war,” he said. “We do not have equipment to compare with the East’s. One day this summer, when the atmospheric conditions were favorable for transmitting, their loudspeakers could be heard over half the city. Furthermore, a loudspeaker offensive is harder on West Berliners, because so many of them live right up against the wall. East Berliners, of course, have been evacuated for a considerable distance behind it. You heard their loudspeaker message once today. Well, then, you’ve heard it a thousand times. It’s always the same, and so is the purpose. They are just playing on our nerves. I don’t think they expect any immediate results from their propaganda. They believe they will get what they want if they wait. The loudspeaker offensive is to make us feel helpless. That is the object—to make us feel that nothing can be done, that we must just sit here and listen, and not be able to turn them off or do anything else about it.” I said that the West Berliners that I saw had seemed to respond to the offensive calmly enough, and remarked on the orderliness of the crowd on Wilhelmstrasse and the contrast between its behavior and the actions on the other side of the wall. We talked for a while about the way the West Berliners have reacted to the provocation of the wall, and the fact that, aside from the demonstrations following Peter Fechter’s death and the setting off of a few explosive charges at the wall, which caused inconsequential damage, they have created no incidents. “They are following the policy of the city government,” the editor said. “The West Berliners are told that they should be aware of the wall, they should not be content with it, but they should never attack it. This puts an unusual stress on the police, because they feel the same way everybody else does. They, too, have relatives and friends on the other side. But they have the responsibility of stopping any kind of activity against the wall, and they have done their job well.” The West Berliners’ obedience, I remarked, is praised by some people as a demonstration of exemplary discipline under stress, but is regarded by others simply as a manifestation of lack of will to resist. “We are not unfamiliar with the charge,” the editor said. “A few weeks ago, there was a newspaper publisher visiting here from Arkansas. He said, ‘I’m going home and tell my readers that the United States shouldn’t lift a finger to do anything about the wall until the West Berliners do something about it themselves.’ Of course, we reject out of hand any idea of appeasement at the wall. At the same time, we cannot ignore the fact that any serious exchange of fire at the wall could set off a chain reaction that might well end in disaster. If something happened at the wall, it could give the Communists the chance to do what they’ve always wanted to do—take over West Berlin on the pretext of intervening to ‘restore order.’ Also, the Allied forces are still in charge of this city. It is still occupied. All the authority that the Berlin government, officials, and police have is what is delegated to them by the Allies. As for a solution, we know that it can be reached only through an agreement between Washington and Moscow. Anything that jeopardizes the possibility of effecting that agreement is against the best interests of Berlin and of Germany. Meanwhile, we must be patient. The philosophy of the people in West Berlin is that one must maintain one’s existence, knowing there will be no calm.”
Later that night, I decided to have a last look at the wall, and just before eleven o’clock, I stopped by Potsdamer Platz, which before August 13th was one of the busiest spots in Berlin, crisscrossed by streetcars, buses, and all manner of other traffic almost as if no border existed. Since the wall was erected across the square, it has been rendered lifeless, and the area around it is languishing. Most of its grocery stores, small restaurants, and shops, which used to do a substantial part of their trade with East Berliners, have either gone out of business or been turned into souvenir stands. The 