On 13 August 1961, barbed wire started to go up along the dividing line separating the two parts of Berlin. The subway tunnels were quickly blocked off. The East German police shot at those who dared to cross. The city of Berlin had again become a victim of the Cold War. And this time its division seemed permanent. But erecting the Berlin Wall signaled East Bloc weakness, not strength.
The people of Berlin resisted as best they could. "There was this one street we used to go to," one of them remembers, "which was split down the middle by the wall. The street was in the west but the houses were in the east. The soldiers bricked up the front doors but people jumped out of the windows. There was a group of us on the western side who used to all try to knock off the top level of the wall before the cement had time to dry. We were a bit of a mob; we would all surge together and smash it"
The mayor of West Berlin, the Social-Democrat Willy Brandt, called the Wall "a shocking injustice." But in his radio address to all Berliners, Brandt also warned the East about the consequences:
“They have drawn through the heart of Berlin not just a border, but a fence, as in a concentration camp. With the support of the East Bloc states, the Ulbricht-regime has exacerbated the situation in Berlin and again broken with legal agreements and humanitarian obligations. The Senate of Berlin brings to the whole world its accusations against the illegal and inhuman actions of those who divide Germany, oppress East Berlin, and threaten West Berlin. They will not succeed. We will in the future bring even more people from all over the world to Berlin to show them the cold, naked, and brutal reality of a system that has promised people heaven on earth.”
