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Condemnation of the Wall by the West German Government (August 18, 1961)

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On August 13, 1961, the world was witness to the first steps on the path toward the realization of the stated aims [of the Ulbricht regime]. The Four-Power Statute on the City of Berlin, valid under the regulations of international law, has been broken once more. The latest measure is at once the gravest and most brutal one. The barricades set up within Berlin and between the city and the Soviet-occupied zone by zonal authorities at the behest of their masters are obviously meant to foreshadow the cutting-off of the free part of the German capital from the free world.

[ . . . ]

It seems like a macabre grotesque when the representatives of the Ulbricht regime stand up today and declare that the Germans in the Soviet-occupied zone have already exercised their right to self-determination.

The permanent flow of refugees in recent weeks and years tells a different story – i.e., the true story. It is instructive to call to mind the juncture at which this strong tide of refugees set in again. It started when the Soviet minister president made massive threats to conclude a peace treaty with the zone, which made the people living in the zone fully aware of the hopelessness of their situation. For these people, the announced separation treaty was a nightmare they wanted to escape under all circumstances. In their emotional desperation these people saw no way out other than leaving their homeland in the Soviet-occupied zone, abandoning their possessions, and risking their lives to make a fresh start and build up a new life in freedom in the Federal Republic. Their free decision to give up their homeland was the only way in which they could practice what remained of their right to self-determination. There was nothing left for them to do but “vote with their feet.” With that vote, these people have shown the world what they really want: they want freedom, not bondage [Unfreiheit].

(Applause from CDU/CSU.)

The Federal Government has reliable evidence that, despite sixteen years of a reign of terror by Communist functionaries in the Soviet-occupied zone, more than 90 percent of the Germans living there reject the regime that oppresses them, despise the slave state that was forcibly imposed on them, and have no more ardent wish than to be united with the Germans who live in freedom.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Soviet Union keeps asserting that the current status of the city of Berlin is one of the causes of the existing tensions. There is no need to reiterate that this assertion is incorrect. But it is certainly appropriate to emphatically point out that solving the German problem on the basis of self-determination is the best if not the only way to eliminate the tensions and difficulties.

(Applause from CDU/CSU.)

Such a solution would indeed be a genuine contribution to maintaining and securing peace in the world.

[ . . . ]

Nevertheless we are a long way from viewing military measures as a solution to this crisis, which has been artificially created by the Soviet Union. The Federal Government is not convinced that the Soviet minister president wants to trigger a war that would destroy his own country as well. In fact, the Federal Government believes that it is possible, now as before, to find a way out of the situation in which the world finds itself by means of negotiations.

(Applause from CDU/CSU.)

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