page_title: German Green Belt
section_title: Fortifications
hierarchical_section_title: German Green Belt / East and West border / Fortifications
caption_attribution_description: English: Extract from an English-language leaflet given to visitors to the en:Inner German border by West German border guards in Lower Saxony, depicting the configuration of the border as it was in the early 1960s.Schematic diagram depicting the inner German border system of the 1960s as seen from West Germany. The border cuts across a road which formerly linked east and west. In the foreground, Federal Republic of Germany territory with signposts marking the zonal border and a road ending in a gate just before the zonal border; a variable distance behind the zonal border, in Soviet zone territory, there is first a fence, then a 20- to 200-metre cleared area, beginning with the 10-metre death strip; after the cleared area, there is barbed-wire fencing, then a mine field with a width of 10–30 metres, parts of it covered with wires, then more barbed-wire fencing, a 6-metre control strip, a trench, then another strip of territory including a ground observation post and a watchtower behind the trench, bounded by a dotted line and a barrier on the road which resumes its course on the eastern side, beyond the mine field. Deeper in East German territory, there are woods and a trigonometrical station. The width of the 500-metre protective strip is marked by a double-headed arrow extending from the westernmost end of the death strip to the easternmost end of the territory containing the ground observation post and watch tower. The firing range of the guards extends from the zonal border itself to just beyond the end of the territory containing the ground observation post and watchtower. The prohibited zone is marked as having a width of 5 kilometres, also using a double-headed arrow, extending from the zonal border in the foreground to a line behind the trigonometrical station. The whole border arrangement is marked as "The iron curtain of the Soviet zone".
context_page_description: The German Green Belt is a project of Bund Naturschutz, one of Germany's largest environmental groups. The project began in 1989 facing a forbidding, 870-mile network of fences and guard towers once ran the length of Germany, separating East and West. Now, one of the world's most unusual nature reserves is being created along the old "Death Strip," turning a monument to repression into a symbol of renewal.
  For decades, Germany's former border sector remained an inaccessible region. It is one of the great anomalies of Germany's division history that in a place where a hostile line had been drawn, nature was able to develop undisturbed over a period of several decades. Apart from the no man's land itself, this also applied to extensive tracts of adjacent land because they were so cut off. This "Green Belt" is characterized by an exceptional wealth of species and habitats, most of which are now endangered, representing a system of interlinked biotopes of national importance, which joins together or passes through valuable swathes of land and intensively farmed agricultural landscapes.
context_section_description: The GDR side of the Inner German Border had by far a more complex system of fortifications and border controls than the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) which ran 1,381 kilometers (858 mi) long and between 50-200 kilometers deep, the German portion ran from the Baltic Sea to Czechoslovakia with the entire "Iron Curtain" extending from the Arctic to the Black Sea. The border fortifications were indeed formidable with visible electrified fences with barbed wire, guard towers, heavily armed guards, and mine fields.
  The first area which one would have encountered along the border, traveling from east to west, would have been the "restrictive zone" (Sperrzone).  This section was a 5 kilometer (3.1 mi) wide area running parallel to the border to which access was heavily restricted with permits and checkpoints. On the far side of this zone was the signal fence (Signalzaun), a continuous expanded metal fence 1,185 kilometers (736 mi) long and 2 meters (6.6 ft) high. It was lined with low-voltage electrified strands of barbed wire and when the wire was touched or cut, an alarm was activated to alert nearby guards. Behind this fencing came the heavily guarded "protective strip"  (Schutzstreifen). This area, that ran adjacent to the actual GDR border, was monitored by guards in large watchtowers constructed at regular intervals along the entire length of the border with almost 700 towers built by 1989. These towers made it possible for East German guards to fire upon anyone attempting an escape.
  With all of these deadly defensive measures in place, it came as no surprise that this "death strip" of land was referred to as "no-man's land." It would be fitting that the former "no-mans land" would become the future "Green Belt." From a nature conservation standpoint, the Iron Curtain was a blessing, a vast strip of land in which wildlife thrived. Freed for 40 years from disturbance hunting and farming, wild animals and plants prospered.
caption: Annotated diagram of the second-generation inner German border system in the early 1960s
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