Word: ulbricht
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...sudden sealing off of the East Berlin border, and the decision of TIME'S editors in New York to put East Germany's Ulbricht on the cover, descended in one-two fashion on TIME'S Bonn bureau. But if surprised, Correspondents Robert Ball and William Rademaekers were not unprepared. They have been living with the story a long time...
...about interviewing West German and American sources on Ulbricht's past and present. Correspondent Ball could draw on eleven years of entries in his notebooks since he did his first story on Ulbricht and the East German Communists. That was back in June 1950, covering the famed East Berlin rally of "free German youth" for his home-town paper, the Owosso (Mich.) Argus-Press. In the process, he was arrested and held for several hours by the Volkspolizei...
Just in Time. For Walter Ulbricht, East Germany's goat-bearded, Communist boss, the wall was utterly necessary to preserve the very life of his dismal satrapy. For seldom had history witnessed so great an exodus as had been flowing Westward in great clotted spurts. "You are sharing in the Great Socialist Experiment," Ulbricht cried to his people in 1949, as he cut their food ration and trimmed away their liberties. Far from sharing Ulbricht's enthusiasm, almost 3,500,000 East Germans-no less than 20% of the post-World War II population-fled to the West...
Rooms with a View. But most were frustrated by Ulbricht's meticulous Communist planning. Even as the open street crossings were being barricaded, other squads raced to lock the gates of the S-bahn (elevated) and of the ten major U-bahn (subway) stations that serviced trains traveling into West Berlin. Guards were posted in the pitch-dark U-bahn tunnels to halt the more imaginative sneakers. After a helmeted Vopo guard at the new barrier leaped across the barbed wire and escaped to the West, East German officers began keeping their enlisted men several yards from the wire...
...hauled over the line and savagely beaten. Realizing that things were nearing flash point, West Berlin police slowly forced their own people a half-mile away from the sector border. As they backed off. the West Berliners, in one final retort before they were out of earshot, cried "Hang Ulbricht! Hang Ulbricht...