A few thousand soldiers intercepted, recorded, and analyzed every telephone conversation within a radius of 300 kilometers - from gossip to state secret.
'Berlin is the testicle of the West. When I want the West to scream, I squeeze on Berlin.' This statement by Nikita Khrushchev, the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union, made no bones about it: the tension between the East and the West was palpable in the early 1960s. Berlin was at the front of this Cold War.
From friend to enemy
A decade earlier, all parties still sat side by side when concluding the Warsaw Pact after the Second World War.
In that treaty, defeated Nazi Germany was divided into two: the West was controlled by the American, British, and French Allies; East Germany fell into the hands of Russia. The German capital - entirely surrounded by East Germany - was divided into four zones: a French, a British, an American, and a Russian zone.
But that togetherness did not last. Both camps disagree on almost every point: the economy, democratic participation,... Things quickly went from bad to worse. For example, after a disagreement over the new German currency, the Soviet Union blocked all access to West Berlin.
For two years (1948-1949), the western part of the city had to be supplied with aircraft, the so-called Berlin Airlift. Ten years later, in 1961, the Russians built a wall around East Germany to block the flight of millions of East Germans.
America's ear