13 August 1961
People’s Police seal off the borders to the Soviet sector. From the early morning, streets in the middle of Berlin are ripped up, pieces of asphalt and paving stones are piled up to form barricades, concrete posts are driven into the ground and barbed-wire barriers are erected. The West Berliners stand on one side of the sector border, the East Berliners and residents of the surrounding area on the other, all of them stunned. The bystanders on the eastern side are held in check with machine guns by Combat Groups and People’s Police; in Allied-controlled West Berlin, police guard the border barriers against distraught citizens.
The surface of Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse is torn up to make vehicle traffic impossible. Despite the sealing-off operation, from Saturday midday to Sunday afternoon, 4 p.m., 800 refugees still register in West Berlin.
The "Journal der Handlung" ("Journal of the Operation"), a logbook on the operation kept by the East Berlin People’s Police, describes in minute detail the resistance, the rage and the despair of people, particularly in the eastern part of the city, and records the protests ("provocations") in the western part.
The Ruling Mayor of Berlin, Willy Brandt, inspects the measures taken to seal off the border. At 9.15 a.m., Brandt chairs a special sitting of the West Berlin Senate. At the same time, the western city commanders have met in the Allied city command centre in the Berlin district of Dahlem. At the special sitting of the Senate, which is attended by the chief of police as well, the Senator for Internal Affairs, Joachim Lipschitz, gives a progress report. A communiqué on the meeting says: "The Berlin Senate condemns the unlawful and inhuman measures taken by the splitters of Germany, the oppressors of East Berlin and the menacers of West Berlin. Sealing off the Zone and the Soviet sector from West Berlin means that the barrier of a concentration camp has been set up through the middle of Berlin. The Senate and the people of Berlin expect the Western powers to take decisive steps with regard to the Soviet government.
In Bonn, West German Chancellor has been kept abreast of the sealing-off operation in Berlin since the early morning. After meeting with State Secretary Hans Globke and the Chairman of the CDU parliamentary group, Heinrich Krone, the Chancellor makes his first statement on the situation to a RIAS radio reporter in the late afternoon. Adenauer calls for calm: "Together with our allies, the necessary countermeasures are being implemented. The West German government asks all Germans to have trust in these measures. It is of paramount importance to respond firmly but calmly to the provocation of the East and to do nothing that can only make the situation more difficult without improving it."
In the evening in Washington, US Secretary of State Dean Rusk issues a statement made in consultation with President Kennedy. The main sentence is: "Present reports indicate that the measures undertaken so far are directed against the residents of East Berlin and East Germany and not against the Allied position in West Berlin or the access routes to West Berlin." However, he says that the restrictions on traffic within Berlin are a violation of the Four Power Agreement of 1949 and will be the subject of a vehement protest "via appropriate channels".
