The person who actually opened the wall came to our school. The Borderguard that was in the video came to our school and talked about his life and that moment his name is Harald Jäger and is actually a nice dude
My brother had a professor who was in Berlin when the wall was up, studying abroad. One day while he was at home working he hears a ton of noise down the street and thinks it's some bored teens, or some petty brawl or some nonsense. The wall was coming down. He missed it. He was studying to be a history professor...
ImperatorKnoedel May you find your own efficacious “Give me liberty or give me death” circumstance then. If it is any comfort, you are not alone in your status as the downtrodden. Your life may be like many throughout history: Potent suffering slowly collected into a critical mass until it finally undermines confidence in the leadership, and all the protections from those they’ve wronged & those that would rather run the show either mysteriously stand aside or convincingly threaten to do so.
As an actual Berliner, thank you for posting this on the 30th anniversary. Considering my parents took part in the tear down, this episode brought me happy tears.
Dr. Santiago I mean the wall coming down so quickly was a mistake, but by that point the Eastern Bloc nations were about 110% done with this communist shit.
@@mpitt0730 yea and people are still not ower it.. people either miss yugoslavia or are nationalistic and consider every other nations of YU as lazy pople who exploited them and in the end tried to kill them...
@@josephschultz3301 Sadly... the ones who suck (the deliberate assholes and antagonists) are reacted to like they're "just telling it like it is" and "just being real" Meanwhile, the ones who don't suck (the open, honest, friendly, and considerate ones) are treated with suspicion, like "no one can be that nice, it must be an act" and even called "creepy" ... what a world we live in...
I always cry when I hear about the falling of the Berlin Wall. The moment families are reunited and become whole again is so moving I just always end up crying
Everytime I hear about the Berlin wall, I can't help but be reminded of my many friends living outside Venezuela, and about how similar it feels to me. There's no literal wall, but there's a whole bunch of miles separating us.
Lovely episode for this important and happy anniversary! I really like that you showed the role of Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia in the process. BTW the Polish elections in June 1989 weren't actually 100% free, but the Solidarity made the most of the compromise negotiated in the Round table Talks preceding the elections, effectively ending the one-party dictatorship. The whole thing could really be its own episode or even series.
my teacher was one of the american soldiers at the fall of the berlin wall and he was one of the people that handed out oranges and he told this story to my class multiple times about handing oranges to kids that didn't know what they were
@@aryaaswale7316 i belive they were communist, and communisem can work....... on the most miniscule of scales. the problem is that its just not a system built to handle large populations
Hey just wanted to say that my history class at school uses your videos, especially those on medical history. They are extremely educational and fun, even the students who continuously complain and mess around can’t help but watch in silence! Thanks!
@@dankdreamz or better yet, checks in on historians discussing the episodes. Even with the corrections episodes, EH does not have a very good reputation. They are very engaging storytellers, but poor researchers.
@@neeneko they condense and sometimes heavily trim the subject they're presenting, because it's just way to complex to explain every detail in such a short time. TH-cam is *NOT* an educational institution, neither is this channel (nor do they claim to be!!!), it's there to spark interest in history and give some basic and rough summary of a historical subject. Which I think they do pretty well. If you want a 100% correct deep dive, grab a book or research papers from a historian who specialises in the subject. If only 5% of the children who watch this channel are inspired to learn some more because of these videos, they've done a good job.
It isn't just the condensing. The criticism I've seen from professionals is, besides not being willing to actually cite their sources (even when asked), for several of their series they seemed to have gone from a single 'accessible' but known problematic text. So they do not seem to be consulting historians about which source materials are respected vs iffy. The lack of citing is borderline unacceptable at this point since other edutainment channels, even ones with much smaller staffs, have moved over to including references in all their videos.
