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CHECKPOINT CHARLIE & The Price of Freedom
INTRODUCTION
This is where East meets West in the heart of Europe. This is where Communism and Capitalism clashed during the Cold War. The crossing point between the east and west was called Checkpoint Charlie and was universally known as the epicentre of the conflict. Throughout its history, it was a place of high tension and drama.
It all began after the Second World War with the 1945 occupation of Germany. The United States and the Soviet Union began to emerge as ideologically opposed ‘superpowers’, each wanting to exert their influence in the post-war world. And unfortunately, Germany became the focus of Cold War politics.
It was an era of secrets, spies, espionage, covert operations, agents and assassinations. Many agents were operating undercover and living double lives to infiltrate enemy governments and societies. It was a ti
me when information was king, and fear and uncertainty ruled.
All this subterfuge, conflict and espionage soon became hot property in Hollywood. The James Bond series exploded and quickly captivated the world. But Hollywood isn’t real life and for the millions of people affected by the politics of the Cold War, it was a heart-rending, grinding and difficult time.
Join me on a journey back to the Cold War, when Checkpoint Charlie held centre stage in the fight for freedom, as we take a closer look at the price of freedom and what freedom really is. And as we do so, you may find the freedom you’re really looking for.
TEMPORARY DIVISIONS
In the spring of 1945, as the Second World War in Europe ground to an end, the four liberating Allied army forces, Britain, France, the United States and Russia met in the capital city of Germany, Berlin.
At the Potsdam Conference held between 17 July and 2 August 1945, they agreed to divide the city into four sectors, each one controlled by one of the occupying forces. However, Britain, France and the US soon decided to join their sectors.
It was only meant to be a temporary solution, but the four occupying zones in Berlin quickly led to a divided city and a divided nation. Although the invasions, shooting and bombings of World War II had ended, there soon arose a tension in the city, and a new kind of conflict in the post-war era.
Shortly after the end of the war in October 1945, the famous English writer, George Orwell wrote about the new threat of nuclear warfare between the two superpowers and used the term, ‘Cold War,’ in his article “You and the Atomic Bomb’.
THE COLD WAR BEGINS
The world had quickly become divided into two hostile camps, dominated by the two superpowers – the United States and the Soviet Union. The name chosen for this geopolitical confrontation between the two world superpowers was George Orwell’s term, ‘the Cold War.’
Even though the USA and the USSR had been allies and fought on the same side during WWII, there was soon tension and animosity between the two governments and the opposing systems they represented. The US wanted to curb the spread of communism, the Russian style of government in the world; while the USSR wanted to spread its influence as far as possible.
The first Russian controlled communist satellite government was formed in Poland in 1947. Followed by Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and other Eastern countries, including Czechoslovakia.
So, to combat the communist pressure, the US helped Greece and Turkey form capitalist governments in 1947.
But it was Germany, whose government was centred here at the Reichstag, that became the focus of Cold War politics and the superpower rivalry. The country was soon divided into two independent nations – East Germany and West Germany – and tensions escalated in the US-controlled West Berlin sector that was completely surrounded by east Germany – that was now under the control of Russia.
The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. In 1948 the Russian forces blocked the Western Allies’ railway, road and canal access to the now surrounded and besieged West Berlin. So, the Allies organised the Berlin Airlift.
For 15 months planes, known as ‘candy bombers’ flew more than 250,000 times to West Berlin bringing thousands of tonnes of necessary supplies of fuel and food to the people. The Cold War was truly underway.
And although there was no official war declared between the two superpowers, the US and Russia fought indirectly in proxy wars, in Korea and Vietnam.
The two powers also competed to get the upper hand on their military might, dramatically increasing their defence forces and military spending. The race was on to create the best weapons for war and to develop nuclear bombs in case of an attack. By 1949, the USSR began testing its nuclear weapons, followed by the USA’s test of the first Hydrogen bomb in 1950.
The fear in the USA of the spread of Russian communism and the threat of nuclear attacks was palpable and soon created the perfect environment for espionage. It quickly became a vital undertaking by both superpowers to protect their national security and hopefully prevent another major world war.
