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On Edge: Building the Border in East and West Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 May 2007

Edith Sheffer
Edith Sheffer
Affiliation:
The University of California, Berkeley
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Abstract

How did the inter-German border, created in 1945, become one of the most formidable boundaries in the world by 1952? The early boundary was not fenced, but just years in the wake of National Socialism's “Thousand Year Reich” Germans on both sides broadly accepted and enforced it against other Germans. These early divisions made possible the GDR's physical closure and fortification of the border after 1952. The hastily drawn demarcation line between Allied zones of occupation had rather quickly expanded into a legal, economic, political, and social boundary—in which both East and West developed a stake.

Type
Research Article
Information
Central European History , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , June 2007 , pp. 307 - 339
Copyright
© 2007 Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association

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