This Episode means so much to me... My mother's family was torn due to the Wall. One of my granduncles was a Border Guards that time, but on the side of East Berlin. My grandma was living in the West with her mother and two sisters, while my granduncle was trapped with his brother and my greatgrandpa on the other side. When the Wall was falling, they had reunited after being seperated during the last 3 years before Hitler's death. My grandma and great-grandma fled germany, they ended up in a crossfire between german troups and french-american troups. They got seperated and my two granduncles and my greatgrandpa got captured and taken to Berlin. Grandma didn't know up until they returned to Westberlin 3 years later and got contacted by a friend of my greatgrandpa. When the Wall came down, it was the first time in ages that the entire family could reunite. It was also the day when my grandma met my grandpa. A day we remember foundly, because none of us would be here if this Wall had stayed :,3
Now we do it because nobody else is allowed to be desperate for a better life. The so called line takes years and very fat checks and perfect paperwork.
In fact, it's been suggested that we build a wall to keep people who want to take advantage of our society out... Oh, but that opinion is politically unpopular and offensive... 😜
But the man who led Yugoslavia and kept unity and brotherhood wasn't even Serbian. Don't pin this on us. Most Serbs were supportive of the monarchy, not the communist state.
@@misterkrazy8401 Frankly I don't know what he's on about, the unity we had wasn't an illusion it just takes a bit longer to erase hundreds of years of idiotic national pride we just didn't last long enough cause we're pathologically allergic to success.
Ok, I don't get emotional easily, but no matter how many times I hear it or who I hear it from the story of the wall coming down always gets me on the edge of tears. Thanks, Extra History.
I remember the fall of the Berlin Wall. Dad hushed me for talking during the news. Now that was normal, but there was something about his hushing that was different that day, and looking at the TV, somehow I understood that something really important was going on. Why else would so many people be out at night?
@UCSHzKs1BS0a0nwNt5_23vrg It's a common 'fact' that a Berliner is a German jelly-filled pastry. People keep translating 'Ich bin ein Berliner' as 'I am a jelly-filled donut'. It's actually more complicated than that; JFK probably misread a line. Though I read somewhere that he said it correctly; it's everyone making the donut joke that's wrong. EDIT: Yep, confirmed BS. Snopes confirms he said it correctly, it's an urban legend he said it wrong. www.snopes.com/fact-check/jfk-doughnut/
...the whole sentence was "...2000years ago, the greatest you could say was: "I'm a Roman", but today it's the gratest to say "Ich bin ein Berliner"...!"
I was 15 at that time, living in West Germany. I still remember the pictures of hungary opening the border, of East Germans climbing the fence of the West German embassy in Prague, of foreign minister Genscher announcing he‘d arranged their safe passage, and then months of peaceful protests meeting less and less resistance by the police…and then this evening when the wall fell by accident. People not in Berlin were stuck to their TVs watching the events unfold. A TV crew was there that was supposed to film the first people applying for visa the next day and now had to do a live report. It was amazing. Thank you for this episode!
Südlicher Nachbar hier, und ja, wir haben auch wie gebannt auf die Mattscheibe gestarrt, als die ersten Feuerwerkskörper aufflammten. Es war..surreal, fast wie ein Märchen, eine wahrgewordene Utopie. Es war ohrenzerfetzend laut und doch irgendwie verhalten und ruhig, dieses symbolische Ende des Kalten Krieges. Ich denke es ist an der Zeit, die nächste Mauer niederzureissen.
This episode has me tearing me up. I remember watching it on TV, as all of Europe, if not the world, looked to Berlin as the Wall fell, this symbol of opression and war, and for one tiny, fleeting moment, I like to think that we as a whole believed that this time, mankind would finally get it right. Don't think I am sugarcoating anything; due to the vaccum left by Russia, during the Balkan War there was an unprecedented amount of genocide, inhuman cruelty and bloodshed akin to Stalin's rule or any concentration camp. Its effects still reverberate throughout Europe, and then, just like now, the Kurds suffered in the aftermath. In 2003, Israel errected a wall separating Palastina from Bethlehem. Lesson not learned. But the dream still lives.
It is true that Walter Ulbricht was in office when the wall was build, but (as far as I know), Honecker was at that point already a high figure in the SED. He was one of the main driving forces behind the idea of building a wall, and further was the person in charge of overseing the construction.
