Europe@War №12 - Cold War Berlin. An Island City, Vol. 2. The Berlin Wall 1950-1961 (2021).pdf

(21230 KB) Pobierz

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction

The Workers’ and Peasants’ State

Building Socialism

Secret Berlin

A Tale of Two Cities

An Accident Waiting to Happen

Operation Rose

A New Reality

Confrontation at Checkpoint Charlie

Die Mauer

A Bid For Freedom

Conclusion

Helion & Company Limited

Unit 8 Amherst Business Centre

Budbrooke Road

Warwick

CV34 5WE

England

Tel. 01926 499 619

Email: info@helion.co.uk

Website: www.helion.co.uk

Twitter: @helionbooks

Visit our blog http://blog.helion.co.uk/

Text © Andrew Long 2021

Photographs © as individually credited

Colour profiles © David Bocquelet and Tom

Cooper 2021

Maps © George Anderson 2021

Soldier illustrations © Renato Dalmaso

Designed and typeset by Farr out

Publications, Wokingham, Berkshire

Cover design Paul Hewitt, Battlefield Design

(www.battlefield-design.co.uk)

Every reasonable effort has been made to

trace copyright holders and to obtain their

permission for the use of copyright material.

The author and publisher apologise for any

errors or omissions in this work, and would

be grateful if notified of any corrections that

should be incorporated in future reprints or

editions of this book.

ISBN

978-1-915113-39-9

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication

Data

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library

publication may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form,

or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording or otherwise,

without the express written consent of

Helion & Company Limited.

We always welcome receiving book

proposals from prospective authors.

Appendices

I The Inner German Border

II Crossing Points And Transit Routes From FRG Across DDR to

West Berlin

III Statistics For Refugees From East Germany To West Germany1

Selected Bibliography/Further Reading

Notes

About the Author

Note: In order to simplify the use of this book, all names, locations and geographic

designations are as provided in

The Times World Atlas,

or other traditionally accepted major

sources of reference, as of the time of described events.

EUROPE@WAR VOLUME 14

Dedicated to Sara, Alex and Katie, with all my love

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to: Tom Cooper and Andy Miles at Helion for their editorial

direction and help. Tom Cooper for the colour aircraft profiles.

David Bocquelet for the colour vehicle profiles. George Anderson

for the maps. Renato Dalmaso for the soldier illustrations. Albert

Grandolini for help with sourcing images plus the excellent on-line

resources of the US National Archives and the Central Intelligence

Agency. Thanks to the New York Public Library for the text of

Walter Lippmann’s interview with Khrushchev, as published in the

New York Herald Tribune

on the 17, 18 and 19 April 1961.

ABBREVIATIONS

ACC

APC

BAOR

BCZ

BGS

Allied Control Council

Armoured Personnel Carrier

British Army of the Rhine (UK)

Berlin Control Zone, airspace over Berlin

Bundesgrenzschutz,

Federal Border

Protection Force, (FRG)

BOB

Berlin Operating Base, CIA (US)

BOOB

Bolt out of (the) blue attack. i.e.,

First Strike

BRD

Bundesrepublik Deutschland

(derogatory

abbreviation used by the DDR)

BRIXMIS

The British Commander-in-Chief ’s

Mission to the Soviet Forces of Occupation

in Germany (UK)

BStU

Bundesbeauftragter für die Unterlagen des

Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen

Deutschen Demokratischen Republik,

the

Federal Commissioner for the Records of

the State Security Service of the former

German Democratic Republic (FRG)

CIA

Central Intelligence Agency (US)

CPSU

Communist Party of the Soviet

Union (USSR)

ČSSR

Československá Socialistická Republika,

Czechoslovak Socialist Republic

DGP

Deutsche Grenzpolizei,

East German

Border Police (DDR)

DDR

Deutsche Demokratische Republik,

German

Democratic Republic or GDR

ELINT

Electronic Intelligence

FDGB

Freier Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund,

Federation of Free German Trade

Unions (DDR)

FDJ

Freie Deutsche Jugend,

Free German Youth,

the

SED

youth wing.

FHG

Freiwilliger Helfer der Grenztruppen,

Volunteer Border Force Helpers (DDR)

Freie Deutsche Jugend

FDJ,

Free German Youth, the

SED

youth wing.

FRG

GCHQ

GDR

GPO

Grepos

GRU

GSFG

HUMINT

IGB

Federal Republic of Germany,

Bundesrepublik Deutschland

(FRG)

Government Communication

Headquarters (UK)

German Democratic Republic,

Deutsche

Demokratische Republik

or DDR (DDR)

General Post Office (UK)

Grenzpolizei,

East German Frontier or

border Police (DDR)

Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye,

Soviet Military Intelligence (USSR)

Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (USSR)

Human Intelligence (spies)

Inner German Border (Innerdeutsche

Grenze),

the border between East Germany

and West Germany (a.k.a. Intra or Inter

German Border)

Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter,

Unofficial

Collaborator for the

Stasi

(DDR)

Indications of Hostilities

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th

President of the USA

Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse,

Combat Groups of the Working

Class, the East German Factory

Militia, a.k.a.

