Inner German border

Inner German border
North and central Germany
Border installations at Schlagsdorf
Type	Border fortification system
Height	Up to 4 metres (13 ft)
Site information
Controlled by	East Germany  West Germany
Condition	Mostly demolished
Site history
Built	1945 (1945)
Built by	East Germany
In use	1945–90
Materials	Steel, concrete
Demolished	1990
Battles/wars	Cold War
Garrison information
Garrison	East: Border Troops of the German Democratic Republic National People's Army Stasi Volkspolizei West: Bundesgrenzschutz Bundeszollverwaltung Bayerische Grenzpolizei  British Army British Frontier Service  United States Army

The inner German border (German: innerdeutsche Grenze or deutsch–deutsche Grenze; initially also Zonengrenze) was the frontier between the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, West Germany) from 1949 to 1990. De jure not including the similar but physically separate Berlin Wall, the border was 1,381 kilometres (858 mi) long and ran from the Baltic Sea to Czechoslovakia.

It was formally established by the Potsdam Agreement on 1 August 1945 as the boundary between the Western and Soviet occupation zones of 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 GDR border guards who faced tens of thousands of West German, British and US guards and soldiers.^[1] In the hinterlands behind the border, more than a million NATO and Warsaw Pact troops awaited the possible outbreak of war.

The border 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,^[2] 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.^[3] It caused widespread economic and social disruption on both sides; East Germans living nearby suffered especially draconian restrictions.^[4]

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. On 9 November 1989, the East German government announced the opening of the Berlin Wall and the inner German border. Over the following days, millions of East Germans poured into the West to visit. Hundreds of thousands moved permanently to the West in the following months as 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,^[5] exactly 45 years to the day since its establishment, and only three months before German reunification formally ended Germany's division.

Little remains of the inner German border's fortifications. 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 reunification of Germany and, in some places, preserve elements of the fortifications.^[6]