COLD WAR HEATS UP
Then the Cold War almost became hot in April 1961. Between 1959 and 1961, CIA agents in the USA recruited and trained 1,500 Cuban exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro, the president of communist Cuba. The failed incident was dubbed the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
Then Russia decided to set up nuclear missile launcher [sites] in communist Cuba, aimed at all the major cities of the USA. It was called the Cuban Missile Crisis and is considered the most critically dangerous event in the Cold War.
Diplomacy between the US President Kennedy and the Russian President Khrushchev, under the guidance of the United Nations President, averted a crisis. It was decided that America would not attack Cuba, and in turn, Russia would withdraw missile stations from Cuba.
After this precarious event, many world leaders wanted a ban on nuclear weapons. A Hotline was soon established between the Kremlin and the White House to encourage both countries to refrain from nuclear war.
But the Cold War continued to thrive, due to simmering tensions caused by the ongoing issue of a divided Germany. The city of East Berlin was the capital of East Germany and under the control of the Soviets, while the city of West Berlin, an isolated island 180 kms behind the Iron Curtain – or border between East and West Germany – was protected by the Allied Forces.
East Germany was known as the German Democratic Republic and its leader, Walter Ulbricht, had been part of the German Communist Party from 1919, the year it was founded. Ulbricht was a hard-line Stalinist whose goal was to make East Germany a model socialist state.
THE BERLIN WALL
For sixteen years after the end of WWII, the sector boundary was an almost invisible border marked only by the occasional painted line. Then without warning in 1961, Ulbricht directed the building of the Berlin Wall to stop the flood of people from East Germany leaving the communist dictatorship for a life of freedom in West Germany.
Now what made this wall so extraordinary was the speed at which it was built. In the early hours of 13 August 1961, ten thousand East German soldiers were sent into the streets of Berlin and began to seal the border and its crossings between the eastern Soviet Occupied Zone of Berlin and the western American, British and French controlled sectors.
But it was not just one wall, but two. Measuring 155 kilometres (or 96 miles) long and four metres (or 13 feet) tall, these walls were separated by a heavily guarded and mined corridor of land known as the ‘death strip’.
When people in Berlin woke up on 13 August 1961, they suddenly found themselves on one side or the other of the wall. The Berlin Wall divided a city, a people, and the world, tearing apart families and friends. People in East Berlin had lost their freedom to travel. In a sense, the Wall created the largest prison in the world.
The Berlin Wall soon became a powerful symbol of the Cold War, and divided Germany from 1961 to 1989. The building of the Berlin Wall now made the border between east and west a militarised border, and the most famous border crossing was Checkpoint Charlie. This was now the Cold War frontline, and became an iconic symbol of the division of Germany.
On 22 October 1961, soon after the wall was built, for the first time, members of the American Military Mission were asked to show their identity cards when they drove into East Berlin. The Americans refused as it breached an international agreement, but their vehicle was stopped.
In retaliation, the Americans stopped Soviet vehicles from entering West Berlin. There was a tense combat alert as US and Russian tanks faced each other until 27 October 1961, when the tanks retreated to their own sides of the checkpoint.
Now, life in East Germany before the wall went up was tough. But as soon as the barbed wire was rolled out, the escapes began. Some just jumped over the barbed wire as it was laid out, before the concrete barricades were built, but they had to become more inventive once the wall was erected.
They didn’t just escape over the wall. In the 28 years that the Wall divided the city, spy tunnels and more than 70 escape tunnels were built underneath the wall and around 300 people managed to escape through these tunnels to freedom.
THE ESCAPEES
But it’s the Mauermuseum that is known around the world for its extensive collection of historical items from the time of a divided Berlin, and its assembly of the amazingly inventive ways people found to escape.
One of the early successful escapees was 22-year-old Joachim Rudolph. One night he waded through a river, crawled through a field, and hid from the border guards until he had crossed the border into West Germany.
But what makes his escape so remarkable is that two months later, when the young engineering student is safe and studying at the West Berlin University, a couple of Italian students ask Joachim to work with them, to tunnel back into East Berlin to help some other friends and family escape.
Joachim willingly worked with them to build not one, but two tunnels and despite being betrayed, the group eventually assisted 29 people to escape from the East. One of the transport carts used in the tunnels can still be seen today.
People found novel, and sometimes virtually impossible ways to escape. Take for example, this Isetta. It doesn’t look like your usual escape vehicle and certainly doesn’t have enough space to hide a passenger.
But space was made for a person to hide by taking out the manifold, the heating system and changing the position of the exhaust pipe. Six times people escaped to the west in one of these tiny Isettas.
Kurt Wordel used a larger vehicle. Using three VW 1200’s like this one with a hidden area just large enough for a person to hide in the bonnet, Kurt smuggled 55 people out of East Germany between 1964 [and] 1966.
Another successful escape plan involved this Opel P4 Van that carried five people across the border. The car had armour plating placed on the sides and the rear, [and] the insides of the doors were filled with concrete so it was now a bulletproof vehicle! The driver just drove straight through the border crossing to freedom, despite being shot at by the border guards.
In 1977, the singer Renate Hagen was helped to escape East Berlin by hiding in one of the loudspeaker boxes in the back of a station wagon.
In their desperate attempt to escape and find freedom, some went over the wall, others went under the wall…Peter Faust went around the wall. In 1988, Peter escaped in an inflatable boat, with a surf sail built of hockey sticks. He sailed past coast guards in the Baltic Sea to freedom.
In just 16 minutes, this ultralight was used in a daring mission by two brothers. They flew into East Berlin, picked up their brother and landed safely back in the park near the Reichstag in West Berlin – all completed in 16 minutes.
One night, Hans Strelczyk, a former aircraft mechanic, was watching a TV program about the history of hot air ballooning. It gave him an idea. He’d long wanted to escape East Germany, and perhaps this could be the way.
So, with his friend Gunter Wetzel, they built a hot-air balloon engine from four old propane cylinders. Their wives stitched the balloon together out of pieces of old canvas and bedsheets. Then, on the 16 September 1979 the two couples and their four children floated over the border at 2,400 metres. They landed safely in Bavaria in West Germany.
FREEDOM IN THE HUMAN HEART
The desire for freedom lies well-entrenched deep within the human heart. Thousands of citizens of East Germany tried to escape across the Berlin Wall between 1961 and 1988. Only around 300 successfully escaped, but sadly more than 100 of them were shot and killed by the GDR border guards, or died in other ways during their escape attempt.
One summer’s day on the 17 August 1962, a year after the construction of the Berlin Wall, 18-year-old, Peter Fechter and his friend, Helmut Kulbeik attempted to flee from East Germany. They jumped out of a window on Zimmerstrasse and onto the ‘death-strip’. The two young men then raced across it, and started to climb over the two-metre (6.5 ft) wall that was topped with barbed wire, into West Berlin, right near Checkpoint Charlie.
As they began to climb the wall, the East German border guards fired at them. Although Kulbeik succeeded in crossing over the wall, Fechter was shot in the pelvis. Hundreds of witnesses watched helplessly as Fechter fell back into the death-strip on the East German side.
Despite his screams for help, Fechter received no medical assistance from the East German side and could not be tended to by those on the West side. Although the West German police threw him bandages, he bled to death after approximately one hour.
A memorial near the old border commemorates his death, and the many others who lost their lives trying to escape to freedom.
Finally, in 1989 the wall came down. The fall of the Berlin Wall and its dismantling ended the longest conflict of the 20th century. It was a pivotal moment in the history of modern Europe. On the 22 June 1990, Checkpoint Charlie was dismantled.
Foreign ministers and military commandants from both east and west, watched as a crane hoist transported the infamous portacabin which had guarded the crossing point for nearly three decades, to the heart of what was the American sector. The cold war had come to an end, in the lead-up to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Here in Clayallee, is the 1998 sculpture called ‘The Day the Wall Came Down’. It’s a memorial to the time on 9 November 1989, when the Berlin Wall was neutralised. The statue of the five wild horses jumping over actual remains of the wall is a symbol of freedom today.
MARX’S NIGHTMARE
The founder of communism, Karl Marx’s dream was to liberate millions; instead, his writings were used to create an empire that for decades was one of the greatest repressors of human freedom that the world has ever seen.
It was this empire that created the despised Berlin Wall. As the miles and miles of wall were going up, the Soviets and their East German government argued that the wall wasn’t there to keep people in. “No.” they said, “It’s been created to keep spies out”.
Very logical, except for one thing: the communist guards at the wall had their backs to the Western side, while they were facing the East, the communist side. Far from keeping spies out, they were keeping their own people locked in.
Thousands of tons of concrete and steel were created for only one purpose: to stifle the freedom of the millions of people behind it. The wall was a symbol of oppression. Then in late 1989, many of those people took their sledgehammers and began smashing down the wall. It was a powerful symbol of the human desire for freedom.
That desire for freedom was so great that, despite the danger, many risked their lives to cross the wall. The lure of freedom was so strong that thousands attempted to cross it. Hundreds of others died seeking the kind of freedoms that we so often take for granted.
There’s a basic longing in the human heart for freedom. We all want to be free. And yet, if history has taught us anything, it’s that freedom isn’t easy to come by.
Now, in the context of this whole question of freedom, I’d like to read a quote about freedom in the Bible book of John. Jesus said,
“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36).
Now, Jesus is talking about a different kind of freedom – a freedom independent of politics, a freedom that no government, whether a liberal western democracy or a communist regime, can give to anyone. And, even more importantly, it’s a freedom that no-one can take away, either.
You see, freedom is a big deal to God. God made us to be free. He wants us to live in freedom. He doesn’t want us enslaved to guilt, or resentment, or the pain of our past, or anything else. He wants us to live free.
Let me tell you something. The biggest prison was not behind the Berlin Wall. The biggest prisons in life aren’t physical. They’re the mental prisons in your mind. Maybe it’s a relationship you feel trapped in? Maybe it’s debt that you can’t escape?
Maybe it’s a habit you can’t seem to shake; or an addiction you can’t break? Maybe it’s a painful memory you can’t forget. No matter what kind of prison you’re in, you need a way out. And Jesus is your doorway to freedom and eternal life!
And you know what? We can have it right now, freedom and the assurance of eternal life through what Jesus has done for us. Remember, that though we were created free, we’ve all sinned and made mistakes in that freedom.
But the good news is that Jesus paid the penalty for those sins and mistakes, and so when we accept Him as our Saviour, we walk away, free of guilt, free from condemnation, free from the fear of eternal death.
JESUS OUR CHECKPOINT
Just as Checkpoint Charlie was the way to freedom for many behind the Wall, so Jesus is our checkpoint to freedom, and the only way to forgiveness, grace, peace, and the abundant life. Many feel freedom is worth everything, and Jesus was willing to give everything for you. He was willing to give everything so that you can be free for eternity.
He opened the door to real freedom, where we find release from fear, condemnation, and the bitterness, anger, loneliness, grief, addictions, hurts and habits that hold us back in life. He loved us so much, our freedom was worth His sacrifice on the cross.
Jesus wants us to enjoy and experience an abundant life and a life of freedom. In the Gospel book of John, [He] says,
“I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).
SPECIAL OFFER AND CLOSING PRAYER
If you would like to experience the freedom that Jesus offers, then I’d like to recommend the free gift we have for all our Incredible Journey viewers today. It’s the booklet, Freedom Worth the Sacrifice.
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If you have enjoyed our journey to Berlin’s Checkpoint Charlie, the frontline of the Cold War, and our reflections on the human longing for freedom that only Jesus can provide, then be sure to join us again next week, when we will share another of life’s journeys together. Until then, let’s pray to the only one who can give us true freedom.
Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the freedom you give us to choose life. We all want to be free, but freedom isn’t always easy. We want to claim your promise that you can, indeed, make us free. Help us now to choose you, to choose that freedom that you so graciously offer us. I ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
