A: I really can judge only by my personal experiences. The tank confrontation, as I said earlier, was - seemed to us much more serious than the night the wall went up. Because I saw that personally. To see Russian and American tanks with motors roaring confronting each other over 50 yards, that was a frightening sight and it after the experience of the wall, just a few months before, it made us very worried about what the other side still had in store for us. Because surely on that particular occasion we were in the right. All we asked was that the access to East Berlin to official Western personnel, which by implication they had promised to continue, because in all those weeks since August 13th there hadn't been a single incident. That part, and of course it held then until the wall came down, that not only official personnel, but all foreigners, could go to East Berlin 24 hours a day. Or rather till 24 hours each day. So again I was ready to look for faults on our side, but the tank confrontation surely was not provoked by us. So I, apart from tactical and other mistakes over the years on the overall question I'd like to be more discriminatory and see part of the guilt on the Western side, but the overall question to me it's still clear that it was the fault of the Soviets.

A: That's an interesting question, to which I don't find an immediate answer. It scared the Germans of course, and by and large shall we say, democracy doesn't flourish in a situation of tension. It certainly had one very negative effect, and that was the early rearmament of West Germany, which I personally viewed with dismay, having lived under the nazis as a boy and so on, so soon after World War 2. But there the Korean War plays into that not only the Cold War in Europe, so it had its negative effects but it didn't in any sense, for instance narrow down the area of free discussion. I mean, nobody was ever so scared that he'd say well under these we're besieged so we must not be too open in criticism whether it was in the early period of the occupation powers which the Germans were not reluctant to criticise at all, or later of their own government. in that sense it did not have an impact. And of course there was a justified feeling that the German recovery in the concert of nations, the West German, was aided by the fact that the Cold War drew this dividing line and there was a general German recognition that their rehabilitation was very directly an effect of the Cold War. So in that sense there was again a positive effect.

(cut - end of interview)