Ah, Walter Ulbrich, the Second-worst dictator Germany has ever seen. A lot of people don't remember him, for the same reason that no one knows what Buzz Aldrin said when he stepped on the moon. He (Ulbricht) did beat down peaceful protests with frikkin tanks tho
Preston Jones Yeah because you'd have to swim for DAYS. Also I don't see many people moving into Africa. Does that make them communist as well? No. It's just because they're poor. So when you have two germanys, one having shoved money into their asses through the marshall fund to make them a buffer zone against soviet russia, and the other one reduced to a agricultural society by stalin out of fear that germany will rise a third time and invade russia again (a fear americans and britains probably can't relate to because they didn't constantly get invaded by their neighbors with millions killed, citys and villages burned down etc.) where they even unbuild the factorys that were undamaged by the war, packed them into boxes and transported them out of germany elsewere. So if you have two germanys like this, one richer, one poorer, even when they have the same political system what do you think how will migration turn out?
Dominique Martinez I live in Detroit it literally is in Walking Distance, every state that borders Canada or Mexico has towns and sometimes cities in walking distance. But still for some reason no one ever really wants to leave the US, in fact we have issues of too many people wanting to come in... huh? It’s like we live in a society that offers opportunities to those willing to put the effort in.
Anyone else cry like a baby watching this? I remember how exciting this was (I was 14; an American) and so many things seemed to be changing - optimism was in the air. I didn't really know all of the details then, so this was very interesting to watch!Takes me back to those optimistic feelings... 😊
@@TheAtb85 Maybe. But the 1% in Capitalism got there through competence, diligence, and wisdom. The 1% in Communism got there because they stole what everyone else had worked for. Capitalism at least makes joining the ranks of the 1% a viable goal, y'know, so they won't be just 1% anymore. Communism automatically casts wealth as evil, and then proceeds to wonder how it made everyone equally impoverished. The moral of the story: you get what you pursue.
At the time the border between East and West Germany fell, I was about one year old. A few days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, my parents drove with me into “The West” - more specifically to Hof, a town in Bavaria. I have no memory on this, but they say it was awesome. Everywhere people were cheering when they saw someone from the “other” side. Families were handing out presents to visiting children. And some child (just a random stranger basically) gave me a plush toy - a little pink bunny. That was my favorite toy and until I was approximately a first grader wherever I went, my “Häschen” (German for bunny) would go to… Sadly I don’t have that toy anymore. But those sure were wild times :)
this is one of those moments in world history that brings a proud tear everytime. the sheer jubilation from both sides was so beautiful to have witnessed.
I can still remember the fall of the Berlin Wall. It's one of my first real memories - I was 5, too young really to understand what I was seeing. I can remember watching people hacking lumps out of the wall, the big party atmosphere, and I thought 'This is big. I don't understand why this is big and important, but it is'
Watching the video with the announcement that made the wall come down gave me chills. So important in history, such a large impact and yet so small. The TV moment of the 20th century.
I I will never forget that. I was driving and heard it in the radio .... I rushed home to put the TV on. I never never never thought that this could happen during my live. I always thought Germany will only be unified in an atomic apocalypse. In the year I was born the wall was build. And no one of my children has experienced the divided Germany. Unbelievable.
It's hard to judge his reforms. On the one hand, they utterly failed to save the Soviet Union, and in truth hastened its demise. On the other hand, it was likely the best outcome, as the USSR was likely beyond saving by the time he came to power.
Gorbachev quite possibly saved the world. If he wasn't the premier of the USSR the collapse f the Soviet institutions would have been a hundred times more bloody.
I feel like it would've been quiet interesting to see a USSR where his reforms were actually put into place without collapsing the entire country. I'm not some Soviet fanboy, but its cool to think about
I remembered the news from the NRK (Norsk Riks Kringkastning / Norwegian National Broadcasting) before going to bed for the night. I was 6 years old at the time, that people from west and east Berlin gathered at the Brandenburg Tor (Gate) and climbed up the wall, singing and cheering with flags, dancing, hugging and kissing. Fireworks flew over the night sky, it was a party after all. November 9th and 10th was immortalized on those days of 1989. The song: Hand in Hand by Koreana during the 1988 Summer Olympics final lines: "breaking down the walls that come between us for all time hand in hand (breaking down the walls between us) hand in hand (breaking down the walls)" Coincidence anyone? maybe, maybe not. It was 30 years ago then and I was only 6 years old. As always Extra Credits fantastic work and drawings and keep up the good work!
