Why did East Germany build a wall around its own people?
Two months before the wall went up, East Germany's leader promised that nobody intended to build one. Twenty-eight years later, a spokesman's fumbled answer opened it.
▶ Start the storyTo stop its own citizens from leaving. Before the Wall, 3.5 million East Germans, 20% of the population, had left the GDR, many by crossing from East Berlin into West Berlin. The inner German border had been closed since 1952, but the border between the sectors of Berlin stayed open, so Berlin became a magnet for East Germans desperate to escape. The emigrants tended to be young and well-educated, which officials feared as a "brain drain." The East German government began building the Wall on 13 August 1961.
3.5 million
East Germany's government called the Wall an "anti-fascist protective rampart" meant to dissuade aggression from the West, but its primary intention was to prevent East German citizens from fleeing. Two months earlier, on 15 June 1961, leader Walter Ulbricht had told a press conference: "No one has the intention of erecting a wall!"
The Wall worked in its own terms. It stemmed the exodus, and the East German economy began to grow, but it was a public relations disaster for the communist bloc. Over 100,000 people tried to escape after 1961 and over 5,000 succeeded, while the death toll from East German authorities is estimated between 136 and more than 200 in and around Berlin.
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Recap
Berlin's open sector border was the leak; the wall closed it, and the economy of East Germany grew.
💡 A trick to remember it · The wall went up to stop people leaving, and fell because a spokesman said 'immediately'.
Surprising fact · Ulbricht denied any plan for a wall two months before building it, and the end hung on a press-conference answer: 'immediately'.
Sources (1)
No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (17 claims) cites at least one of these.