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The Border Troops of the German Democratic Republic (German: Grenztruppen der DDR) was the border guard of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from 1946 to 1990.. The Grenztruppen were the primary force guarding the Berlin Wall and the Inner German border, the GDR's international borders between West Berlin and West Germany respectively.
At their peak, the Grenztruppen had up to 50,000 personnel. [1] East German border guard Konrad Schumann fleeing East Germany, 1961. Around half of the Grenztruppen were conscripts, a lower proportion than in other branches of the East German armed forces. Their political reliability was under especially close scrutiny due to the sensitive ...
The German-German Museum Mödlareuth preserves the longest stretch of border wall still present on the former border, 700 metres (2,300 ft) long) and 3.3 metres (11 ft) long), along with two observation towers, border columns and warning signs, floodlights and other relics of the division of the village. The preserved border installations lie ...
A special unit of the Stasi secret police worked covertly within the Grenztruppen, posing as regular border guards, between 1968 and 1985, to weed out potential defectors. [79] One in ten officers and one in thirty enlisted men were said to have been recruited by the Stasi as informers.
The border was initially manned by the Royal Military Police and the Group of Soviet Occupation Forces In Germany. [1] From 1950 onwards, the East German Grenzpolizei (later the Grenztruppen der DDR ) performed the border control on the eastern side of the checkpoint while the Soviet Army escorted NATO military traffic to and from West Berlin.
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.
An insight into the permanent exhibition of the Borderland Museum Eichsfeld. At this historical place the Borderland Museum Eichsfeld was opened in 1995. [1] It is located in the original buildings of the former border crossing point, allowing its visitors to see the original rooms, such as the passport checking rooms and the detention cells. [2]
For the border guards, this presented special dangers, as their colleagues were under orders to shoot without warning if an escape attempt was made. The dilemmas they faced were highlighted in the May 1969 defection of a soldier and a non-commissioned officer (NCO) of the Grenztruppen. When the NCO made his escape, the soldier, Jürgen Lange ...