1960: Manfred Smolka, East German border guard

ExecutedToday.com ^ | July 12th, 2013 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

On this date in 1960, Manfred Smolka was guillotined in Leipzig.

Smolka was among three million East Germans or more who escaped over the border to West Germany in the 16 years after the defeat of the Nazis divided the country.

In the earliest years, people sluiced over the long border just anywhere. By Smolka’s time, that perimeter was buffered by an “internal border” that made it difficult for ordinary people to approach near enough to West Germany to escape. Consequently, most emigration by the the late 1950s occurred in the divided city of Berlin — a flow that East Germany would finally stanch in 1961 with the ultimate in immigration reform, the Berlin Wall......

[linMcHlp]

One of the Cold War’s iconic photographs: East Berlin border guard Conrad Schumann leaps over the barbed-wire barrier into West Berlin on Aug. 15, 1961, just days after construction of the Berlin Wall began.

[BenLurkin]

The defeat of the Nazis divided the country?

ET never heard of the Iron Curtain?

[Flash Bazbeaux]

“The defeat of the Nazis divided the country?”

Sure did. Into four parts, by agreement. Berlin was also divided into four parts, by agreements. The US, British and French parts of Germany eventually united as West Germany, and the US, British and French parts of Berlin became West Berlin.

[BenLurkin]

After ‘the defeat of the nazis’ ‘the country’ was divided by the “allies”.

There. Fixed it.

[Verginius Rufus]

I once heard a first-hand account by a woman who had escaped from East Germany as a child with her mother, in the 1950s. It was very difficult to get close to the border with West Germany. They lived some distance from Berlin and it was impossible for them to get permission to go to Berlin--that was before the Berlin Wall was built.

The Deliverance of Sister Cecilia is an autobiographical account of a Slovak nun who escaped from Czechoslovakia a few years after the Communist takeover. The book describes how they escaped into Austria, into what was then the Soviet zone of Austria, but the Russians didn't bother them. A few years later the Russians agreed to leave their portions of Austria (which included a section of Vienna) in return for Austria agreeing to remain a neutral country in the Cold War.

[Verginius Rufus]

Initially it was a three-way split (US, UK, USSR) of what was left after eastern parts of Germany were given to Poland and Russia. Later France was given sections but they were taken from the American and British sectors—Stalin kept all that he had been given initially.