BERLIN HAS NO EARLY HOPE OF PEACE

Press, Volume C, Issue 29680, 25 November 1961, Page 8

BERLIN HAS NO EARLY HOPE OF PEACE

Tense Atmosphere Main Impression [Written for “The. Press’’ by E. T. BEARDSLEY, 1961 New Zealand Commonwealth Press Union Fellow.] QNLY a totally incurable optimist would return now from a visit to Berlin with any immediate hopes of a peaceful settlement of the future of the city. The only peace to be found is in the Tiergarten, once Berlin’s diplomatic quarter and now a huge park full of silver birches, lindens and poplars in the last of their autumn glory in the unseasonable sunshine. But walk a few paces through the trees and you are confronted with one of the ugliest structures ever thrown together—the Berlin wall, 25 miles of concrete blocks, cement and barbed wire topped with jagged glass, which cuts the city in two as never before.

The wall makes a striking impact on any visitor, and the atmosphere it has generated is tense and dangerous. Propaganda, tear-gas and bullets are exchanged across it night after night, and on the Western side it has raised German tempers to explosion point. The houses with bricked-up windows on the far side of the wall tell a pathetic story. So do the men and women standing at vantage points near the wall to exchange forlorn waves with relatives and friends on the other side —the only communication they now have. And so too does the heap of flowers marking the spot on the Bernaustrasse where an old woman fell to her death while attempting to climb from her window on the border into the West. If the wall has depressed East Berliners, it has incensed those who live in the West and they remember August 13, 1961, the day its construction began, as the English remember 1066. West Berliners are incensed, too, with the Western Powers for permitting its construction and they claim that had Western troops been ordered to knock the wall down as it was being built, nothing would have happened, as the East German police did not at that time carry ammunition. Be that as it may, they certainly do now and West Berliners, for their own protection, are kept well away from the wall by their own police. It is almost impossible to get photographs of the wellarmed East German police behind the wall as they cut some ridiculous capers to avoid the camera’s eye. Persistent efforts may be rewarded with a tear-gas bomb and one German reporter keeping a watch on the border was recently killed by sub-machine-gun fire. As a result, Mr Macmillan’s statement on Gleneagles golf course earlier in the summer that the Berlin problem had been invented by the press, is recalled with considerable bitterness by West German newspapermen. West Berliners Incensed What most incenses West Berliners, and Bonn too. is that the wall has apparently

made the division of the city permanent and has been most effective in its main purpose —not. as East Germany claimed, to keep out Western spies and provocateurs, but in halting the flow of East Germans going to the West. Before August 13, West Berliners say, it was possible to live with the division of the city since thousands of East Berliners travelled to work in the West each day and visits could be made to relatives and friends over the border. And those East Berliners who wished to express their dislike of the regime could do so in a very effective way: by catching a train to West Berlin and not using the return ticket. Since the end of the war, nearly 3.5 million East Germans, half of them under 25 years of age. have done that. It was the dramatic increase in the flow of East Germans to the West under Mr Khrushchev’s threat of signing a separate peace treaty with East Germany, that caused the Ulbricht regime to construct the wall. It has been almost totally effective. From 46,000 in the first quarter of this year. 56,000 in the second quarter, 30.000 in July and 47.000 in August (many East Germans were then on holiday in the West and simply stayed on), the flow of refugees has fallen away, and though officials will not now disclose the figures for fear of giving comfort to the East, it is clear that the flow has been halted. Refugee Camp Well, not quite halted. The current strengthening of the wall makes it clear that some East Berliners are still escaping and that some still pass through the refugee camp at Marienfelde, West Berlin, where, after being screened by the Secret Service and police, they are questioned by a committee of former refugees to ascertain what assistance they are entitled to from the West German Government. The questioning is quite informal and if some of the refugees’ answers come a little pat, they can scarcely be blamed for putting the best construction on their actions. .And their sincerity could not be doubted. A pretty girl of 19, with a beehive hairstyle, who worked in the East German postal service, told the com- 1

mittee that she left—the method was not stated—because, as she put it, “they" wanted to win her to communism by making her work extra hours without extra pay. She complained and was criticised by the F.D.G., the East German Youth Movement, to which she belonged, for her “negative” attitude and because her appearance was “too Western.” There was no secret about the way the next two to appear before the committee had left the East. Boys of 19 and 20, they explained how, with seven others, they had stolen, a truck and driven it at speed through the wall. The truck actually stopped under a hail of bullets. but the occupants, unhurt, were rescued by West Berlin police and American troops when East Berlin police attempted to pull them back from the Western side of the border. They told the committee they decided to leave when strong pressure was brought to bear on them to join the “volunteer” East German Army. Visits were made to their homes and factory and finally the party committee in the factory put up a list of names of those who had not enlisted. Those who felt disgraced by this eventually changed their minds went to the committee and had their names removed. Fellow Workers’ Pressure “But we had no desire to pick up a gun for Herr Ulbricht. Is that unreasonable?” one of the youths asked the committee. He said that finally only their two names were left on the list, and that the committtee called on their fellow workers to boycott them so their work quota would fall. Their mates constantly urged them to give in and not to make trouble for everyone. “Don’t you know you may have to serve in the West German Army?" the youths were asked. “Yes,” one replied, “but there’s a basic difference if you serve in the army of a State whose politics you believe in.” Asked how they made their escape plans, the youths said they lived near the border and were able to observe what was going on. They noticed other youths doing the same thing, and made careful contacts with them. They all met one night in a pub and decided there was no time like the present to make the attempt. All of them had motor-cycles and they rode in military style to the home of one of the youths, who had observed that a chauffeur of the East German Lufthansa was in the habit of driving a truck home from his work each evening. Some of the youths filled sandbags and gathered old mattresses while others stole the truck. They packed the sandbags and mattresses in, huddled behind them and drove carefully to the border. “Then we made a quick decision and pushed through,” one of the youths said, he did not know till later that 250 bullet holes had been counted in the truck. If the wall has been effective in halting the flood of East German refugees, it has been effective in another way too. West Berlin has a resilience that is amazing and its development is equally amazing. But though it is helped very considerably by the West German Government—there is a 20 per cent, reduction in income tax in West Berlin, the Federal 4 per cent, turnover tax is abolished on goods exported to Germany or overseas and there are very favourable depreciation rates for new industries—Berlin cannot indefinitely stand a crisis as acute as the present one. Though it was not officially admitted, people were leaving West Berlin for West Germany last month in quite large numbers and investors were looking on the Berlin risk as high. Last month the West German Employers’ Federation appealed to factory workers to volunteer for six months’ “front-line” duty in West Berlin factories; and if this is the only way Berlin’s prosperity can con-

tinue, the struggle is going to be very hard indeed. The wall has ensured that it will be difficult. Not only has it stopped the drain on East German labour for West German and West Berlin factories. But the Social Democrats, the governing party in West Berlin, believe that the East German war of nerves will fail. The shock and dismay caused by the wall was beginning to wear off a month ago, and industrial production in West Berlin, the bigigest industrial city in Europe, is higher than it was a year ago. Investments are returning to normal and it is reported that more people are settling in Berlin than are leaving. This improvement is due, however, to artificial resuscitation, for the wall is growing higher and stronger and East Germans face appalling risks to break past it. The East German police will shoot anyone attempting to break out. The wall is closely guarded day and night, there are machine-gun posts and barbed wire along the canals between East and West and where the border once ran through a garden settlement at Reinickendorf, in th? French sector, all is now desolation. Two 6ft barbed-wire fences mark the border and behind them lies a strip of ground 100 yards wide from which everything has been removed—gardens, homes and even factories. A deep trench runs along the middle, the whole area Is reported to be mined, and powerful lights turn the strip into day every night. Only the most daring and resourceful can hope to get away. (To Be Concluded.)