20 August 1961
The sealing-off measures are continued; the construction of a wall running through the middle of Berlin progresses further, and escape becomes more and more difficult. In the evening, an "aimed shot" ("Zielschuß") is fired at an escapee at the Wilhelmsruh train station.
From West Berlin police reports: "In the night from 20 to 21.8.1961, 150 members of Free German Youth (FDJ) began putting up a second fence at a distance of three metres from the zone border in Staaken (SOZ) along Nennhauser Damm and Finkenkruger Weg. While nine layers of barbed wire have already been set up from Brunsbütteler Damm to the Staaken railway station, there are only cement posts erected on the rest of the section to Finkenkruger Weg. Four armoured personnel carriers have been deployed to protect the workers." – Four members of the People’s Police registered as refugees in West Berlin. At 12 midnight, the "highest alarm level" of the West Berlin police is ended after altogether six days.
West Berlin: Second day of the visit by US Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. Six motorised convoys of the US army with troop reinforcements, some 1,500 men, arrive in the city. In the afternoon, four convoys set off on a lap around the city; they are met with frenetic cheering from several hundred thousand people on their route.
Western press comments:
In the "Süddeutsche Zeitung", Hermann Proebst accuses West German politicians of holding on to illusions for too long ("Woe to Those Who Deceive Themselves"): "People who lived for years in cloud-cuckoo-land without ever noticing the sharp contradiction between superficial well-being and the misery of unsolved, completely unsolvable questions regarding our existence as a people, are now giving vent to their disappointment with loud laments. Up and down the country there is talk of a crisis of confidence in our relationship with our allies. This, too, is non-politics which can only produce unpleasant political consequences. If our confederates came to the conclusion that the Germans are simply fickle, unsafe and unfaithful by nature, then they would at the most feel absolved of the obligation to continue to take any great efforts in our interest. However weak and incoherent their political reactions may have been up to now, we should have known for years that that was how they were. And we didn’t do anything about it, even though we were seriously asked often enough to do our bit to put forward constructive suggestions. Despite all, we remain indebted to our allies, for we have hampered our freedom of action by obstinately clinging to illusions without exerting any mental effort towards averting a fate of our own making. Up to now, we could say the East loved falsehood, but the West loved self-deceit. We, too, have become used to taking pleasant appearances as truth. Now, this will not get us any further. There will be negotiations about an account that excludes the risk of a war because of the Germans. We will have to pay part of it."
