THE WALL

On Sunday, 13 August 1961, residents of the city of Berlin awoke to find that a startling event had decisively changed their lives and transformed the character of their already beleaguered city. Early that morning, armed contingents of East German troops, factory militia, and Volkspolizei had assembled on the boundary line dividing East and West Berlin. A ring of tanks was rolled up to the Brandenburg Gate, the symbolic point of entry into East Berlin. Then, under the supervision of Erich Honecker, the man who would one day preside over the East German Communist Party, shock workers erected barbed-wire fences and rough concrete barriers along the city's line of demarcation, effectively cutting off all means of transport and communication. Within a week, these actions culminated in the erection of a more extensive, permanent structure. This was the Berlin Wall.

This barrier, or die Mauer, as it is known in West Berlin, supplemented and fortified in following years by steel girders, watchtowers, tank traps, death strips, and sophisticated electronic gadgetry, has since become one of the most famous and infamous symbols of East–West confrontation and conflict.