So I'm from Germany, to be more precise Leipzig in Saxony, which is in the former DDR and the one of the City with the biggest Monday demonstrations. And while I'm to young to have witnessed it myself I always love hearing my dad or grandpa telling stories of when they went. Like that in the beginning my grandpa went there without telling anyone out of fear what might happen. And that later on they'd walk with the children in the front, gambling that the soldiers wouldn't dare to shoot them. It always is a interesting listening to these stories and it feels somehow nice and motivating knowing that people in your family helped changing something in history.
My dad wrote his dissertation on East German economics (he's a professor of political science) and was actually there in 1989 when it came down. He isn't even German (we're American), but he didn't miss the opportunity to pick up a hammer and have at it with the rest of 'em. He even kept a fist sized chunk with some graffiti on it, which sits on his desk to this day. I am so damn proud of my dad I don't even have the words to describe it.
A little late to the party here but still, thanks so much for making this video! It really struck a chord with me... My mother grew up in East Germany and though she told some stories of what happened to her and her family under the system - such as how hard it was to get a decent car or manage the family's "Volksegeigener Betrieb" ("Nation-owned Business") - she hasn't really opened up much about how it all panned out. She and her brother escaped (after the family was apprehended and subjected to extensive questioning before being sent home while on a legit holiday trip) about 2-3 weeks before the wall came down. One of her stories I remember fondly though is about those 'deconstruction workers' chanting "Die Wand muss weg! Die Wand muss weg!" ("The wall must go! The wall must go!")
Thank you for that episode. Such an incredible, crazy and wonderful time. For us young West-Berliner (I was 12) it was also a new freedom - we saw the other half of our city for the first time and discovered the surrounding countryside. It might be hard to imagine to live in a city - but there is no countryside. For us it was weird to suddenly be able to cross the boarder and visit all of these fields, forests and villages.
"they had torn down the wall and could now build a future... thank you to world of tanks (images of tanks shooting),,," XD man my stomach hurts from laughing on that timing XD
My high school German teacher was actually there that day as a student visiting from America. She got to chip off a piece of the wall and showed it to her classes each year. :) I miss that woman.
Thank you, american youtubers, for disproving the popular claim in the US that reagans "tear down this wall" speech had an impact on the fall of the wall
I love how the Berlin Wall fell because someone was like “when will people be able to go to West Berlin” and my guy was just like “i don’t fuckin know mate”
I Hope Someday, Oneday, one video to be uploaded on this Channel. "After several Decades DMZ has broken down" As a Korean, I sincerely hope one day my ethnic race will be reunited as Germany did.
It will happen one day. Just wait, go with the flow and everything will soon come to pass. It may not happen in my lifetime, but the Kim dynasty cannot last forever. One day, they will finally open their eyes and see the Kim family for they are. Tyrants who use fear to put the people in line. I would bet that their kingdom will soon come crashing down and the rest will take of itself. Not by the outside but from within. I will root for you.
One of my favorite posters is where someone painted "Mother, Should I Trust The Government?" on The Wall. It was photographed on July 4th, 1989. My poster copy is pretty trashed, but I still carry it with me wherever I move.
My girlfriend's dad gifted me a piece of the Berlin wall as I'd mentioned it was a childhood dream of mine to own a piece, probably my most favorite random thing lying around my office
Ah... Bringing back the good old outro music. I have loved that outro since I first heard it in one of your guy's videos from over a year ago. Keep doing what you're doing.
Bismark: Germany will not be unified with speeches and treaties but by iron and blood. Germans (1989): how about some guys with sledgehammers and a big party?
My partner is a historian and a geographer, and he clearly remembers when the wall came down. He was describing it to me this morning, and I decided that rather than confuse my brain (which was seriously injured in early 1988 so my memories from that time period are vague to nonexistent) I would wait a few hours to vies this video. Your description sounds a lot like what he described observing, and I'm glad to have heard it from two unique perspectives.
