As the Berlin Wall (called by the GDR regime the “Antifascist Protective Barrier”) became increasingly difficult to pierce, the escape attempts dropped off in number while becoming more inventive in method. Over the twenty-nine years of the Wall’s existence, folks burrowed under it, ballooned over it, slipped through it in hidden compartments in cars, smashed through it in trucks, dove under it in scuba gear, bamboozled their way through it disguised as Soviet officers, and passed through it enclosed in coffins. The most ambitious escape method was tunneling: in all there were twenty-eight different tunnels bored under the Berlin Wall, eighteen of them failures. A total of ninety-seven refugees escaped in this fashion; three were killed and three wounded. In April 1964 a West German pharmacy student named Wolfgang Fuchs (known as “Tunnel-Fuchs”), along with some colleagues from the Free University, began digging a 150-meter long tunnel from Bernauer Strasse in the West to an abandoned house in Strelitzer Strasse in the East. When the work was completed in October 1964, twenty-three men, thirty-one women, and three children fled through it to the West. The oldest escapee was seventy, the youngest three. “Hell isn’t really filled with wild animals,” observed the three year old upon emerging. More refugees might have escaped through this tunnel had not East German border guards found the opening after three days and closed it off. By the time the Wall finally came down, the West Berlin police had recorded 5,043 successful escapes and about as many known failures. If, as the poet Robert Frost wrote, neither man nor nature loves a wall, no wall in history has been less loved than the one that divided Berlin.
On August 19, the day of the first fatality at the Berlin Wall, Vice President Lyndon Johnson and General Lucius Clay, hero of the Berlin Airlift, arrived in West Berlin with orders from Kennedy to do their best to restore the morale of the West Berliners. On their way to Berlin they had stopped in Bonn as a courtesy to Chancellor Adenauer. At the airport Adenauer pointed out to Johnson an old woman carrying a sign saying “Deeds, Not Words!” With
That evening Johnson delivered a speech to a huge crowd assembled in front of the Schöneberg Rathaus. Paraphrasing a line from the Declaration of Independence, he intoned: “To the survival and to the creative future of this city we Americans have pledged, in effect, what our ancestors pledged in forming the United States—‘our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.’ The President wants you to know and I want 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. . . . This island does not stand alone.” These words were greeted with wild applause, though few West Berliners could have been very happy about the prospect of living on an “island” whose borders consisted not of sandy beaches but of an ugly wall. Their unsettling situation was best summed up by the Hungarian composer, Gyorgy Ligeti, who defined West Berlin as “a surrealist cage: those inside are free.”
In addition to delivering his speech, Johnson, along with Brandt, personally welcomed a 1,500-man combat unit that Kennedy had dispatched from West Germany as another gesture of Allied support for Berlin. The convoy had passed through East Germany without incident, which is fortunate, since the commander had not been told how to respond in the event of trouble. Johnson also paid visits to the American garrison and to the Marienfelde Reception Center. He had intended to visit the Wall but never made it. Instead, he did some last-minute shopping, which was difficult since all the stores were closed. Wanting some shoes just like the ones Brandt was wearing, he insisted that the mayor contact the store owner and have the desired items delivered to his hotel suite.
