Having had martial law duty foisted on them by the Soviets, the East German military treated the matter with uncharacteristic casualness. All orders were dutifully conveyed, but it didn't take long for the average soldier to understand that the officers had little sympathy for their forthcoming "socialist duty." Martial law was declared on 15 July and a curfew was imposed in most cities. The new situation was enforced without enthusiasm, and large public protests were met with ineffective army actions. A pattern of small-scale mutiny began, compounded by large-scale desertion by troops stationed on curfew duty. What was especially alarming was that the soldiers were deserting with their weapons. With Soviet troops largely confined to the kasernes, the NKFD terrorists began striking at strategic targets, especially military rail links into the bases. This was not amateur high jinks: Military-grade high explosive was being used. Soviet investigations found that it was Soviet explosives used in the attacks, but the Soviet press pointed an accusing finger at West Germany as being behind the NKFD activities. The propaganda campaign became so shrill that the West German government withdrew its ambassador from Berlin in late July "for consultations."
The situation continued to degenerate. Enraged by the halfhearted response of the East German Army to the martial law crisis, the GSFG commander, General Belov, decided to employ Soviet troops for crowd control for the first time. On 29 July, special Interior Army (security force) regiments brought in from the Ukraine were used to confront a large "peace" rally in Leipzig.
The Soviet troops were taunted by the crowd, and bottles and rocks were thrown. The Soviet soldiers did not have shields, tear gas, or any of the usual riot gear paraphernalia. They carried ordinary assault rifles. After nearly twenty minutes of abusive behavior by the irate German crowds, shots rang out. A Soviet investigation stated that German provocateurs had begun sniping at the Soviet troops from rooftops. But many Soviet officers present knew that the situation had simply gotten out of hand, and isolated soldiers had fired for fear of losing their lives to an angry mob. Several dozen Germans were killed.
East German troops on the outskirts of the city, on hearing of the massacre, mutinied. With many of their junior officers in the lead, they headed into the center of the city to settle some old scores. Sporadic street fighting broke out in a confusing battle between Soviet Interior Army troops, German police, and German soldiers. It was not clear who was fighting whom, but it was obvious that the two regiments of Soviet troops were inadequate to pacify the city. A motor rifle division from neighboring kasernes was rushed in the next morning to prevent any further fighting. The German troops did not give up easily, but they did not have an adequate supply of antiarmor weapons. In two days of street fighting, the Soviets finally managed to restore a measure of order in the city at a considerable cost in human life.
Kucherenko had read the report on the Leipzig crisis. He was appalled. Kucherenko was no bleeding heart, nor was he particularly sympathetic to the Germans. He had grown up on a steady diet of Russian propaganda about the German horrors against the Russian people in World War II. But he was a skilled professional soldier and did not approve of actions that threatened to bring on an unwanted conflict with NATO.
Kucherenko was fond of military history, and the recent incidents reminded him of historical examples of the failure of colonial regimes. He didn't like to think of Soviet involvement in Central Europe as a colonial relationship, but he was hardheaded enough to admit that it was. To secure a stronghold in a colony, acquiescence of the local population was a cheaper route to control than purely military actions that aroused the locals. Recent Soviet actions in East Germany had enraged the populace and were rapidly turning their grudging acceptance of Soviet control into stubborn and irrational resistance.
What ignited the troubles with NATO was the Kremlin decision to restrict travel into West Berlin. Significant segments of the political leadership in Moscow were convinced, against the evidence, that the West Germans were provoking the disturbances. It was a comfortable myth to explain why East Germany had so suddenly turned violent. West German television was doing nothing to calm the situation. A television documentary in late July on Soviet brutality during the 1945 fighting in Germany was particularly shocking to the Russians. Two other matters triggered the action. Many in the Kremlin were convinced that West Berlin was serving as a staging area for NKFD terrorist actions. The Soviets were convinced of West German complicity in the recent bombings and assassinations of Soviet officers. Furthermore, the city was serving as a magnet for fleeing East Germans. As a gesture of goodwill in the early 1990s, the Soviets had acquiesced to reducing the barriers along the border. East Germans were taking advantage of gaps in the barriers to flee into West Berlin. The local GSFG officers were demanding permission to beef up border security using army forces. But a special Central Committee delegation that had visited East Berlin in late July urged caution. East Berlin was a powder keg of frustrations. The delegation members had been brusquely informed by East German party officials that Soviet military action in Berlin could result in outbreaks far worse than those in Leipzig.
The restrictions in transit consisted initially of rigorous searches of automobiles and trucks using the roads leading into Berlin. The Soviets also threatened to block air routes into Berlin unless some form of Soviet or East German "customs" inspection of incoming flights was instituted.
The action was intended as a calculated overreaction to the developments in East Germany. The Kremlin, with little subtlety, passed the word to West German leaders, as well as the U.S. and other NATO states, that the action was intended mainly to coax some reaction from the West German government to help dampen the situation. The Kremlin hoped for some restrictions of German television broadcasting, as well as more vigorous efforts to hunt down NKFD terrorists on West German soil.
The West German reaction was not what the Soviets had hoped for. The Germans did not consider the Soviet actions to be a simple gesture of concern, but further evidence of Soviet ham-fisted and brutal occupation policy. The German public was horrified by the brutality of Soviet troops in suppressing the disturbances in East Germany, and no German politician could argue for conciliation. The Bundestag (West German parliament), under considerable public pressure, mobilized two divisions and moved them up to the border opposite the two main roads into East Germany. At the same time, Bundestag representatives tried to make clear to Soviet officials at the embassy in Bonn that this should not be construed as a military threat, merely a substantive action showing how concerned the Federal Republic was about the deteriorating situation in East Germany.
August was a nightmare in East Germany. Rather than the disturbances subsiding, they continued. The Soviet forces began to slowly disarm the East German forces. Tanks and other equipment were called in for special overhaul, only to have certain vital parts become suddenly "unavailable." East German Army units were put through particularly vigorous training, using up what small inventories of live ammunition were on hand. But Soviet officers were shocked at the level of pilferage from stockpiles and were fearful of how much equipment had been squirreled away by dissident troops. During the second week of August, they would discover just how large this cache had become.