Question

The American answer to the abrupt closure of the East German border was designed to avoid an outright clash with the Red Army stationed in GDR while accomplishing two main goals: maintain a free access to, and presence in, Western sectors of Berlin; and keep up the pressure for the removal of The Berlin Wall.

To assert its right of access, the U.S. used on August 20, 1961 – only eight days after the border was closed – one of the authorized East German highways to move into its West Berlin sector 491 military vehicles and 1,500 troops in full combat gear.

The defiant gesture – a 110 mile-long convoy – was closely watched by East German police, but it did not provoke any immediate response. The Soviets, however, began tightening up their control of who entered East Berlin and in October 1961, GDR border guards – in clear violation of the agreement the divided the former German capital – refused to allow the entry of a senior U.S. diplomat.

Once again, the U.S. response was measured but unmistakably serious: the army moved a tank unit to Checkpoint Charlie, the crossing point to the American sector of Berlin. After the Soviets did the same on their side of the checkpoint, American and Soviet tanks were facing each other, as John le Careé described it, “across a hundred yard strip of road, their guns trained on one another’s turrets. Now and then they roared at each other with their engines, supposedly to keep them warm and ready to advance, but in reality they were psyching each other like boxers before the big fight.”

After 16 hours of this standoff, the Russian tanks pulled back on order from Moscow, and from then on, there was no interference with U.S. diplomats visiting East Berlin. The U.S. army, however, kept every three months asserting the Allies’ rights by sending a battalion of troops along the same East German route to the divided city.
Which of the following did the U.S. NOT do in response to the construction of the wall?

send soldiers to the wall

fire a warning shot at a Soviet tank

place a tank unit at the border

send a new battalion to the border every three months

Answer 1

fire a warning shot at a Soviet tank

The passage describes troop convoys, a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie, and sending a battalion every three months, but it never mentions the U.S. firing any shots — the tanks only revved their engines.