Western press comments
In the "Welt" of 14 November 1961, Sebastian Haffner argues against signing a special peace treaty with the Soviet Union: "By accepting August 13, the West has made its real position in Berlin much worse. By accepting a special peace, it would also undermine its legal and political position in Berlin in a similar way."
On 21 November 1961, the "Frankfurter Allgemeine" comments on the reinforcement of the barricades under the headline "Fortress Berlin": "The wall across our country that reveals itself to the whole world in the German capital under the searchlights does not lose its character because of its anti-tank trenches. It is a dungeon wall and offers no protection. Its purpose is just as hypocritical as the Nazis were when they arrested someone under the pretence of putting him into "protective custody". The new fortifications reveal the Zone still more unmercilessly as the forced detention that it has always been. (…) Other observers in Berlin want to see the feverish activity in their city since last Sunday interpreted as a demonstration, as a prelude to the Washington discussions. The German and American statesmen should keep in mind: the construction in Berlin is for the long term, with cement, iron, anti-tank obstacles; what is being built there will not be torn down any time soon. Well, we have heard such plans once already, even reckoning with a thousand years."
Since August 13, according to the American journalist Walter Lippmann in the West Berlin newspaper "Der Tag" of 24 November 1961, West Germany has been confronted with the realities that it has deliberately and artificially ignored over the past ten years. "The official fiction that East Germany will one day be freed and integrated in the West German state through free elections is over and done with." He says that the real German question today consists in finding "a practicable German form of politics", which includes the necessity of an agreement with Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
less