Excerpt from Walter Elkins website USAREUR  Public Affairs Press release, June 07, 2002 "USAREUR 60 Years" complete article at: Part 1 :  "USAREUR  celebrates sixty years  of service" Part 2:   "USAREUR’s  Cold War years shape the future of the Army" Although the open East-West conflict had ended, political tensions  remained high in Europe. Particularly troublesome was the impasse over the  Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany, the former British, French and  U.S. zones of occupation) and the German Democratic Republic (East  Germany, the former Soviet zone of occupation).   Berlin posed an additional problem; it was surrounded by East  Germany, but Great Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet  Union all occupied sectors in the city.  At that time, travel between the sectors was unrestricted.   At the time Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev announced in June 1961  that the Soviet Union was planning to conclude a peace treaty with the  East German government, 3,000 East German refugees flowed daily into  Berlin.    Suddenly  on the night of Aug. 12, 1961, the Soviets closed the border crossing  points and began to construct the Berlin Wall, isolating the three western  sectors of the city both from East Germany and the Soviet sector, or East  Berlin.   In  response, the United States deployed an additional armored cavalry  regiment to Europe, along with additional support units.   USAREUR strength reached an all-time high of 277,342 in June 1962  as the crisis deepened. The command dispatched a reinforced infantry  battle group to Berlin to strengthen the existing garrison.   The  crisis cooled in Berlin from 1962 to 1963, and augmenting forces returned  to the United States.  Equipment  modernization programs during this period included the M-113 armored  personnel carrier, the M-14 rifle, the M-60 machine gun, the OV-1 fixed  wing observation aircraft, the UH-1B Huey helicopter, the M-151 truck, and  the M-60 tank.   On  Dec. 1, 1966, the separate headquarters of Seventh Army was eliminated,  and USAREUR became Headquarters, U.S. Army, Europe, and Seventh Army.   At the same time, France withdrew from the military structure of  NATO, and U.S. forces were withdrawn from France. The communications zone  headquarters moved from Orleans, France, to Worms, Germany, (and later to  Kaiserslautern, where as 21st Theater Support Command it  remains today). USEUCOM moved to Stuttgart.   The  first Redeployment of Forces From Germany (REFORGER) took place in 1968,  with the removal of about 28,000 military personnel from Germany.   The units and personnel withdrawn remained committed to NATO and  during REFORGER I – Return of Forces To Germany – conducted in January  1969, more than 12,000 soldiers returned to Germany for an exercise using  pre-positioned equipment.   In  the 1970s, USAREUR continued to improve its firepower when it received the  new M-16A1 rifle, the TOW anti-tank weapon, the OH-58 observation  helicopter, and the AH-1G Cobra helicopter.    In  the late 1960s and early 1970s, the needs of the war in Vietnam reduced  USAREUR’s assigned strength, sometimes drastically.  As the war began to wane, forces began to return to Europe,  and USAREUR adopted a new system based upon the community commander concept. In 1974, efforts to streamline the headquarters resulted in the  termination of the U.S. Theater Army Support Command, and its replacement  by a smaller organization, the 21st Theater Army Area Command, now known  as 21st TSC.   With increased combat and support  components in place, the command undertook a wide-ranging modernization in  the decade of the 1980s.  More  than 400 new systems were introduced, including individual weapons, field  rations, the M1Al Abrams tank, the M2 and M3 series of infantry and  cavalry fighting vehicles, the multiple launch rocket system, the Patriot  air defense system, the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter and the AH-64A Apache helicopter. The dramatic events of the late  1980s – the opening of the Berlin Wall, German reunification, and the  collapse of the Soviet Union – combined to change USAREUR again.  Intermediate nuclear weapons were withdrawn, chemical weapons were moved  out of Europe, and units began to depart the European continent while  others were inactivated.