January 1961
In 1960, 199,188 people fled from the GDR, three quarters of them (152,291) over the still open sector border from East to West Berlin. In January 1961, the stream of refugees continues: 16,697 people from the GDR arrive in the West; 47.8 percent of them are young people under the age of 25.
5 January: In Bonn, West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer celebrates his 85th birthday. Bishop Otto Dibelius conveys the best wishes of the Protestant Church in Germany and touches upon the serious situation in Berlin.
11 January: The press office of the prime minister (Ministerpräsident) of the GDR states that the GDR government rejects plans to hold the all-German Protestant Church Congress in Berlin and regards it as a provocation. West German parliamentary speaker Eugen Gerstenmaier claims that the main reason for this rejection is the SED’s fear "that one of the last and most important connections holding people together in the separated parts of Germany, the unity of the Protestant Church, works at a spiritual level against the division of our fatherland that the SED has deliberately created."
19 January: The economic crisis in the GDR puts paid to the resolution, taken at the 5th SED Party Congress in 1958, to demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism: by 1961 the per capita consumption of all major foodstuffs and consumer goods in the GDR was to catch up with and overtake that in West Germany. SED leader Walter Ulbricht informs the Soviet party leader Nikita Khrushchev that this plan has failed and that the predicted economic growth will not be attained. He says that the GDR will fall far behind West Germany, something which will not go towards reducing "illegal emigration". Ulbricht asks the Soviet leader for a loan of DM 800 million. If this is not possible, he says, "such a serious situation will arise in supply and production that we would be confronted by grave symptoms of crisis." The SED leader suggests to Khrushchev that the DDR should undertake a propaganda offensive so that progress could at last be made on the "peaceful solution to the question of West Berlin and the creation of a peace treaty." This offensive includes a letter in which Ulbricht as Chairman of the State Council wants to directly address US President John F. Kennedy. In his written answer of 30 January 1961, Khrushchev responds to the appeal for economic help by pointing out that negotiations between the two sides were currently under way. But he makes it perfectly clear to Ulbricht that any diplomatic steps towards preparing negotiations on a peace treaty were a matter for the Soviet Union alone. Only if the Soviets failed "to reach an agreement with Kennedy", he says, would the GDR perhaps, "under certain circumstances", be asked for suggestions. He adds, however, that it would be some time before Kennedy established his position on Germany.
20 January: John F. Kennedy takes up office as President of the United States. The main sentence in his inaugural address refers to relations with the Soviet Union: "Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate."
21 January: SED leader Walter Ulbricht orders Defence Minister Heinz Hoffmann to confer with the Supreme Commander of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (GSFG) to clarify questions of military security that would arise if the situation in Berlin and on the western border were to grow more serious. Ulbricht would in particular like to know to what extent the SED can bank on the military support of the Red Army in the case of a crisis and what further measures on the border are considered necessary by the GSFG. At the same time, the Operative Administration (Verwaltung Operativ) of the GDR Defence Ministry looks at plans pertaining to the "securing of the national border".
25 January: The CPSU’s main mouthpiece, "Pravda", publishes a speech by Nikita Khrushchev in which he threatens once more to sign a separate peace treaty with the GDR in order "to remove the splinter – the occupation regime in West Berlin – from the heart of Europe."
26 January: The Germany Academy of Agriculture holds a two-day scientific conference on "open-stall systems" for keeping cattle on the Soviet model. GDR agriculture is suffering a severe crisis. On average, 720 cattle are dying every day. The main underlying cause is the forced collectivisation of farms, which was almost completed by 1960: of the 850,000 private farms once existing in the GDR, only around two percent are left. On the same day, the "Green Week" exposition opens in West Berlin, and comparisons are drawn between agricultural policies in East and West. In his opening address, the West German food minister, Werner Schwarz, says that, after all the suffering inflicted on the farmers in the GDR because of the brutal expropriations, the West has to do everything it can to "stop their hope of liberation from dying out."
