Interzonal traffic

Inter-zonal traffic was the cross-border traffic between the

Second World War

.

History

Following the military occupation of Germany in May 1945, civilians were initially only allowed to leave their place of residence or its immediate vicinity with a permit from the garrison authority of their zone. By June 1945, the

hitch-hiking

.

On June 30, 1946, the boundary between the Soviet garrison zone and the Western garrison zones (the American, British and French zones) was blocked. The Soviet military administration in Germany (SMAD) had previously asked the Allies to secure the line of demarcation to the Western zones. A special

identification card, the Inter-zones Travel Passport

(Germany), known as the inter-zones passport, was introduced by the Allies. This had to be applied for by citizens wishing to travel in occupied Germany.

The passport was valid for 30 days and only valid for travel between zones within Germany. On July 23, 1946, all restrictions on travel between the British and the American garrison zone were canceled (in preparation for the

Trizone. On July 13, 1948, the Soviet Military Administration in Germany

(SMAD) issued a decree that travelers between the Western garrison zones and the Soviet garrison zone would also need a residence permit of the Soviet garrison zone in addition to the inter-zones passport.

As of November 14, 1953, the

GDR

government also stopped checking it. GDR inhabitants now had to apply for a departure permit if they wished to leave the zone's boundary. About 4% of GDR citizens traveled into the West with permission but did not return again.

Once the Berlin Wall was built, it became yet substantially more difficult to obtain a departure permit. Except for business trips, only pensioners with family matters to attend to were able to travel into the West and only for a limited amount of time.

Trains

On August 5, 1945, the first goods train went out of the

Ruhr Valley to Berlin. The non-stop passenger service, however, did not run until May 1946. The first (and until 1949 only) inter-zones express train, which was reserved exclusively for foreign travelers, ran between Berlin and Osnabrück

.

Berlin blockade

The railroad traffic between Berlin and the Western zones was interrupted between April 22, 1948, and May 12, 1949, allegedly due to structural work, but in fact because of the Berlin Blockade crisis. Because the single express train route in inter-zonal traffic (FD 111/112) between Cologne and Berlin was permanently overburdened, five additional express train routes started to run over the German domestic boundary on September 10, 1949:

FD 1/2 between Berlin and
Frankfurt am Main
FD 63/64 between Berlin and Hamburg
FDt 65/66 as an express train between Berlin and Hamburg
FD 109/110 as a second train route between Berlin and Cologne
FD 149/150 between Berlin and Munich

Road traffic

On August 25, 1946, an inter-zones bus connection was opened between Berlin and Hanover. However the bus traffic was interrupted again and again through political crises. For example, the Erfurt transport company had to stop interzone bus transport, which was also used to obtain spare parts, in 1953.

Air traffic

There was no regular air traffic between the Western zones and the Soviet garrison zone. The first domestic air route was only set up by Lufthansa on August 10, 1989, between Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig. However, several foreign airlines (notably Pan Am and Air Berlin) were permitted to provide service (called Inter-German Service) between West Berlin and several West German cities.