19 August 1961
Together with some other people, the 47-year-old driver Rudolf Urban lowers himself down on a rope from his apartment in the eastern part of Berlin on Bernauer Strasse onto the pavement in the West, takes a fall and suffers a multiple fracture of the lower leg. On 17 September 1961 he dies in hospital as a result of the accident.
From West Berlin police reports: "The border barricades in the SOS and SOZ were extended further. – From 18.8.1961, 11.15 p.m., to 19.8.1961, 5.30 a.m., cement walls were built between Potsdam Square and Hindenburg Square and between Clara Zetkin Strasse (Dorotheen Strasse) and Reichstagsufer in the Soviet Occupied Zone (SOZ). Members of the People’s Police began adding barbed wire to the walls at around 10 p.m.. – In N4 and N 58, all exits to the Western sector and the cellar windows of houses situated directly on the sector border have been walled or nailed up. Passengers say that the northern exit of the Bernauer Strasse underground train station has also been walled up."
West Berlin: In the afternoon, following talks with Konrad Adenauer in Bonn, the American vice president Lyndon B. Johnson, accompanied by General Lucius D. Clay, arrives in West Berlin. The two men are greeted by hundreds of thousands of people. In a speech, Johnson stresses the American guarantee for West Berlin: "I have come across the ocean to Berlin by direction of the president of the United States, John F. Kennedy. He wants you to know, and I want you to know, and the United States wants you to know, that the pledge he has given to the freedom of West Berlin and to the rights of Western access to Berlin is firm (…). To the people of East Berlin I would say: do not lose courage, for while tyranny may seem for the moment to prevail, its days are numbered."
London: A Defence Ministry spokesman announces that Great Britain will send 16 tanks and 18 armoured trucks to reinforce the British garrison in Berlin. – The British prime minister, Harold Mcmillan, who seems to be enjoying a carefree holiday in Scotland, is in favour of negotiations with the Soviet Union, opposes counter-measures in general, and sees his country’s own little military gesture in an ironic light. He confides to his diary: "Lots of phone calls, morning and evening, with Alec Home because of the ‘Berlin Crisis’. The East German authorities have banned every movement from East to West Berlin. The stream of refugees had taken on such proportions (…) that they were probably almost forced to take this course. The situation is tense and could turn dangerous, partly because the West German election campaign is under way, but partly also because the Americans are very upset. (…) Effective negotiations can only take place after September 18 (the day of the German elections), but if preparatory measures are taken now, it should have a calming effect. (…) Kennedy has sent me a message about the question of sending additional troops to Berlin. That is nonsense from a military point of view. But I have said I am ready to send a few armoured vehicles etc. as a gesture. (…) The danger is, of course, that both sides bluff away busily and the catastrophe could be triggered by a small mistake." (Macmillan 1972, p. 392 ff.)
