The Soviet party and state leader Leonid I. Brezhnev and SED General Secretary Erich Honecker sign an agreement in Moscow on "friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance" for the duration of 25 years. The agreement contains no references to Germany as a whole.
Brezhnev tells Honecker that in view of the growing inner German economic relations and the increasing amount of travel and visits between the two German states, he considers the border to have been passed "that goes beyond the control of the Politburo". Reproachfully, Brezhnev says that if 40,000 cars carrying Westerners visited a GDR town of 12,000 inhabitants in one year, as had been reported to him, the ideology would also come in with them. And, he asks Honecker, "How is the Secretary of the SED party organisation to know who is coming if there are 40,000 cars?"less
7 October
1975
The 26th anniversary of the founding of the GDR is celebrated as a "national" holiday for the first time.
9 October
1975
The foreign ministers of West Germany and Poland sign an agreement in Warsaw under which 125,000 people of German descent are allowed to move to West Germany.
14 October
1975
In an order for the coming training year 1975/1976, the head of the GDR border troops demands: "Targeted education and training of border troop members is to guarantee that firearms are employed decisively and accurately with a high sense of political responsibility according to the regulation on firearm use to prevent border breakthroughs, provocations and diversion tactics of the enemy."
28 October - 2 November
1975
Helmut Schmidt is the first West German chancellor to visit China, where he meets Mao Tse-Tung.
29 October
1975
The medal "Hero of the German Democratic Republic" is introduced for "heroic acts [serving] the general strengthening of the GDR, the enhancement of its international authority and its secure military protection".more
