Berlin Wall

The night of 12-13 August 1961

During the night of 12-13 August 1961, acting on Walter Ulbricht's order and under Erich Honecker's operational direction, East German security forces sealed the sector boundary between East and West Berlin and the outer boundary around West Berlin.

More than 10,000 border and People's Police, assisted by factory combat groups, tore up street paving, erected barricades and concrete posts, and unrolled barbed wire. National People's Army tanks stood ready to prevent breakthroughs.

The operation was prepared in secrecy and launched on a Sunday, in the hope that the population would be less able to react.

Thirteen checkpoints, thirteen stations

All but 13 border checkpoints were closed, through-running S-Bahn and U-Bahn services were severed, and 13 stations were shut to East Berliners.

More than 50,000 East Berlin residents were cut off from their jobs in West Berlin, and streets, transit routes, friends and families were divided.

Wire first, masonry after

The first-night barrier was principally barbed wire, roadblocks and torn-up transport links. The concrete walls, guard towers, vehicle trenches and death strip familiar from later photographs did not exist on 13 August.

Over the following days, guarded work crews began replacing the wire with a masonry wall about two metres high. Current research documents at least 140 Wall-related deaths between 1961 and 1989.