uarantees, this one contains a joker, for the Constitution also says that the right to emigrate can be restricted by law.) As another step, East Germany established elaborate security measures three miles in depth along its eight-hundred-and-sixty-mile border with West Germany. Yet as long as the escape route through Berlin remained open, the flow of refugees could not be staunched. It was not difficult for an East German to travel to East Berlin, and, once there, he needed only to buy a ticket on the U-Bahn (subway) or S-Bahn (elevated) and ride to West Berlin. Some refugees walked across the border; others took a taxi. All of them ran the risk of encountering spot customs checks by the East German border guards. From time to time, the Vopos—an abbreviation for the Volkspolizei, or People’s Police, and now, by extension, the usual term for all East German armed forces on border duty—arrested intended refugees who had given themselves away by nervous behavior or suspicious luggage, or had been denounced by informers. However, the great majority of refugees from East Germany used the Berlin route successfully. It was open to almost anyone who was ready to leave behind him, among other things, his job, his home, and his personal possessions.
The number of East Germans willing to accept these terms in order to get out of the country averaged about nineteen thousand a month from 1950 through the first half of 1961. In July of that year, 30,415 people crossed over. And in the first days of August, the stream of refugees reached flood proportions. The deluge was partly a response to the discouraging outcome of the Kennedy-Khrushchev meeting in Vienna in June, and partly a response to events within East Germany, such as a rise in the work quotas, a speedup of the collectivization of agriculture, and an intensified campaign of harassment of the “boundary walkers”—some sixty thousand people who lived in East Berlin and worked in West Berlin. Thanks to hindsight, it is not difficult now to see that some measure to stop the drain of manpower—perhaps the erection of a wall—was imminent. In fact, Ulbricht had suggested as much, though only in the customary reversible Communist terms. In mid-June, he had said flatly at a press conference, “Nobody has the intention of building a wall.” More clues turned up in July. The East German newspapers approached hysteria in their agitation against “slave trading.” More and more “boundary walkers” were stopped at the border or required to surrender their identity cards. By the beginning of August, the East German border police had been reinforced to six times their former strength. It was estimated that in the week between July 29th and August 4th every second Berlin-bound refugee was intercepted. Nevertheless, 10,419 refugees—a record number—got through. As the next week began, West Berlin newspapers reported that Ulbricht was in Moscow and that he had asked Khrushchev to permit the blocking of the border forthwith. A few days later, the newspapers announced that Khrushchev had sent his secret-police chief to East Berlin. At this time, too, the East German press was printing a great many letters from individual citizens and resolutions from groups demanding the immediate closing of the border; this was a telltale sign, for a similar spate of “spontaneous” communications had preceded every coercive measure undertaken in East Germany. All these portents contributed to the building up of a now-or-never mood among East Germans who had considered fleeing, and they left by the thousands. They swamped Marienfelde, the refugee reception center in West Berlin. The British Army set up tents around the center to shelter the multitudes waiting to be admitted; the American Army supplied as many as twenty-five hundred field rations a day to help feed them; and Pan American, Air France, and British European Airways—the three airlines that are permitted to provide service to West Berlin—flew about a thousand refugees a day to camps in West Germany. On August 11th, the West Berlin newspapers said quite specifica