Historiography of the Berlin Wall Crisis

Historiography of the Berlin Wall Crisis, 1961

Summary for GCSE

Before the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, writing about the Berlin Crisis tended to be through the Cold War’s ‘Us v Them’ mindset. East German and Soviet writers blamed the West. Western writers also picked sides: traditionalists blamed the USSR, revisionists blamed the USA. This old way of thinking, still seen in school textbooks, represents the crisis as a “top down showdown” between the superpowers in a ‘grand game’ of diplomacy: tit-for-tat, action-and-reaction, with the emphasis on personalities like Khrushchev and Kennedy.

When the Wall fell, new research became possible because Soviet and East German archives opened, and this has led to significant revision of the way we see the crisis:

One new approach (called "depolarisation" or "pericentric") moves the focus away from just the US and USSR. Historians now see that Soviet policy was influenced by China, and Hope Harrison has shown how East Germany’s leader, Ulbricht, pushed the Soviets into building the Wall (the ‘tail-wags-the-dog’ theory, 2003). Equally, historians are beginning to appreciate that West Germany, Britain and France influenced US policy.

Another approach is "constructivism," which looks at the impact of underlying social factors – “history from below”, which incorporates ordinary people's experiences. Following his line of approach, Patrick Major (2006) found that the Wall was built mainly to stop the mass migration of people (especially farmers) from East Germany, and Mary Fulbrook (2011) realised that East Germany was not the dreadful dictatorship portrayed in western propaganda.

The Wall stood until 1989. For anybody on either side of the divide trying to write the history of the Berlin Crisis of before that date, it was very difficult not to do so through the prism of the Cold War confrontation of the time, and the focus tended to be ‘them-and-us’, ‘victors-and-losers’, who to blame.

East German and Soviet writers blamed the West for inventing the Cold War; they did so, not just because the state censored their output, but because the focus of communist writing was to interpret the events within a Marxist framework of capitalist expansionism.

Western writers, however, also adopted much the same ‘them-and-us’, ‘victors-and-losers’ approach – the ‘traditionalists’ blaming the Soviet Union, the ‘revisionists’ blaming the United States.

Although characterised as the ‘old-fashioned’ approach, this “top down, as a showdown between the White House and the Kremlin” approach, which portrays the crisis as a ‘grand game’ of diplomacy: tit-for-tat, action-and-reaction jousting – usually with an emphasis on personalities (Khrushchev & Eisenhower, Khrushchev v Kennedy) – has not gone away, e.g. Lightbody (1999):

“Khrushchev threatened military action to force an immediate Western withdrawal … Kennedy refused to be intimidated. In frustration Khrushchev resorted to unilateral action [and built the Wall]”

School books particularly tend to be conservative and out-of-date in their content, and you will be able to spot this approach in the language of today’s GCSE specifications and textbooks – how’s about this from a 2003 GCSE revision book:

“the Western nations had to be satisfied with a propaganda victory only.”

The Wall fell in 1989, and Soviet and East German archives were opened soon after, allowing new research – though Patrick Major (2010) is dismissive of the new histories coming out of eastern Europe:

“The vast majority of this material, it must be said, is routinized bumf, and German-speaking histories of the GDR in the 1990s tended to replicate this functionary’s eye-view of the system, producing painstaking, but often unimaginative accounts”

Some Western historians, however have used the opportunity to try to approach the 1961 Crisis from different viewpoints:

1. “Depolariastion” (James Herschberg)/ “Pericentric study” (Tony Smith)

(i.e. there were more players than the US and the USSR!)

Historians have been able to see that Soviet policy was NOT monolithic and unchallenged, but was affected by China, Korea, the Warsaw Pact countries … and especially by East Germany, which was not – as so often portrayed in traditional accounts – a mere cypher of the USSR.

The climax of this approach has been Hope Harrison’s ‘tail-wags-the-dog’ theory of the building of the Wall (2003), which sees Ulbricht, not Khrushchev, as the dominant participant:

“Ulbricht succeeded in maneuvering the Soviets into a corner whereby if they wanted to save their East German communist ally, they would need to close the border as he had been pushing for.”

Other scholars are beginning to appreciate Konrad Adenauer’s influence on the West’s policies and actions, and recognising the contribution of Britain and France.

2. ‘Constructivism’ – “the voice from below”

Other historians have looked beyond/below the diplomacy, and are trying to see the ‘bottom-up’ impact of wider socio-cultural trends. They are beginning to access ordinary people's memories, how the Cold War ‘felt’, “what was happening on the ground”, and to see the Cold War as an “intellectual realignment” – a meeting/clash of two popularly-accepted “missions”.

Following this line of approach, one historian of East Germany, Mary Fulbrook (2011) points out that East Germany cannot be pigeon-holed as a ‘second dictatorship” Stazi state, as it often has since 1989, that it was a “participatory dictatorship” and that there is a significant ‘ostalgia’ for life under the GDR.

Patrick Major (2006) sees the building of the Wall as primarily a reaction to the mass-migration – especially of farmers – from East Germany:

Just as the Soviets were to some extent prisoners of one of their geopolitically crucial allies, where the bulk of their European forces were stationed, the German communists were captives of their own inhabitants. Key groups without whom they could not hope to build socialism, such as doctors and engineers … The party was generally seen to be 'on the defensive' on the eve of the Wall … As one recent social history has claimed, the GDR operated as a 'participatory dictatorship', and it would be wrong to ascribe the people a totally passive role.