Checkpoint Charlie: Difference between revisions

Checkpoint Charlie was the name given by the Western Allies to a crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War, located at the junction of Friedrichstraße with Zimmerstraße and Mauerstraße (which coincidentally means 'Wall Street'). It is in the Friedrichstadt neighborhood, which was divided by the Berlin Wall. Many other sector crossing points existed in Berlin. Some of these were designated for residents of West Berlin and West German citizens. Checkpoint Charlie was designated as the single crossing point (by foot or by car) for foreigners and members of the Allied forces. (Members of the Allied forces were not allowed to use the other sector crossing point designated for use by foreigners, the Friedrichstraße railway station.) The name Charlie came for the letter C in the NATO phonetic alphabet; similarly for other Allied checkpoints on the Autobahn to the West: Checkpoint Alpha at Helmstedt and Checkpoint Bravo at Dreilinden, southeast of Wannsee. The Soviets simply called it the Friedrichstraße Crossing Point (КПП Фридрихштрассе) . The East Germans officially referred to Checkpoint Charlie as the Grenzübergangsstelle ("Border Crossing Point") Friedrich-/Zimmerstraße.

Checkpoint Charlie became a symbol of the Cold War, representing the separation of east and west, and — for some East Germans — a gateway to freedom. It is frequently featured in spy movies and books, such as those by John le Carré. The famous cafe and viewing point for Allied officials, Armed Forces and visitors alike, Cafe Adler ("Cafe Eagle"), is situated right on the checkpoint. It was an excellent viewing point to look into East Berlin, while having something to eat and drink.

The checkpoint was curiously asymmetrical. During its 28-year active life, the infrastructure on the Eastern side was expanded to include not only the wall, watchtower and zig-zag barriers, but a multi-lane shed where cars and their occupants were checked. However the Allied authoritie never erected any permanent buildings, and made do with the iconic wooden shed, which was replaced in the 1980s by a larger metal structure now on display at the Allied Museum in western Berlin. Their reason was that they did not consider the inner Berlin sector boundary an international border and did not treat it as such. In the years after reunification, a reproduction of the 1960s-era wooden shed was placed at the site of the original.

The Berlin Wall was erected with great efficiency by the East German government in 1961, but naturally there were many means of escape that had not been anticipated. Checkpoint Charlie was initially blocked only by a gate; a citizen of the GDR (East Germany) smashed a car through it to escape, so a strong pole was erected. Another escapee approached the barrier in a convertible, took the windscreen down at the last moment and slipped under the barrier. This was repeated two weeks later, so the East Germans duly lowered the barrier and added uprights.

On 27-28 October 1961 during the Berlin Crisis of 1961 the stand-off between the Soviet and the US tanks took place at Checkpoint Charlie.

On 17 August 1962, a teenage East German, Peter Fechter, was wounded in the back, shot by East German guards while trying to escape from East Berlin. His body lay tangled in a barbed wire fence, slowly bleeding to death, in full view of the world’s media. American soldiers could not rescue him because he was a few yards inside the Soviet sector. East German border guards were reluctant to approach him for fear of provoking Western soldiers, one of whom had shot an East German border guard just days earlier. Over an hour later Mr. Fechter’s body was removed by the East German guards.

A spontaneous demonstration formed on the American side of the checkpoint, protesting the actions of the East and the inactions of the West: a few days later, the crowd stoned Soviet buses driving towards the Soviet War Memorial, located in the Tiergarten in the British sector. The Soviets tried to escort the buses with Armoured Personnel Carriers ("APCs"). Thereafter, the Soviets were only allowed to cross via the Sandkrug Bridge crossing point (which was the nearest to Tiergarten) and were prohibited from bringing in APCs.

Western units were deployed in the middle of the night in early September with live armaments and vehicles, in order to enforce the ban. None of this ammunition was ever expended, although East German border guards in 1973 opened fire with automatic weapons, leaving bulletholes in Checkpoint Charlie, but no US personnel were hurt.

Although the wall opened in November 1989, the checkpoint remained an official crossing for foreigners and diplomats until German reunification in October 1990 when the booth was removed; it is now in the Allied Museum in Zehlendorf. The course of the former wall is now marked on the street with a line of bricks. A copy of the booth and sign that once marked the border crossing was later erected where Checkpoint Charlie once stood. It resembles the first booth erected in 1961, behind a sandbag barrier towards the border. Over the years it was replaced several times by booths of different sizes and layouts (see photos). The one removed in 1990 was considerably larger than the first one and had no sandbags.

Near the location of the booth is the Haus am Checkpoint Charlie, a private museum opened in 1963 by Rainer Hildebrandt, which was augmented with a new building in the 1990s. The two Soldiers (one American and one Russian) represented at the Checkpoint Memorial were both stationed in Berlin during the early 1990's. While the Russian remains unknown, the American Soldier is Jeff Harper, still serving on active duty in the U.S. Army as of 2008.

Developers tore down the East German checkpoint watchtower in 2000. This famous symbol of the Cold War was removed in a clandestine manner so as to attract a minimum amount of attention. The watchtower, which was the last surviving original Checkpoint Charlie structure, was demolished to make way for offices and shops. The city tried to save the tower but failed as it was not classified as a historic landmark. As of January 2006, nothing has been built at this site and the original proposals for development have been shelved.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Checkpoint Charlie.

• Haus am Checkpoint Charlie museum
• Video of Checkpoint Charlie Museum including interview with Alexandra Hildebrandt, Chairman of the museum
• Current Owner of Check Point Charlie Sign
• Berlin Wall history, by R. Langill
• National Security Archive interviews
• National Security Archive history
• Report claiming crisis began on 25 October. Sources give conflicting accounts of the dates when the tanks arrived at and left Checkpoint Charlie.
• Photo of tanks at Checkpoint Charlie in 1961
• Obituary of Albert Hemsing
• Resources for study of Berlin
• Notes on a meeting at which Khrushchev discussed West Berlin
• Checkpoint Charlie on Western Allies Berlin website including pictures
• Virtual e-Tour Checkpoint Chalie Shockwave Player required

Template:Geolinks-buildingscale