In the early hours of August 13, 1961, Berliners awoke to find their city changing before their eyes. Soldiers from East Germany’s army and police fanned out across streets that had been open the day before. They carried coils of barbed wire, concrete posts, and shovels. In the dark and stillness of the night, they began to seal off the crossings between East and West. The world would come to know it as Barbed Wire Sunday.
The move was sudden, but it was not born overnight. Since the end of the Second World War, Berlin had been a divided city. The Western Allies held their sectors in the west, the Soviets controlled the east. Yet it was still possible for people to walk, ride a streetcar, or take a subway across the sector lines. That open border became the great loophole in the Iron Curtain. For millions trapped in the communist bloc, Berlin was the escape hatch.
East Germany had been bleeding people for years. Between 1949 and 1961, more than 3.5 million citizens left for the West, often through Berlin. They were not only workers but teachers, doctors, engineers, and skilled craftsmen. The loss threatened East Germany’s economy and its credibility as a socialist state. The leadership, headed by Walter Ulbricht, knew the exodus could not go on.
In June 1961, Ulbricht assured the world, “No one has the intention of erecting a wall.” It was a calculated statement, and it was not true. Behind the scenes, he and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev discussed sealing the border. Khrushchev saw an opportunity after meeting President Kennedy in Vienna. Kennedy’s guarded remarks about not intervening over a barrier were taken as a sign that the West would accept it. The completion of a railway line that bypassed West Berlin removed one of the last practical obstacles.
Shortly after midnight on August 13, trucks rolled in under heavy guard. Troops unspooled barbed wire along 156 kilometers of border. They ripped up streets to make them impassable, blocked railway lines, and guarded every crossing point. Stasi agents stood watch at major intersections. By dawn, Berlin was being carved in two.
Word spread quickly. By four in the morning, West Berlin radio stations were reporting “commotion in the streets.” By the afternoon, as many as half a million Berliners gathered near the dividing line. West Berlin police held back their own citizens, who shouted for action. East German police kept their people well away from the construction. At the Brandenburg Gate and other checkpoints, the mood was tense. One West Berlin police officer warned reporters, “It just needs a spark to set the crowd off.”
Some still got through. Around 800 East Berliners managed to escape on that first day, climbing out of windows that opened into the West or forcing their way over the wire. Most would not be so lucky again. By the next day, only a few dozen made it out. The border was now a barrier in more than name.
Reactions came quickly. West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt condemned the action as a brutal attack on freedom. West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer urged calm but made it clear that the move was illegal and provocative. In Washington, President Kennedy was briefed while still returning from a weekend in Hyannis Port. Secretary of State Dean Rusk called the closure a “flagrant violation” of agreements guaranteeing free movement in Berlin. Allied diplomats met in urgent session to consider possible countermeasures, including restrictions on travel from West Germany into East Germany to pressure the communist economy.
For the East German regime, the public story was that the new barrier was an “anti-fascist protection rampart” designed to protect its citizens from Western agents. Few believed it. The truth was visible in the barbed wire, the armed guards, and the faces of families separated in an instant.
In the days that followed, the wire was replaced with concrete. Guard towers rose. Escape became far more dangerous, often deadly. The Berlin Wall, as it came to be called, would stand for 28 years. For the West, it became the most visible symbol of communist repression. For the East, it was a lifeline to stop the outflow of its people, no matter the human cost.
Barbed Wire Sunday was more than a sudden act of border control. It was the closing of the last escape route from the Eastern Bloc, the hardening of the Cold War’s front line, and the beginning of a long separation for a city that had already endured war, blockade, and division. On that day, Berlin’s fate was literally drawn in wire.
DAVE DOES HISTORY 
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