Inner German border

The inner German border (German: innerdeutsche Grenze or deutsch–deutsche Grenze; initially also Zonengrenze, lit. 'zonal boundary') was the border between the German Democratic Republic (GDR or East Germany) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG or West Germany) from 1949 to 1990. It ran north–south in a 1,381-kilometre-long (858 mi) irregular L-shaped line from Dassow at the Baltic Sea to Eichigt at the border with Czechoslovakia. The better-known Berlin Wall was a physically separate, less elaborate, and much shorter border barrier surrounding West Berlin, more than 170 kilometres (110 mi) to the east of the inner German border.

The inner German border was formally established by the Potsdam Agreement on 1 August 1945 as the boundary between the Western and Soviet occupation zones in Allied-occupied Germany. On the Eastern side, it was made one of the world's most heavily fortified frontiers, defined by a continuous line of high metal fences and walls, barbed wire, alarms, anti-vehicle ditches, watchtowers, automatic booby traps and minefields. It was patrolled by 50,000 armed Border Troops of the GDR who faced tens of thousands of West German, British and US guards and soldiers. In the hinterlands behind the border, more than a million NATO and Warsaw Pact troops awaited the possible outbreak of World War III in Europe. It was a physical manifestation of Winston Churchill's metaphorical Iron Curtain that separated the Soviet and Western blocs during the Cold War. Built by the East German government in phases from 1952 to the late 1980s, the fortifications were constructed to stop Republikflucht, the large-scale emigration of East German citizens to the West, about 1,000 of whom are said to have died trying to cross it during its 45-year existence. It caused widespread economic and social disruption on both sides; East Germans living nearby suffered especially draconian restrictions.

On 9 November 1989, during Die Wende, the East German government announced the opening of the inner German border and the Berlin Wall. Subsequently, millions of East Germans poured into the West to visit, and hundreds of thousands moved permanently to the West in the following months. More crossings were opened, and ties between long-divided communities were re-established as border controls became little more than a cursory formality. The inner German border was not completely abandoned until 1 July 1990, exactly 45 years to the day since its establishment, and only three months before German reunification formally ended the GDR. Little remains of its fortifications, and its route has been declared part of a European Green Belt linking national parks and nature reserves along the course of the old Iron Curtain from the Arctic Circle to the Black Sea. Museums and memorials along the old border commemorate the division and the reunification of Germany and, in some places, preserve elements of the fortifications.