Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
From 1945 onwards, unauthorised crossers of the inner German border risked being shot by Soviet or East German border guards. The use of deadly force was termed the Schießbefehl ("order to fire" or "command to shoot"). It was formally in force as early as 1948, when regulations concerning the use of firearms on the border were promulgated.
Hundreds of thousands of East Germans found an escape route across the border of East Germany's erstwhile ally, Hungary.The inner German border's integrity relied ultimately on other Warsaw Pact states fortifying their own borders and being willing to shoot escapees, including East Germans, around fifty of whom were shot on the borders of Polish People's Republic, Czechoslovak Socialist ...
Czechoslovakia's hardline communist government agreed to close its border with East Germany to choke off the exodus. The closure produced uproar across East Germany [160] and the GDR government's bid to humiliate refugees by expelling them from the country in sealed trains backfired disastrously. Torn-up identity papers and East German ...
A preserved section of the former inner German border at the Borderland Museum Eichsfeld. The inner German border was a complex system of interlocking fortifications and security zones 1,381 kilometres (858 mi) long and several kilometres deep, running from the Baltic Sea to Czechoslovakia.
Three Border Troops guards in a watch tower on the Inner German border in 1984. Schießbefehl (German pronunciation: [ˈʃiːsbəˌfeːl] ⓘ; German for "order to fire") was the term in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) for standing orders authorizing the use of lethal force by the Border Troops to prevent Republikflucht at the Inner German border from 1960 to 1989.
BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany's government announced plans to impose tighter controls at all of the country's land borders in what it called an attempt to tackle irregular migration and protect the ...
Due to faulty signalling and a poor decision by a traffic controller, a freight train hit a passenger train which had stopped after a technical default. Rail accident of Neddemin [53] 4 December 1945 38 68 Head-on collision of two passenger trains due to a dismantled train protection system and a mistake by the train controller.
The Line fire, which is alleged to have been started Sept. 5 as an act of arson, has burned more than 39,000 acres in San Bernardino County. It damaged four structures and destroyed one. It has ...