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Before the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, 3.5 million East Germans circumvented Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions, many by crossing over the border from East Berlin into West Berlin. From there they could then travel to West Germany and other Western European countries. Between 1961 and 1989, the Wall prevented almost all such ...
At the Vienna summit on 4 June 1961, tensions rose. Meeting with US President John F. Kennedy, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev reissued the Soviet ultimatum to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany and thus end the existing four-power agreements guaranteeing American, British, and French rights to access West Berlin and the occupation of East Berlin by Soviet forces. [1]
On 15 August 1961, Conrad Schumann was the first East German border guard to escape by jumping the barbed wire to West Berlin. [97] On 22 August 1961, Ida Siekmann was the first casualty at the Berlin Wall: she died after she jumped out of her third floor apartment at 48 Bernauer Strasse. [98]
On 13 October 1961, Westfälische Rundschau journalist Kurt Lichtenstein was shot on the border near the village of Zicherie after he attempted to speak with East German farm workers. His death aroused condemnation across the political spectrum in West Germany; he was a former parliamentary representative of the German Communist Party. [36]
US M48 Patton tanks facing Soviet T-55 tanks at Checkpoint Charlie in October 1961. Soon after the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961, a stand-off occurred between US and Soviet tanks on either side of Checkpoint Charlie. It began on 22 October as a dispute over whether East German border guards were authorized to examine the travel ...
It has been 80 years since the Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz, the largest Nazi concentration complex. First established in 1940, Auschwitz had a concentration camp, large gas chambers, and ...
After being invaded by Germany, the USSR carried out various massacres of mostly German POWs. The most infamous included the torture and murder of 160 wounded German soldiers in the massacre of Feodosia (1941-1942), and the 1943 torture, rape and murder of 596 Axis POWs and civilians in the massacre of Grischino. Estimates of German POWs who ...
Accordingly, before 1961, most of that east–west flow took place between East and West Germany, with over 3.5 million East Germans emigrating to West Germany before 1961. [6] [7] On August 13, 1961, a barbed-wire barrier, which would become the Berlin Wall separating East and West Berlin, was erected by East Germany. [8]