Am 03.01.2012 01:48, schrieb Wolfgang Schwanke:
In 1987, the West German and West Berlin media (and authorities)
waged a big campaign against the GDR to force them to close the last
hole in the wall, and to act as a auxiliary police force of the West
Berlin cops.

People who landed at the Schönefeld airport and who had a transit
visa for the GDR could enter West Berlin via the Friedrichstraße
checkpoint. The West Berlin police did not want to establish their own
immigration control. They wanted the GDR border police to do it for
them. The Wessies detested the free travel across the Berlin wall...

The Western allies considered the boundary between East Berlin and West
Berlin a sector boundary not different from the boundaries between US
and British sector.

so they were dealing with fictions and not with facts. But facts are
stubborn things.

But it was not the Allied occupation forces which demanded that the
GDR close the Wall completly, but the West German and West Berlin
authorities.

Therefore West Berlin authorities did not install
any passport controls at border crossings between East and West Berlin.

But then they should not complain that people travel from GDR to
Westberlin. If they would have wanted to change that, they would have to
install immigration checks on _their_ side of the border. If they had
wanted, they might perhaps even been allowed to install those within the
Bhf Friedrichstraße check point.

Instead they asked the GDR government to close the Berlin Wall
completly, and not let anybody cross the border unchecked.

It is all a disgusting hypocrisy.


Cheers,
L.W.