The Cold War: Death Strip

While the West’s eyes were focused on Walter Ulbricht’s ugly Berlin wall, a greater, equally ugly wall was being built —almost unnoticed by the world—along the entire East-West German frontier. It consists of two parallel concrete and barbed-wire fences, with land mines seeded in between. When it is finished, it will run from the Baltic coastal resort of Travemunde to the Czech border, turning all of East Germany into a giant concentration camp. Last week TIME Correspondent William Rademaekers toured the 834-mile border. His report:

It is cold and overcast on the Baltic coast. Rusted strands of barbed wire run over the sand dunes and dip into the sea. Across the border in East Germany is a vista of desolated heath, broken only by a squat Communist watchtower. Some 20 yds. beyond the barbed-wire barricade, the East Germans have hacked through the underbrush and cleared a strip of land 15 ft. wide. Later, I found that it rambled the entire length of the frontier. The purpose of the strip is to enable authorities to trace the footsteps of fleeing East Germans to determine their route, and to discipline any patrols that might let them escape. West Germans call the cleared area der Todesstreifen—the death strip.

Any German. East or West, who sets foot on the strip is shot on sight.

The death strip is backed up by other obstacles to prevent escapes from East Germany. Immediately behind it there is in effect a second death strip, which, however, is usually lethal only at night: it is the “500-meter zone,” where anyone is shot after dark. Beyond that is a “security zone” dotted with watchtowers that report the movements even of farmers in the fields. Beyond that is a five-kilometer (threemile) Sperrzone (forbidden zone), dotted with control points that check travelers’ passes, available only at Communist Party headquarters.

Down the Barrel. Despite all this, escapes to the West continue, and so, south from Travemunde, Ulbricht’s work gangs are laboring hard to close the remaining gaps in the new wall. At the West German town of Schlutup, a legal crossing point, the East Germans have put on a friendly face for tourists driving into East Germany from Scandinavia. No barbed wire is visible, and the armed guards are stationed some 400 yds. beyond the border. A few yards across the line from Schlutup in East Germany actually lives a West German family. Two young boys wearing soldier caps play on the road, marching solemnly between East and West.

But in the fields south of Ltibeck, the double barbed wire resumes, and it is no slipshod affair. Cement pylons are sunk 5 ft. into the ground and stand slightly over 6 ft. above it. Each pylon is threaded with seven strands of wire. Along the border a tractor equipped with a posthole digger is busily planting holes every dozen feet. As I watched the work crews through my binoculars, I suddenly found myself staring down the barrel of an East German submachine gun across the barrier.

The fence follows the border like a giant snake, twisting and turning, dipping and curving around fingers of Wrest German land that jut into East Germany. On the Elbe River north of Helmstedt, East German patrol boats watch out for refugees. At Schnackenburg, the Communist patrol boats share the river with West German customs boats, inspecting the traffic that flows into East Germany. “It’s hard to believe that this is the Elbe, and that these people speak German,” says one West German customs official. “We haven’t exchanged words in five years.”

Vodka & Cigarettes. Between Schnackenburg and Helmstedt, hundreds of work-corps youths are building the new wall. In some areas, the crews manage to seal off as much as six miles of the border a day. The fence weaves through the Hansel-and-Gretel-like Harz Mountain forests. Near Braunlage, I came upon two miserably wet East German guards standing alongside the brook that separates the two zones. From my side of the barbed wire, I offered them a cigarette and then a drink from a pocket flask. “Ja, bitte,” they said, and I threw both cigarettes and flask across the brook and barrier.

They puffed deeply on the cigarettes and pulled appreciatively on the vodka, then threw the cigarette pack and flask back and disappeared into the forest.

At one point where the double rows of barbed wire run parallel to the West German Autobahn, the East Germans have built a huge billboard on their side of the line, on which is drawn a likeness of the great German writer and the slogan: “Anti-bolshevism is the underlying madness of the 20th century. — Thomas Mann.”*

Ten a Day. From Göttingen to the Czech border, there are still many open patches where no fences are visible. But the woods have been cleared, and pylons are stockpiled, ready to be sunk. At the Czech border, the East Germans have run their fence to foil East Germans who might try to escape to the West through that corner of Czechoslovakia that borders on both East and West Germany.

How successful is the greater wall? Refugees from East Germany this month have trickled to fewer than ten a day, compared with 50 a day in October. Significantly, most of those who are coming over the line are not civilians but defecting military — their uniforms allow them to get within striking distance of the frontier. To cut down on further escapes by people living near the border, the Communists are engaged in a mass-evacuation scheme; some 200,000 East Germans living near the line are being relocated in the East.

*Mann often made such left-wing sounds. After he fled Germany in 1938, he was a supporter of all anti-Nazi groups, which often included Communists. His defense of the Communists for their anti-Nazi position was later used by them for their own purposes.