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| Checkpoint Charlie in the 50's. |
Checkpoint Charlie or Checkpoint C was the name given by the Western Allies to the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War (1947–1991).
GDR leader Walter Ulbricht agitated and maneuvered to get the Soviet Union's permission to construct the Berlin Wall in 1961 to stop Eastern Bloc emigration westward through the Soviet border system, preventing escape across the city sector border from communist East Berlin into West Berlin. Checkpoint Charlie became a symbol of the Cold War, representing the separation of East and West. Soviet and American tanks briefly faced each other at the location during the Berlin Crisis of 1961.
More information: Mauer Museum
On August 13, 1961, a barbed-wire barrier that would become the Berlin Wall separating East and West Berlin was erected by the East Germans. Two days later, police and army engineers began to construct a more permanent concrete wall. 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 ploughed earth, to slow and to reveal the prints of those trying to escape, and mined fields.
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| American sector of Checkpoint Charlie |
The name Charlie came from the letter C in the NATO phonetic alphabet; similarly for other Allied checkpoints on the Autobahn from the West: Checkpoint Alpha at Helmstedt and its counterpart Checkpoint Bravo at Dreilinden, Wannsee in the south-west corner of Berlin. The Soviets simply called it the Friedrichstraße Crossing Point, КПП Фридрихштрассе or KPP Fridrikhshtrasse. The East Germans referred officially to Checkpoint Charlie as the Grenzübergangsstelle, Border Crossing Point.
On 17 August 1962, a teenaged East German, Peter Fechter, was shot in the pelvis by East German guards while trying to escape from East Berlin. His body lay tangled in a barbed wire fence, and he bled to death, in full view of the world's media. American soldiers could not rescue him because he was a few metres inside the Soviet sector. East German border guards were reluctant to approach him for fear of provoking Western soldiers, one of whom had shot an East German border guard just days earlier. More than an hour later, Fechter's body was removed by the East German guards. A spontaneous demonstration formed on the American side of the checkpoint, protesting the action of the East and the inaction of the West.
More information: History.com
Although the wall was opened in November 1989 and the checkpoint booth removed on June 22, 1990, the checkpoint remained an official crossing for foreigners and diplomats until German reunification during October 1990 when the guard house was removed; it is now on display in the open-air museum of the Allied Museum in Berlin-Zehlendorf.
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| The Bonds ready to cross Checkpoint Charlie |
The course of the former wall and border is now marked in the street with a line of cobblestones. A copy of the guard house and sign that once marked the border crossing was later built where Checkpoint Charlie once was. It resembles the first guard house erected during 1961, behind a sandbag barrier towards the border. Over the years it was replaced several times by guard houses of different sizes and layouts. The one removed during 1990 was considerably larger than the first one and did not have sandbags.
After the dissolution of
the Eastern Bloc and the reunification of Germany, the building at
Checkpoint Charlie became a tourist attraction. It is now located in the
Allied Museum in the Dahlem neighborhood of Berlin.
More information: The Guardian
The horrors of the Second World War,
the chilling winds of the Cold War and the crushing weight
of the Iron Curtain are little more than fading memories.
Ideals that once commanded great loyalty are now taken for granted.
Jan Peter Balkenende
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