Stora tråden om amerikansk inrikespolitik

With the closing of the Inner German border officially in 1952,[65] the city sector border in Berlin remained considerably more accessible than the rest of the border because it was administered by all four occupying powers.[60] Accordingly, Berlin became the main route by which East Germans left for the West.[66] East Germany introduced a new passport law on December 11, 1957, that reduced the overall number of refugees leaving East Germany, while drastically increasing the percentage of those leaving through West Berlin from 60% to well over 90% by the end of 1958.[65] Those actually caught trying to leave East Berlin were subjected to heavy penalties, but with no physical barrier and even subway train access to West Berlin, such measures were ineffective.[67] Accordingly, the Berlin sector border was essentially a "loophole" through which East Bloc citizens could still escape.[65] The 3.5 million East Germans that had left by 1961 totaled approximately 20% of the entire East German population.[67]

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Even with the Inner German border strengthening, emigration through Berlin began to swell, with 144,000 in 1949, 199,000 in 1960 and 207,000 in the first seven months of 1961 alone.[73] Orderly planning had become almost impossible in East Germany, with entire towns existing without physicians, crops going unharvested and fifty-five-year-olds put to work running street cars.[73] The East German economy was on the verge of collapse.[73] With fears of drastic action in Berlin, on July 15, 1961 Ulbricht called a rare press conference, insisting that "no one has any intention of building a wall," but made clear that "the outflow has to stop."[73] He added "it goes without saying that the so-called refugee camps in West Berlin"—the transit camps at which refugees were processed en route from West Berlin to West Germany—"will be closed down."[74]

On August 13, 1961, a barbed-wire barrier that would become the Berlin Wall separating East and West Berlin was erected by East Germany.[71] Two days later, police and army engineers began to construct a more permanent concrete wall.[74] The construction briefly caused fears of a military crisis, though only 11,000 western troops were located in Berlin compared to 500,000 Soviet troops surrounding them deployed in East Germany.[75] The completion of the Berlin Wall closed the biggest loophole in the Iron Curtain. It brought an end to a decade during which divided capital of the divided Germany was the easiest place for unauthorized east-to-west crossings.[76] Along with the wall, the 830 mile zonal border became 3.5 miles wide on its East German side in some parts of Germany with a tall steel-mesh fence running along a "death strip" bordered by bands of plowed earth, to slow and to reveal the prints of those trying to escape, and mined fields.[77]

Thereafter, only 5,000 crossed the Berlin Wall between 1961 and 1989.[78] Consequently, after the erection of the Wall, the total net emigration from Central and Eastern Europe fell even further to 1.9 million between 1960 and 1969, 1.1 million between 1970 and 1979.[63] This increased somewhat to 2.3 million between 1980 and 1989 with increased ethnic emigration after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the mid-1980s.[79] More than 75% of those emigrating from Eastern Bloc countries between 1950 and 1990 did so under bilateral agreements for "ethnic migration",[55] and religious minorities, such as those from Bulgaria (ethnic Turks and other Muslims), Poland (ethnic Germans, ethnic Hungarians and ethnic Jews), Romania (ethnic Germans, ethnic Jews) and Yugoslavia (ethnic Turks and other Muslims).[63][80] Most Soviets allowed to leave during this time period were ethnic Jews permitted to immigrate to Israel after a series of embarrassing defections in 1970 caused the Soviets to open very limited ethnic emigrations.[81] About 10% of emigrants were refugee migrants under the Geneva Convention of 1951.[55] Emigration from Eastern Bloc countries was as follows:[82]