The GDR closed its western frontier in May 1952 and, in the operation officially codenamed Aktion Ungeziefer, expelled from the new restricted strip residents judged politically unreliable, relocating them into the interior; a second sweep, Aktion Kornblume, followed the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The fortifications — minefields, automatic firing devices, watchtowers and a wall around West Berlin — were directed inwards, at the state's own population, and unauthorised departure was a criminal offence under the Republikflucht provisions. At least 140 people were killed at the Berlin Wall and several hundred more along the wider frontier, according to counts by the Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam and the Berlin Wall Memorial; the exact figure remains disputed because of differences over which deaths to include. The system held roughly 17 million people in place for 28 years and is the largest state confinement of a population by movement control in postwar Europe. It fills the gap in the atlas between the postwar expulsions and 1989.
The German Democratic Republic sealed its western frontier, cleared the population of the border strip, and criminalised unauthorised departure by its own citizens
The GDR's population was about 18.4 million in 1952 and 16.4 million in 1989, the decline driven largely by the 3.5-4 million who left before the Berlin Wall was built in August 1961. After 1961 emigration was criminalised as Republikflucht; around 5,000 escaped over the border and at least 140 were killed at the Berlin Wall, with several hundred more along the inner-German border. The border strip clearances, Aktion Ungeziefer in 1952 and Aktion Kornblume in 1961, forcibly resettled roughly 11,000-12,000 people from the frontier zone.
The low figure is the Berlin Wall Memorial and Centre for Contemporary History count of people killed at the Berlin Wall between 1961 and 1989; the high end covers the whole inner-German frontier and includes contested categories such as border guards shot by colleagues, people who drowned in the Baltic attempting to escape, and those who died of heart failure at checkpoints.
Stasi and district administration records released after 1990 document the border-strip expulsions, the demolition of houses in the strip and the imprisonment of citizens for attempted departure.
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