Inner German Border

The inner German border was the frontier between the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, West Germany) from 1949 to 1990. 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 on 1 July 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, trenches, watchtowers, automatic booby-traps and minefields. It was patrolled by 50,000 armed GDR guards who faced tens of thousands of West German, British and U.S. guards and soldiers. 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 metaphor of an Iron Curtain separating the Soviet and Western blocs during the Cold War. It marked the boundary between two ideological systems - capitalist and communist, freely elected and totalitarian.