Kampfgruppen

(KG) or

Betriebskampfgruppen

(Company Combat

Groups) (DDR)

Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit,

Fighting Group against Inhumanity

(FRG Berlin)

Kommunistische Partei Deutschland,

the German Communist Party (pre-

April 1946)

Kasernierte Volkspolizei,

the ‘barracked’

People’s Police, the East German

paramilitary police force, which was the

forerunner of the National People's Army,

the

NVA

(DDR)

IOH

JFK

KdA

KgU

KPD

KVP

COLD WAR BERLIN: AN ISLAND CITY VOLUME 2: THE BERLIN WALL, 1950-1961

LBJ

LPG

MAD

MAP

MdI

MfNV

MfS

MLM

MPU

NATO

NSDAP

NVA

OPC

ORBAT

OSP

OSS

Ostmark

RBT

RIAS

ROE

Lyndon Baines Johnson, US Vice President,

later President

Landwirtschaftliche Produktions-

genossenschaft,

Farmers ‘voluntary’

cooperatives (DDR)

Mutually Assured Destruction

Military Assistance Program (US)

Ministerium des Innern,

the East German

Ministry of the Interior (DDR)

Ministerium für Nationale Verteidigung,

the

Ministry of National Defence (DDR)

Ministerium für Staatssicherheit,

the East

German Ministry for State Security (DDR)

Military Liaison Mission

Main Processing Unit (London)

North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

Nationalsozialistische Deutsche

Arbeiterpartei,

the German Nazi Party

Nationale Volksarmee,

the East German

Army (DDR)

Office of Policy Coordination, CIA (US)

Order of Battle

Office of Special Projects, CIA (US)

Office of Strategic Services (US)

The East German Mark (currency) (DDR)

Rundblickbeobachtungsturm,

BT-11 watch

tower (DDR)

Radio In (the) American Sector (US)

Rules of Engagement

SED

SIGINT

SIS

SIOP

SMA(D)

SPD

SSD

Stasi

Trapos

TPU

USAID

USIA

USMC

USSR

Vopo

VPB

Sozialistische Einheitspartei

Deutschlands;

the Socialist Unity Party of

Germany (DDR)

Signals Intelligence

Secret Intelligence Service a.k.a. MI6 (UK)

Single Integrated Operational Plan (US)

Soviet Military Authority Germany (USSR)

Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands,

the German Socialist Social Democratic

Party (DDR)

Staatssicherheitsdienst,

East German State

Security Service, the

Stasi

(DDR)

Staatssicherheitsdienst,

the East German

State Security Service (DDR)

Transportpolizei,

East German Transport

Police (DDR)

Technical Processing Unit

(Washington DC)

United States Agency for International

Development (US)

US Information Agency (US)

United States Marine Corps (US)

United Soviet Socialist Republic, the Soviet

Union (USSR)

Volkspolizei,

the East German ‘People’s’

Police Force, plural

Vopos

(DDR)

Volkspolizei-Bereitschaften,

People's Police

‘Alert’ or ‘Readiness’ Units, Public Order/

Riot Police (DDR)

INTRODUCTION

In the years immediately following the end of the Second World War,

Berlin had established itself as the epicentre of the fledgling Cold

War, where wartime allies had become enemies in the shadow of the

atomic bomb. The West, primarily in the form of the United States

and United Kingdom, were facing off against the East, which was

centred around the Soviet Union and her ‘client’ or ‘satellite’ states.

In a few short years, Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union

and figurehead behind the worldwide communist movement, had

engineered the spectacular coup of building a buffer zone, his ‘Ring

of Steel’, between Western Europe and the Motherland of the Soviet

Union. By converting the territory his Red Army had ‘liberated’

from the Nazis into communist ‘client’ states, he had successfully

created an ‘Iron Curtain’ from ‘Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the

Adriatic’, to quote Winston Churchill.

Poland, Czechoslovakia,

Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia (until 1948), and East

Germany had all fallen under the Soviet Union’s patronage.

The city of Berlin, however, was a major thorn in Stalin’s side.

Located 100 miles into the Soviet Zone of Occupation, his former

allies, Great Britain, The United States and France, insisted on

retaining their right to occupy their sectors and protect their access

rights into the city. In June 1948, he had tried to force them out

by closing all the road, rail and waterway access into West Berlin,

effectively blockading the city in the style of a medieval siege. The

move shocked the world and proved to be an unmitigated disaster

for Stalin after the US, British and French successfully supplied the

city’s every need by air for almost a year. The logistical miracle of the

Berlin Airlift proved that the West’s economic and industrial muscle

could feed and heat West Berlin almost indefinitely and in May 1949

Stalin had to make an embarrassing climb down and open up the

access routes again.

The whole escapade had the unintended effect of focusing the

West’s attention on the threat posed by the Soviet Union, which

resulted, in April 1949, in the formation of the North Atlantic

Treaty Organisation, known by its initials: NATO. It also hastened

the merging of the British, American and French occupation zones

of Germany to create a new sovereign state, the

Bundesrepublik

Deutschland

(Federal Republic of Germany, FRG or West Germany),

which was formed on 23 May 1949.

Since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which ended

the Second World War in August 1945, the United States had

maintained the global monopoly on nuclear weapons, but on 29

August 1949, thanks largely to a masterful intelligence gathering

operation, the Soviet Union detonated its own atom bomb, RDS-1.

This momentous event caused a major shift in the global balance

of power and brought the front line in the new Cold War straight

back to Europe, with both sides possessing weapons of immense

destructive power, and with Berlin at the epicentre again.

In October 1949, the global communist movement responded to

these new threats with the creation of two new communist states.

On 1 October 1949, after a long and bloody civil war, Mao Zedong

declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and on 7

October 1949, in response to the creation of the FRG earlier that

Plik z chomika:

Doncaster1972

Europe@War №12 - Cold War Berlin. An Island City, Vol. 2. The Berlin Wall 1950-1961 (2021).pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: