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ABSTRACT
The border guards were what made the Berlin Wall both function and lethal. Without them, people could escape nearly without any hindrance. Thus, it is crucial to understand the role of the border guards, who they were, and how they were prepared for their duty. They had a double task: preventing citizens, in most cases respectable and unarmed, from fleeing; and serving as an initial front-line defense in case of war. The military aspect of their mission, however, remained hypothetical, whereas preventing escapes became their daily duty. The duplicity of their task, with the military aspect determining armament, training, and structure no doubt increased the number of fatalities at the border.
KEYWORDS
Berlin Wall; German Democratic Republic (GDR); border guards; Soviet Military Administration; National Volksarmee (NVA); border police; secret police (Stasi)
When the Wall was built through Berlin in August 1961, severing the two halves of a city that were part of hostile opposing camps until 1989, the policemen and soldiers, who were later deployed to guard the Wall and prevent fugitives from fleeing, already looked back on a precarious fifteen- year history of border surveillance. Their double function at the Wall, however, can only be understood in the context of the earlier history leading up to this period. For this reason, before details of their daily routine and the ambivalence of their duty can be presented, it is necessary to first describe their function and entrenchment in the political system of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), beginning not with the time when the Berlin Wall was built, but with the founding of the border police.
The GDR Border Guards: From Police to Military
The border police of the GDR was founded prior to the state that it served for forty years. The Soviet Occupying Power in Germany created it in 1946 as a part of the police forces it controlled. Its main purpose was to guard the borders to the western zones of occupation.1 It was initially under the authority of the Soviet Military Administration (SMA) in Germany and took its orders from Soviet officers. Its tasks were to control the traffic across the borders, prevent illegal border crossings, and suppress any illegal transport of goods through smuggling and black market dealings...