Checkpoint Charlie
A view of Checkpoint Charlie in 1963, from the American sector by Roger Wollstadt - Flickr: Berlin - Checkpoint Charlie, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14779751
I wasn’t alive when the Berlin Wall was quickly established in August 1961, but I had the opportunity to see it in person in the late 1980s, when its existence was still as chilling and ominous as it was at its inception. On a backpacking trip in 1987, our group took a train from Moscow to West Berlin, a route which then required transiting through the Soviet Union and into the heart of East Germany surrounding the divided city of Berlin. Traveling through the Soviet bloc was, as many writers and historians have said, very much like viewing the world in tones of grey and brown. The Wall was then covered in graffiti, and facing it on the Eastern side of Berlin were barbed wire, grim and dilapidated housing blocs, and the continual reminder of a barricaded world. As we crossed into West Berlin, the shops and people and buildings sprang up as though they had forced their way into a desert. West Berlin at the time had an amazing subway system, a world-renowned zoo, highly-lauded art galleries and restaurants, but East Berlin was deadened.
Part of our touring in West Berlin included an essential stop at “Checkpoint Charlie,” one of the original crossing points into East Germany from the American, French and British sectors of the city. Named based on the NATO phonetic alphabet, the Checkpoint Charlie crossing point was world-famous, not in the least because after the Wall was established it became the major border entry point for non-Germans, including US, French and British troops, diplomatic personnel and tourists. It was not an elaborate border stop, but rather kept over the period the Wall endured as a simple hut building that the Allies intentionally never upgraded as they wished to signal to the world that neither the checkpoint, nor the Wall, nor the Soviet militarized occupation of East Germany was permanent. That is not to say that the checkpoint was not heavily guarded, or that there were not surrounding installations that were capable of support if a border breach occurred, or that the border was not heavily patrolled by military personal on both sides of a wide DMZ; they were. But the white wooden guardhouse itself was quite small, and remained so throughout its existence.
Up and down the streets around it on the Western side there were museums and historical centers dedicated to detailing the history of the Wall, and the people who were murdered by Soviet and East German authorities upon trying to escape to the West. I remember vividly one museum with several exhibits showing early escape attempts of people hiding in secret, cramped compartments in automobiles, and notes from East Berliners which were tossed over the wall in 1961 in efforts to communicate with the West.
In November 1989, with those memories in mind, I watched on television as East Germany began permitting its citizens to leave for West Berlin, and then in amazement as the Wall was dismantled included initially by Berliners who attacked it with sledgehammers. As quickly and as stealthily as it had been constructed, the Wall was rapidly and publicly destroyed. In 1961 the developments were not as easily broadcast on radio or TV, but in 1989 the scenes and sounds were everywhere as the entire world was watching. Checkpoint Charlie soon was dismantled as well; the guardhouse in place when the wall came down was removed in 1990 and is now preserved at the Allied Museum in Berlin. http://www.alliiertenmuseum.de/en/home.html
In subsequent years, even the site itself has been threatened, as parts of it were paved over, and a proposed redevelopment plan now moving forward to put apartments and shops there.
For more information on the history of the Berlin Wall, and Checkpoint Charlie, consider reading “Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, the Berlin Wall, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth” by Iain MacGregor, a British writer who has done an excellent job of chronicling the experiences and perspectives of not only the Allies, but also the German, Soviet, and others outside the British, French and American occupants of West Berlin during its existence. https://bookshop.org/books/checkpoint-charlie-the-cold-war-the-berlin-wall-and-the-most-dangerous-place-on-earth/9781982100049.
-Laura Flippin | Wheels Up
