The well-known images of East Germans eagerly pouring into West Berlin on
the night of November 9, 1989, have become symbols of the beginning of the
end of the Cold War and, more specifically, evidence of the failure of
Communist rule in the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany)
and its socialist economic system. Yet that historic moment was only the final
dramatic high point in the long history of dissatisfaction with living conditions
in the eastern territory of Germany, first occupied by the Red Army during the
defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 and, four years later, established as the GDR
when, in Winston Churchill’s words, the Iron Curtain fell across the continent.
Between the formal political division of Germany in 1949 and the final
hardening of the border with the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, a
constant population flow from east to west took place, a movement away from
Soviet-style socialism and toward western capitalism. East Germans stopped
voting with their feet only when the construction of the Wall in Berlin made
it impossible to leave; outside the capital, prohibitive barriers already had
stretched across the whole country. Nonetheless, many continued to try to
escape, and hundreds lost their lives, shot by border guards in brave attempts to
“flee the republic,” as the crime was cynically designated. To state the obvious:
there are no similar accounts of throngs of westerners clamoring to enter East
Germany. Between 1950 and 1989, the GDR’s population decreased from 18.4
million to 16.4 million, while that of West Germany (the Federal Republic of
Germany, or FRG) grew from 50 million to 62 million.1 This tally is an
indisputable judgment on the failure of socialism. The GDR system was unable
to provide sufficient grounds to convince its population to remain willingly.
Only the Wall and the rifles of the border guards prevented East Germans from
departing.