The Berlin Wall Crisis, 1958-63 » The Refugee Problem and the Origins of the Berlin Wall

Germany and Berlin in 1958

After the Second World War, Germany was split between the winning powers. By 1949 there were two German states. The Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), or West Germany, was a democracy backed by the USA, Britain and France. The German Democratic Republic (GDR), or East Germany, was a Communist state backed by the Soviet Union. The GDR was ruled by one party, the SED (the Socialist Unity Party). Its leader in the late 1950s was Walter Ulbricht.

Key terms:

• GDR: the German Democratic Republic, the Communist state of East Germany, set up in 1949.
• FRG: the Federal Republic of Germany, the democratic state of West Germany, set up in 1949.
• SED: the Socialist Unity Party, the only party that really ruled in the GDR.
• Sector: one of the four zones of occupied Berlin, run by the USA, Britain, France or the Soviet Union.

Berlin was the strange part. The city lay deep inside East Germany, well over 100 km from the West German border. Yet it was also split into four sectors. The American, British and French sectors together made up West Berlin. The Soviet sector was East Berlin, the capital of the GDR.

A border you could walk across

In 1952 the GDR sealed the long border between East and West Germany with fences and a guarded zone. After that it was very hard to leave the GDR by land.

Berlin was the exception. The sectors were not fenced off from each other. East Berliners could take the underground or the S-Bahn train, or simply walk, into West Berlin. From there they could be flown or taken by train to West Germany. West Berlin became the easy exit from the GDR.

The refugee problem

A refugee is someone who leaves their country to escape danger or hardship. Between 1949 and 1961, more than 2.5 million people left the GDR. That was about one in six of its people. Most went through West Berlin.

Key terms:

• Refugee: a person who flees their home country to find safety or a better life elsewhere.
• Brain drain: the loss of a country's most skilled and educated people when they leave to work abroad.

Who was leaving? Many were young: roughly half were under 25. Many were also skilled. Engineers, doctors, teachers, skilled workers and craftspeople left in large numbers. These were the people the GDR most needed to build its economy.

Why were they leaving? Historians talk about push factors (what drove people out of the GDR) and pull factors (what drew them to the West).

By 1961 the flow was speeding up. About 30,000 people left in July 1961 alone. On 12 August, the day before the Wall went up, over 2,000 crossed in a single day.

The impact on the GDR

The refugee problem hurt the GDR in three main ways.

• Economic damage. The GDR lost workers it had paid to train. Doctors, engineers and teachers were hard to replace, so factories, hospitals and schools were short of staff and the economy fell further behind the West's.
• Political embarrassment. People were "voting with their feet". Every refugee was a sign that many East Germans preferred life in the West. This was a propaganda defeat for the Communist state.
• Danger to the state. If the flood kept growing, the GDR could collapse. Its Soviet allies would not accept losing East Germany. Something had to be done to stop it.

The answer came on 13 August 1961, when the border was closed and the Berlin Wall began to go up. How and why that decision was made is the story of the next lesson, Ulbricht, Khrushchev and the Decision to Build the Wall.

Exam-style question

This is a Paper 2 Section A (a) question. You choose one of the two alternatives.

Describe TWO features of EITHER the refugee problem in East Germany in the years 1949-61 OR the effects of the Berlin Wall on East Berliners. [6 marks]