It began as a strike by East Berlin construction workers but quickly escalated into waves of protests throughout the German Democratic Republic. The 1953 uprising in East Germany is not as well remembered today as the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 or the Prague Spring of 1968, but it was no less consequential. On the 16th of June hundreds of thousands of workers took to the streets. A decree to raise production quotas in industry and construction was the initial catalyst, but soon enough the movement was calling for a free country and the resignation of the government. It was violently suppressed a day later by Soviet troops and tanks and East German police. Hundreds of people were reportedly killed.
Karl F. Mautner was a Foreign Service Officer assigned to Berlin at the time. He was interviewed by Thomas K. Dunnigan in 1993. Dr. Robert R. Bowie was the Director of the Policy Planning Council at the State Department. He was interviewed by Robert Gerald Livingston, Philipp Gassert, Richard Immerman, Paul Steege, and Charles Stuart Kennedy in front of a public audience at the German Historical Institute in 2008. The following excerpts tell of the American perspective of the uprising and its consequences.
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