Friday Interview: Cold War Hot Spot Checkpoint Charlie Remembered | Eastern North Carolina Now

   Publisher's note: This is a most interesting conversation on Carolina Journal Radio with retired Army Colonel Vern Pike gives us an interesting perspective on the Cold War.

   N.C. resident watched Berlin Wall rise as he worked in Berlin in 1961

   RALEIGH     The Berlin Wall served as the clearest sign of the Cold War that divided East and West for decades after World War II. Vern Pike, a retired Army colonel who now lives in North Carolina, served as the first officer in charge of Checkpoint Charlie the night the Berlin Wall went up in 1961. He's written a book titled Checkpoint Charlie: Hot Spot of the Cold War. Pike shared themes from the book with Mitch Kokai for Carolina Journal Radio. (Click here to find a station near you or to learn about the weekly CJ Radio podcast.)

    Kokai: For those who are unfamiliar with the term, remind us: What was Checkpoint Charlie?

    Pike: Toward the end of World War II, the Western Allies and the Soviet Union met in London, England, to divide up the occupation of Germany at the end of World War II. And Germany was divided into four occupation zones, and within the Soviet zone of Germany lay the capital, Berlin. And what they agreed to in November of 1944 was that Berlin itself would be occupied by the Allies: the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. And so the city was divided into four sectors, the largest being the Soviet sector, or what is known as East Berlin, and the western three sectors -- British, French, and American -- known as West Berlin.

    The East German authorities, seeking to find their own individual identity as a nation, sought to exercise control over all aspects of border control that are associated with international recognition. The East Germans were desperate to stop the outflow of their people from leaving the Communist regime -- engineers, architects, doctors, lawyers, skilled workers. The last week before the Wall went up, there were 13,000 a day crossing, just across the street, nothing more than walking across into the free part of Berlin. So the Berlin Wall went up initially as barbed wire and was later replaced by a wall. And the response to the action ... by the Western Allies was to take action to preserve and protect the freedom of movement within the three western sectors of Berlin.

    The one area that foreigners and Allies were allowed to use to continue to access the Soviet sector of Berlin was on Friedrichstrasse. And we, the Americans, had checkpoints established in the autobahn that connected the western part of Germany with Berlin, at Checkpoint Alpha on the West Berlin end and Checkpoint Bravo on the Berlin end of the highway that connected the city. And so the next checkpoint to be established was Charlie -- A, B, C. And we placed that down on the Friedrichstrasse to control Allied traffic moving across from the western sectors into the Soviet sector. That was the beginning of Checkpoint Charlie.

    Kokai: And so Checkpoint Charlie really was the spot. If you were on one side you were in West Berlin; on the other side, East Berlin.

    Pike: That is correct. Yes, exactly.

    Kokai: Your book is subtitled Hot Spot of the Cold War. In what way did Checkpoint Charlie end up being sort of a hot spot for this longstanding Cold War?

    Pike: Our one-time ally, the Soviets, walked out of the Allied Kommandatura, which controlled all of Berlin in 1948. And you recall we had a Berlin airlift when they sealed off West Berlin from the rest of the world. Then Gen. [Lucius] Clay, who was the senior American officer in Germany, said, "We won't stand for that, and what we're going to do is to resupply Berlin by air." And he started this round-the-clock, 24/7 Berlin airlift in 1948 and 1949. We broke the Soviet blockade. They suddenly realized that not only could they not sustain it, but they were losing all kinds of face in the international community.

    Fast forward to 1961. Now the puppet state of East Germany, the client state of the Soviet Union, wants to declare independence and sovereignty over what they perceive to be their part of Germany. And so they put this wall up to restrict the movement, and in so doing, they tried to restrict Allied movement. And Gen. Clay was sent back by President Kennedy to ensure that free access between the sectors was maintained and that we provided for the security of West Berlin, of the American sector. So everything that took place in Berlin affecting the Soviets and the three Western Allies and the international community took place at Checkpoint Charlie, on the Friedrichstrasse.

    Kokai: We're only going to be able to scratch the surface, but your book spells out a lot of interesting stories about your work as the first officer in charge the night the Berlin Wall went up. What's one of the more interesting things people will find in the book?

    Pike: Well, to me, the captivating moment was a series of events where military police armed escorts were used to escort U.S.-plated civilian vehicles with civilians inside, Americans inside, through the barricades and through the East German control points, into the Soviet sector of Berlin. Those were young 18- and 19-year-old soldiers, most of them draftees, armed with weapons, and their orders were, "If someone tries to stop you, you shoot them." We did that about 15 times, because the East German authorities would not ever, up to that point, allow the free access that we once had before the Wall went up. The culmination of those probes, if you will, was the night that the tanks came against our tanks at Checkpoint Charlie, which we later determined to be Soviet tanks. And that's what made Berlin such a hot spot because, had those been East German tanks and not Soviet tanks, we would have gone to war.

    Kokai: You also told a story about the interesting situation of people coming over who were soldiers from the East German side who ended up not wanting to go back, and so that changed their whole procedure.

    Pike: Yes. We had many incidents where the East German guards -- VoPos we called them, Volkspolizei -- one incident that I recounted for you was the trash wagon that would come down each day to take the trash away from the Communist Party newspaper, which was, interestingly, right on the border -- was on Zimmerstrasse -- and it faced West Berlin. And there was a barricade where the VoPo guards would come down, raise the barricade, the horse-drawn trash wagon would go down, police up the trash, come back, they'd lower the gate, they'd go back into East Berlin.

    At this one particular time, the young VoPo raised the gate as the trash wagon went down behind the Wall to the Neue Zeitung newspaper building. The VoPo turned and walked over to Checkpoint Charlie and said, "I surrender." And then the next day there were two VoPos to escort the trash wagon. And we always laughed about it and said, "Well, there's one VoPo there to watch the other one." Those kinds of incidents happened with some regularity the first three or four months that the Wall went up.

    Kokai: When you look back on your experience with this, are you surprised that cooler heads did prevail and we did not go to war, with the tension that was mounting around Checkpoint Charlie and the whole East-West Berlin split?

    Pike: No, I was not surprised. We felt very, very confident in Gen. Clay. This man was respected not only by Berliners but by the Soviets. And he knew how far he could go with the Soviets. It's not a surprise. I would say it was disappointment that we didn't take the Wall down. And in 1961 we could have done that. In fact, Gen. Clay had prepared -- had developed -- plans to do just that. And we now know, 45 years later, with the release of the Khrushchev papers, that had Gen. Clay done what he wanted to do, the Soviets would have done nothing to stop us. So my surprise is not really that. It's more disappointment.