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Deutschland, Deutschland über alles. Uber alles in der Welt.
Stalin for Fuel. On the Soviet side of Potsdamer Platz, which abuts on to West Berlin like a huge picture window in the Iron Curtain, a group lit a bonfire and fed it with Communist banners and placards —a slogan "Forward to the Building Up of Socialism," next a huge portrait of Joseph Stalin, then a faded portrait of East German Commissar Walter Ulbricht.
By 11 a.m., small fires were burning in several squares and even in some buildings. A cordon of Soviet soldiers was thrown around the main government offices, but rioters got into the big state-run store to loot and destroy.
Then over the din came a new sound—the metallic clatter of tank treads on the cobblestones. A woman shrieked, "The tanks! The tanks are coming." Along Friedrich Strasse rolled eight field green T-34 medium tanks emblazoned with the Red Star, their 85-mm. guns ominously traversing the mob. Along other big streets came more, about 200 in all. For a while they rocked and snarled past and through the crowds. But one band of young rioters scooted close to a T-34 and jammed a log into its tracks, leaving it crippled with its crew inside. Others tossed sticks and big stones into the tracks of tanks.
At the six-columned Brandenburg Gate, on the East-West border, two men climbed to the top and to a billowing cheer tore down the Red flag and tossed it to the ground. The crowd gleefully burned it. On other squares and corners, the Red flag was ripped down, spat upon. It was past noon.
In half a dozen places at once, the machine guns and submachine guns began chattering. Witnesses in the West sector reported that the Soviet soldiers seemed to aim above the crowd; the Vopos fired point-blank at their countrymen. On the squares, the crowds broke. Hundreds threw themselves into gutters and doorways, and down subway stair wells to dodge the bullets. But not all made it. A man in Unter den Linden was crushed by a growling tank. Some demonstrators rushed out to pull his body away, then defiantly drove a crude wooden cross into the asphalt where he had died. Scores were hit by point-blank fire. At Potsdamer Platz, two West Berlin ambulances darted across the border to pick up wounded.
Curfew at 9. Near the West border, a gang of rioters pounced with a whoop of discovery on to a small grey automobile. In it, terrified, was 70-year-old Otto Nuschke, a collaborating Christian Democrat who is Deputy Premier in the East German puppet regime. The rebels pushed him across the West border. (After two days in the hands of West Berlin police, he went back to East Berlin.)
At 2 o'clock, the brand-new Berolina office building was fired. To the north, a crowd tore down overhead streetcar wires. Throughout all East Berlin, a city of 1,700,000, ordinary life was at a standstill while at the center violence went its course. More Soviet troops poured in, and so did reinforcements of the Volkspolizei. Gradually, East Berlin's rebellion guttered out in the rain. By 2:30, most of the shooting had stopped and the drenched crowds had melted away. A police sound truck circled the riot area, booming: "The Soviet commander of troops . . . has ordered a [9 p.m.] curfew . . . Prohibited is the gathering of groups of more than three . . ."