9 August 1961
In the period from 9.8.1961, 8 a.m. to 10.8.1961, 8 a.m., 1,926 refugees are registered at the Marienfelde refugee centre in Berlin.
The People’s Police and transport police step up their controls in suburban trains and underground trams to West Berlin and arrest numerous people suspected of wanting to flee.
In strict secrecy, preparations begin at the highest level for the deployment of armed forces on 13 August.
1. In the Ministry for National Defence, a small "operative group" consisting of thirteen officers is formed and transferred to the guest house of the National People’s Army in Wilkendorf near Strausberg under the pretext of a large-scale military exercise. The operative group has the task of preparing, by 12 August and without consulting those who are actually responsible, all the orders, plans for transfer, transport and supply, maps and intelligence connections that are necessary for the deployment of two divisions.
These two divisions are to be used as a second line of security about 1,000 metres back from the border:
The 8th Motorised Rifle Division from Schwerin, consisting of around 3,150 soldiers, 100 tanks and 120 armoured personnel carriers, is to work together with the People’s Police and border police to help prevent people breaking through the sector border in Berlin itself; the 1st Motorised Rifle Division from Potsdam, consisting of around 4,200 soldiers, 140 tanks and 200 armoured personnel carriers, is to prevent breakthroughs on the so-called Outer Ring of West Berlin.
In both divisions, the alarm is already sounded in the afternoon of 10 August; as night falls, they depart from their barracks to the ordered positions ("areas of concentration"); all participants are made to believe it is an exercise.
2. The most important task, however, is not given to the National People’s Army, but to the Interior Ministry: the security commandos of the East Berlin People’s Police, together with the riot squad, transport police and the "Combat Groups of the Working Class", are to form the first line of security on the inner-city sector border. In the Interior Ministry, another "operative group" consisting of seven officers has been formed. It has to prepare the deployment of all the ministry’s armed forces. This "operative group", based in a school of the German People’s Police in Biesenthal near Berlin, draws up all the combat orders of the Interior Minister, the plans for barricading the border crossings to West Berlin and for blocking off the train and underground connections as well as the plans for the deployment of all the forces and resources of the Interior Ministry.
The newspaper "Neues Deutschland" publishes the "first regulation on the implementation of the city council decision of 4 August 1961 on payments in democratic Berlin by people who have work in West Berlin". According to § 1, "people residing in the capital of the GDR (democratic Berlin) who work in West Berlin have to pay (…) their a) rents of any kind, b) leases for pieces of land, c) rates for electricity, gas, water and d) public fees (such as telephone, radio, television, rubbish collection, street cleaning, sewage fees, car taxes, dog taxes, waterways tax, compulsory insurance and administration fees of all kinds) in DM DBR (West Marks)". This obligation, it is stipulated, "still exists if a group of people living together has a family member who belongs to the people named in 1)". According to § 3, anyone offending against these regulations will be "punished according to § 9 of the disciplinary rules for economic crimes of 2 August 1950 in the version laid out in the revised ruling of 14 December 1953, insofar as a more severe punishment is not forfeited according to other regulations." The regulation is put into force with retrospective effect as of 1 August 1961.
In Paris, US Secretary of State Dean Rusk and other members of the American negotiating delegation report to the ambassadors of the United States in European countries on the results of the meeting of foreign ministers and the stance of the US government on the Berlin issue. The negotiations with the Soviet Union, says Dean Rusk, could take place in October/November. He says the United States is in the process of defining its negotiating positions, which means establishing the point of departure and anticipating the desired result. He adds that every piece of advice is welcome.
In the face of the great danger of a nuclear conflict, Rusk says, it is important to differentiate between the essential interests and the merely important interests of the United States. He says that the latter are not worth enough to provoke an armed conflict – and thus perhaps an atomic war.
He goes on to say that the really essential interests are a) the presence of the Western Powers in West Berlin and b) free access to the city. He says, however, that the United States is no longer of the opinion that a suspension of its rights of access would lead directly to the "big bang" of a nuclear war. For example, the mere transfer of rights of control to the East Germans will not in itself be a "casus belli". He says that the military plans will have to be changed, the aim being to extend both diplomatic and military options at the same time.
Finally, Rusk stresses that the strategic concept of the Kennedy administration has changed. In the minutes of the discussion, he states: "We were now emphasizing the build-up of conventional forces not because we preferred land war in Europe to hydrogen bombs over the US, but because we were trying to force political decisions before we took military action. We had given up the concept of a ‘bigger bang for a buck’ because it involves too great a danger for all states that their own as well as enemy territory would be subject to complete devastation. (.....) Notwithstanding Khrushchev's threats, we wanted also to increase his range of choice by not limiting our own choice to the grim alternatives of nuclear war or complete surrender."
Moscow: Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, an officer in the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet military secret service (GRU) in the general staff of the Soviet army, who also works as a spy for the American and British secret services, receives information on the imminent "establishment of border controls" in Berlin, as Khrushchev puts it. However, he cannot pass on this information until ten days after the sealing-off operations have begun, as he has no opportunities to convey information immediately. – Penkovsky is exposed in 1962 and executed in Moscow in 1963. (See Schecht/Deriabin 1993, p. 249/50)
West Berlin: the (US) "Berlin Watch Committee", the coordinating committee of the American secret services working in Berlin, discusses possible measures to which the GDR might resort to stop the stream of refugees. Some of the participants in the discussion have information suggesting that a sealing-off operation is imminent, but the sources are seen as unreliable. The prevailing opinion is that it is technically impossible to close off the sector border. Most of the secret service personnel think that the most probable option is a signing of the peace treaty combined with the closure of the border between the GDR and East Berlin. (Catudal 1981, p. 251 ff.)
