this information on to his superiors.
The answer returns: do nothing.
As the builders mould the slabs together, in Washington, Kennedy is still deliberating. If he sends tanks to the barrier, he could start a ground war he knows the West will lose. And he isn’t prepared to threaten nuclear war over what’s described in his presidential daily briefing as just ‘new travel restrictions in Berlin’. As he dithers, Edward R. Murrow, the veteran American reporter who Kennedy admires, who was in Berlin the day the barbed wire went up, writes to Kennedy. He compares Ulbricht’s barrier to Hitler’s conquest of the Rhineland in 1935, telling Kennedy he has to do something.
Six days after the wall goes up, Kennedy finally does something. He sends his vice-president, Lyndon B. Johnson, to Berlin. But it’s too little, too late.
Johnson arrives to find a huge conc
rete wall running through the city. It is obvious to everyone who sees it: Berlin is now divided.
It is one of the biggest ‘what ifs’ of the twentieth century: what if Kennedy and the West had done more? After all, in building this barrier, Walter Ulbricht had broken the post-war agreement that the US had signed with the Soviet Union. Kennedy had every right to retaliate.
What if Kennedy had at least sent tanks to that barbed-wire fence? The British sent troops? Would Walter Ulbricht have built his concrete wall? Kennedy’s most experienced diplomat in Berlin, General Clay, thought not. ‘I do not believe we should have gone to war to stop the creation of the wall,’ he wrote in a letter to Kennedy after the concrete wall appeared, but ‘we could have moved back and forth across selected places on the border with unarmed military trucks and this limited action might well have prevented the wall.’
Now, though, it is too late. For an enormous grey wall runs through most of Berlin, encircling the old city in the East, then running past the districts of Wedding, Moabit and Tiergarten in the West, all the way down to the River Spree. Compared to other walls in history, the Berlin Wall in its early stages is shoddy, an embarrassment of engineering. One onlooker says it looks as though it’s been put together by ‘a band of stonemasons when drunk’. But it is unique in one respect: most walls in history have been built to keep enemies out. This is one of the only walls built to keep people in.
When the barbed wire first appeared, it was described as a barrier. From now on, it would be called ‘the Wall’. And anyone who wants to escape has to work out how to get over it.
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