The Wall, twenty years on
Tom Bower
Hasso Herschel gave up the escape business dramatically and in style. He was aged 38 as I watched him arrive at a rubbish tip in West Berlin on a warm spring afternoon. Getting out of his Mercedes, clutching a bottle of Chivas Regal in one hand and a PanAm zipper bag in the other, he walked slowly to a smouldering pile of rags. As the television cameras whirred, Herschel dramatically tipped the contents of the bag onto the fire and took a swig from the bottle. Thirtyseven West German passports, worth thousands of pounds, went up in flames. At the time he did not explain why he was, after 11 years, giving up a very lucrative career. It later emerged that one of his 'employees' had been killed in East Germany trying to help some unfortunates escape to the West. Herschel then explained that it was not his first loss, but the atmosphere was too sour to continue.
Herschel arrived in West Berlin by climbing over the wall on 15 August 1961, two days after it was built. Stung by his own experience and the tension which dominated the city, he immediately joined a group of idealistic young people devoted to helping others escape. At the time they were hailed by the media, the West German government and the whole Western world as freedom fighters. With considerable bravery they guided escapees over the barbed wire, through holes in the wall, across the Elbe and, most successfully of all, through a tunnel dug from a shop in the Bernauerstrasse, under the wall, to a toilet in a disused building 120 metres away. After a film of the actual escape was shown, Herschel was swamped with lucrative offers. Exchanging his amateur status for that of the professional, over the next nine years Herschel used many ruses for the £10,000 per head he charged. None was more successful than the employment of a Hungarian diplomat, based in East Berlin, and blessed with a special permit to drive through Checkpoint Charlie without being searched. Paid £2,500 per person, the communist ferried dozens of anti communists to the bright lights until he was caught. According to Herschel, he was quickly replaced. But six more losses later, having helped 'over 200 escapes' Herschel felt both disgusted and afraid. East German intelligence had successfully penetrated many escape organisations, and with the disappearance of the early idealism, too many criminals had joined the trade, wiping away both the glamour and Bonn's blessing.
To Herschel's anger, the wall is no longer a subject of emotion, protest or even dispute in Western Germany. It's a far cry from the anguish voiced 20 years ago. This week, the Bonn government hopes that the anniversary will be peacefully ignored by its citizens. Gone is the rhetoric of Kennedy's `Ich bin em n Berliner' speech.
In contrast, the East German government has organised a celebration. Although it is unlikely to have an audience of 750 million, East German television is giving live coverage to a march by the Kampfgruppen — the builders of the wall — down the Kark-Marx Allee. The climax for the 'tens of thousands' of spectators is a speech by East Germany's leader, Erich Honecker.
In his memoirs, recently published in the West by Robert Maxwell's Pergamon Press, Honecker proudly claims the credit for giving the actual orders to the Kampfgruppen to 'move' 20 years ago. Quoting two unimportant right-wing West German newspapers, Honecker claims that the West was preparing to 'stir up new unrest' in the DDR. Western politicians, Honecker claims, were describing the open border as their 'cheapest atom bomb, a 'thorn in the flesh of the East', and a 'frontline city of the cold war.' Could we afford,' he writes, 'to look on while the open border was exploited to bleed our republic to death?' By building the wall, 'peace was saved and the foundations laid for the further thriving of the DDR . . . by our action a valuable service has been done for peace on German sol and in Europe.'
However reluctantly, Honecker's claims cannot be totally dismissed. The wall has benefited East Germany not only economically, but also politically. Until 1961, East Germany had craved international recognition of its statehood, to guarantee its permanency. Honecker claims that the wall has sharply reduced tension in Europe. But even East German communists admit that the cost of removing their insecurity has been appalling. The country's concentration camp image has destroyed any moral advantage it possessed over West Germany, and blinded even the most objective inquirer to one of the country's positive qualities.
Unlike the mass of West German viewers, the millions who watched Holocausi in the East were not surprised by the Hollywood drama. Teachers in the East, unlike their counterparts in the West, have, with some limitations, been suprisingly candid about the crimes committed by Germans during the Third Reich. The reason is simple. The Germans who arrived from Moscow in 1945, the rump of the once powerful German Communist Party, were themselves the victims of the Nazis. During the first months of peace, British and American officials in Germany were convinced that the non-Nazis in the Western zones would be easily seduced by the promises of political freedom offered by the anti-Nazis in the East. In the years since the wall was built, the surviving Communist leaders of that period have claimed that they would indeed have won over the majority of the Germans had the Russians been more trusting and not interfered. Their ambition; they say, was to make a complete break from the past and there is little doubt that, in one important respect, they succeeded.
Combing through the official gover!1. ment records in London and Washington, if is quite clear that both the British and American occupation armies deliberately sought the help of seriously incriminated Nazis not only to rebuild, but also to govern their zones. School teachers and university professors who had taught Nazi racial theories and organised the bonfires of liberal books were reinstated in their old jobs; judges of the notorious 'People's court' who had passed death sentences for trivial offences, were reappointed to their posts; high-ranking Gestapo officers were put in charge of police forces; while industrialists who had financed Hitler and willingly employed slave labour in the most appalling conditions were actually encouraged to resume their directorships. There is no evidence that the same happened in the Russian zone.
But East Germany's hard line towards Czechoslovakia in 1968 and towards Poland now, the imprisonment of writers and the shooting of helpless civilians at the wall have revealed an intolerance thought to have been buried in 1945. Twenty years after the symbol of communism was built, the DDR is more secure and more prosperous, but it is unloved. And thousands are still dreaming about their escape.
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