(5 of 9)
Chanting "The Wall must go," some 5,000 demonstrators swarmed across the square in front of Berlin's city hall and used police loudspeakers to ask Mayor Willy Brandt what he planned to do about it. Brandt, who later blamed the outbursts on "a small minority of rowdies" and known Communist agents, warned them that they were playing into the hands of the Communists, and said that he had ordered his police to halt the demonstrations. Ignoring his advice, several mobs of more than 1,000 youths each headed for the Wall, where they cruised up and down hurling rocks at Vopos almost all night. Next evening another Soviet bus was twice waylaid by rock-hurling youths; later on, a wedge of car-borne demonstrators forced a Soviet staff car to seek temporary refuge in the U.S Army's McNair barracks.
The Escort Question. The rioting finally petered out after heavily reinforced police had put a moat of barbed wire around Checkpoint Charlie and arrested 128 troublemakers. The Soviet guard faced trouble of a different sort when its commander announced that it was going to drive to the war memorial in three armored personnel carriers, which by tacit agreement between U.S. and Soviet commandants enter each other's sector only if they do not display arms. When the Soviet guard showed up with submachine-gun-toting soldiers standing on the sides of the vehicles, General Watson insisted that they climb inside. After a 43-minute argument, the Russians agreed and were escorted to the memorial by MPs. After another three-hour sitdown in which they objected to the escort, the Russians retaliated by dispatching a "quasi-escort" to shepherd a U.S. convoy on the Helm-stedt Autobahn.
At the top level, away from the streets, U.S. and Soviet commandants went through an Alphonse and Gaston exchange calculated to observe the diplomatic niceties without meeting face to face. U.S. commandant Watson, who had earlier sent the Russians a note protesting "acts of terror" (it was ignored), sent the deputy .Soviet commandant, Colonel C.V. Tarasov, an invitation to attend a four-power meeting to discuss the disturbances (it was rejected). Tarasov then tried twice to see Watson to protest the stoning of Soviet troop buses. He was predictably rebuffed in both attempts. This merely widened the smile on his chubby face; Moscow was soon crowing that the Americans were not only unable to prevent hooliganism, but refused even to discuss their failures.
Concerned that the killings at the Wall might unleash uncontrollable violence in Berlin, Secretary of State Dean Rusk summoned Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to his office, urgently requested Russian authorities in Berlin to join four-power discussions aimed at reducing tensions in the troubled city.
Another Dictum. The Allies fired off stiffly worded protests to Moscow against the East German regime's "coldblooded killings." Before the Western notes could be delivered, East German policemen standing at the West Berlin border pumped 30 machine gun bullets into a fleeing 19-year-old East Berliner who was already inside the French sector. He died.