No "West Berlin"

[Valamyr]

What if there was no western-allies occupation zones of Berlin? It was a strange concept to begin with, to have these enclaves in the occupied capital.

Assuming the USSR has full control of its occupation zone in Germany after the second world war, including all of Berlin, how much would change in history? Without the implicit threat of a soviet takeover of west berlin, would the cold war play elsewhere, or would it in fact simply remove a big tension point between the superpowers?

In other words, with a soviet Berlin, do we see a milder cold war, or simply a stronger and more daring soviet union?

 

[Andrei]

A few assumptions:
If the Soviets would had kept Berlin , the Allies might have not evacuated Thuringia and Sachsen-Anhalt.
The border between East and West Germany could have been on the Elbe , and the Soviets could have let the East Germans to keep a part of Silesia and Stettin , because they wouldn't want their ally to be too weak.

 

[oberdada]

Let's simply assume, the western Allies thought ion Dezember 1945, West-Berlin is to much trouble, and handed it out to the Soviets.

1. No immigration from East to West Germany between 1952 and 1961
(I think it was something around 2 million (mostly well-educated people)

2. no Berlin wall as a simbol

3. No place to flee from the draft law imposed in western Germany in 1955

4. maibe no uprising in East Germany in 1953

5. far less consumption of western TV and Radio programms in eastern Germany

6. No Airlift

 

[Steffen]

Funny, you could start the flame war already with the title:

"It´s Berlin (West) not Westberlin, you commie"
"Imperialistic scum!"

Ah the joys of consequence-free cold war reenactment.


consequences of no Berlin (West):

No "shopwindow of the west", with certainly less powerful emotive symbols of freedom and struggle against socialist oppression.

- The "GDR" gets away with calling Berlin it´s capital.

- Immigration to the west in the pre-wall period has to go through the green frontiers.

A lot less legal problems deriving from the 4-power-control status

and in the Federal Republic, the radical left needs another place to go into "exile". (Maybe Frankfurt or Hamburg?)

 

[Tyr]

I've never got this but- why was immigration from east to west Berlin such a big deal?
Sure in the early days with no border guards and all it was easiest but why later on? Surely the real east/west border would be better due to its sheer size- they can't guard it all.

 

[oberdada]

I've never got this but- why was immigration from east to west Berlin such a big deal?
Sure in the early days with no border guards and all it was easiest but why later on? Surely the real east/west border would be better due to its sheer size- they can't guard it all.

It was Easy to go from East to West Berlin till 1961.
It was close to impossible to go from East Germany to West GErmany at any other place, since the Eayt German Goverment closed down the rest of the Border.

I hope this answers your question

 

[Tyr]

It was Easy to go from East to West Berlin till 1961.
It was close to impossible to go from East Germany to West GErmany at any other place, since the Eayt German Goverment closed down the rest of the Border.

I hope this answers your question

Yeah I know it was easier in the early days but I mean later on, after the Berlin wall was up and all. Surely it was easier to try and cross over some barbed wire out in the countryside then getting past one of the most heavily defended obsticles in the world.

 

[Max Sinister]

There wasn't only barbed wire, they also had mines there, and armed soldiers who had to shoot on anyone trying to commit the crime of fleeing from the GDR.

There's also a joke:
Three East German soldiers have guard duty on the border. Then, some animals (deers and so on) run through the minefield at that place, and the mines explode and kill them.

The 1st soldier thinks: "Too sad! The poor animals!"
The 2nd soldier thinks: "Too sad! All those mines were expensive!"
The 3rd soldier thinks: "Too sad! If I was alone now I could flee, now that there are no more mines left!"

 

[oberdada]

Surely it was easier to try and cross over some barbed wire out in the countryside then getting past one of the most heavily defended obsticles in the world.

You had to get to the countryside first. You weren't allowed to come close to the border, without special permission.
I knew some east German guy who tried to flee through Yugoslawia.
He only got a permission to visit hungary,
and close to the yugoslavian border, some farmers reported him to the police,
they arrested him, and shipped him back to the GDR where
he spend some years in prison.

 

[Scomerger]

What the above posters said.

 

[wkwillis]

You had to put some effort into it. I read some guy talk about how he got out. At the Armenian border there were no guards or fences. You hitched a ride close to there, then at night you walked to the border and then when you got close, you walked in the countryside away from paths till you got to Iran. Then you hitched a ride to the US embassy and got a visa.
You could still do that in the eighties. Now it's very hard for a Russian to get to immigrate to the US.

 

[RKO General]

Funny, you could start the flame war already with the title:

"It´s Berlin (West) not Westberlin, you commie"
"Imperialistic scum!"

Ah the joys of consequence-free cold war reenactment.


Is there a joke in there i'm missing? In the Anglo world it was always West Berlin

 

[gtrof]

Maybe the wall moves? I bet immigration would move to the Elbe, new East/West German border. So to close down traffic the GDR and USSR really fortify the border.

Also with no wall prehasp the climate of the 60s is less tense? No Berlin Airlift to have one of the first conflicts of the Cold War. No Berlin standoff alters what leads up to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Khruschev doesn't meet Kennedy and forms the opinion that JFK doesn't seem like a strong man, thus begining the Cuban Missile Crisis, so no Crisis?

 

[Steffen]

Funny, you could start the flame war already with the title:

"It´s Berlin (West) not Westberlin, you commie"
"Imperialistic scum!"

Ah the joys of consequence-free cold war reenactment.


Is there a joke in there i'm missing? In the Anglo world it was always West Berlin

The red side actually won this because West Berlin is easier to say.

But the legalistic aspect of it was that West - and Ost- Berlin were not part of the Federal Republic nor the eastern part and stood under control of the 4 victorious powers (and therefore the Eastern Part of Berlin couldn´t be capital of the so-called GDR.

So the point is the naming in itself is some kind of political statement. (Although the western side was, as I said, not able to put it´s definition into everyday use)