Panorama | Panorama Goes to Berlin

In the days leading up to the construction of the Berlin Wall, this special edition of 'Panorama' has Richard Dimbleby reporting live from the city on the spot where a single nail in the cobblestones signifies the divide between Eastern communism and Western democracy. Meanwhile, Ludovic Kennedy visits a refugee camp in West Berlin and talks to those who have fled from the East, people in New York and Bristol give their opinions on the Cold War, and Foreign Secretary Lord Home talks about the stance of the British government as the crisis escalates.

The Stasi (the East German secret police or internal surveillance service) kept files on some six million people throughout their operations from 1945 to 1990. They created fear and paranoia among East Berliners as they looked for signs of anti-government behaviour, one effect being that fellow citizens would mistrust or betray each other (sometimes wrongly). The exodus of refugees from East to West Berlin reached 1,500 per day before the Berlin Wall was put up.