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The Berlin Crisis of 1961 (German: Berlin-Krise) was the last major European political and military incident of the Cold War concerning the status of the German capital city, Berlin, and of post–World War II Germany. The crisis culminated in the city's de facto partition with the East German erection of the Berlin Wall.
Between 1945 and 1988, around 4 million East Germans migrated to the West. 3.454 million of them left between 1945 and the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The great majority simply walked across the border or, after 1952, exited through West Berlin.
The inner German border (German: innerdeutsche Grenze or deutsch–deutsche Grenze; initially also Zonengrenze) was the frontier between the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, West Germany) from 1949 to 1990.
East Germany (German: Ostdeutschland [ˈɔstˌdɔʏtʃlant] ⓘ), officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR; Deutsche Demokratische Republik [ˈdɔʏtʃə demoˈkʁaːtɪʃə ʁepuˈbliːk] ⓘ, DDR [ˌdeːdeːˈʔɛʁ] ⓘ), was a country in Central Europe from its formation on 7 October 1949 until its reunification with West Germany on 3 October 1990.
From the mid-1970s, East Germany remained poised between East and West. The 1974 amendment to the Constitution deleted all references to the "German nation" and "German unity" and designated East Germany "a socialist nation-state of workers and peasants" and "an inseparable constituent part of the socialist community of states."
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 nature of their role.
East German border guard Konrad Schumann fleeing East Germany, 1961. In 1961, the Grenzpolizei were reorganized as the Border Troops of the GDR (Grenztruppen der DDR) and were moved from the Ministry of the Interior, which oversaw policing, to the Ministry of National Defence (MfNV) which oversaw the military.
The development of the inner German border took place in a number of stages between 1945 and the mid-1980s. After its establishment in 1945 as the dividing line between the Western and Soviet occupation zones of Germany, in 1949 the inner German border became the frontier between the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany).