flow one way: personal freedom and economic opportunity

Chapter One Early Post-War Border Operations 1945 - 1946

The problem was that almost immediately the flow became increasingly one way from east to west, thus creating tremendous logistic problems for the American forces in the care and feeding of POWs and displaced persons.
With the Russians the problems were much more difficult. Although the British were occasionally guilty of passing burdensome refugees and displaced persons into the, US Zone in order to avoid caring for them, the Russians did it on a massive scale.

Still another factor in this anarchic situation was the introduction of border incidents by the Soviet soldiers. Initially, they simply fired weapons into the US Zone; however, this dangerous, but fairly harmless, sport was followed by incursions of small groups of Soviet soldiers for looting and kidnapping expeditions. The Czechoslovak border was the scene of illegal crossings the Suedeten Germans being "encouraged" to immigrate to Germany.

The greater personal freedom and economic opportunity available in the West induced 1.6 million Germans in the Soviet Zone to cross into the western zones between October 1945 and June 1946, leading to a curious reversal of roles, with the Russians demanding that the zonal border be closed to all except authorized traffic.

The Grenzpolizei (national border police service) had been abolished upon entry US forces into Germany due to their Nazification and infiltration by the SS. Initially, border control duties were carried out by US tactical units of the Eastern and Western Military Districts assisted by the reorganized German rural police.