Just a few days ago I watched a few videos about this same event, they were fine but no other content bring my tears as you guys with your narration and cartoons. You are great
The East Germans are still pissed that they essentially got annexed by west germany. It involved a whole lot of actually profitable East Germany companies being destroyed and divided by West German companies. Those West German companies saw no reason to keep production there, and instead moved it westward. Also, that was an interesting pronunciation of Leipzig.
as a person who is old enough to still remember this thank you for sharing this with another generation they need to know with all the style and skills good story tellers and historians like yourselves can muster, this is a perfect example of why walls are never the answer
I remember I was an exchange student from germany sitting in an american history class about 10 years ago. There my teacher claimed the Berlin Wall was no more than a wire fence and when I confronted him after class he said that his students wouldn't have understood the real thing. Maybe he just should've shown this video instead.
just look up some of the videos from the time, people literally threw a party and took turns with sledgehammers, chisels, even just kicking the wall because they could. Was wild to see on the news.
@@TheMichigami It was; every single 'European' station stopped all their programs and swtched over to the fireworks, the cheering, the tears of happiness, gratitude and relief, the destruction -for once entirely positive - and the proof that for one moment in time we ended a war beyond wars in a good way.
The person who actually opened the wall came to our school. The Borderguard that was in the video came to our school and talked about his life and that moment his name is Harald Jäger and is actually a nice dude
@@No-mq5lw nice
But not safe from hockey pucks.
@@Rustikreign *fuzes loudly in the distance*
@@No-mq5lw back then he still had his ACOG as standart equipment.
Talk about a normal day turning into a pivotal moment in history.
Reporter: "Wait, so when does this law come into action?"
Schabowski: "Um.. Immediately I think"
Everyone in East Berlin: "Aight, Imma head out"
Yes
Accuracy 10000000000%
... just going for cigarettes honey!
*millions of blitzkrieging jerry boy sounds in the distance*
It’s weird seeing memes on a history channel
My brother had a professor who was in Berlin when the wall was up, studying abroad. One day while he was at home working he hears a ton of noise down the street and thinks it's some bored teens, or some petty brawl or some nonsense.
The wall was coming down.
He missed it.
He was studying to be a history professor...
now thats irony :D
Ooh jeez
He missed one of the most historically significant events in the 20th century
While studying history, he accidentally misses history being made.
oh damn- the pain of that happening when studying to become a history teacher
"The Cold War ended not with nuclear annihilation, but a street party."
And I'm grateful it went down this way.
well either way it would have ended with a blast
I'm not. :/
@Andrew J Colby Because death is a preferable alternative to capitalism.
ImperatorKnoedel May you find your own efficacious “Give me liberty or give me death” circumstance then.
If it is any comfort, you are not alone in your status as the downtrodden. Your life may be like many throughout history: Potent suffering slowly collected into a critical mass until it finally undermines confidence in the leadership, and all the protections from those they’ve wronged & those that would rather run the show either mysteriously stand aside or convincingly threaten to do so.
I don't know studies have shown that radiation is better to animals than humans.
“Unaware of the firestorm he’d created.” A sentence that applies to 80 percent of politicians
And all Californians who clapped too hard
Most people are just blokes like you and me.
No more like 100 percent
"-would toil the Balkans for over a decade" well yeah 30 years is technically over a decade.
@@kingmac6638 needs another 0
8:58 A Hammer destorying a symbol of communism. Ironic, to say the least.
©°°|
Take that commies
As an actual Berliner, thank you for posting this on the 30th anniversary. Considering my parents took part in the tear down, this episode brought me happy tears.
：）
@Whozaper lmao loser
Respect to your parents, Boney.
@Whozaper Hi, from Europe. Still here, doing great all things considered.
Bruh my dad was one of em with the sledge hammers 😂😂
'Immediately. Without delay.', is a huge meme within the history community. The Cold War ended with a mistake, as all good things do.
Dr. Santiago I mean the wall coming down so quickly was a mistake, but by that point the Eastern Bloc nations were about 110% done with this communist shit.
I think you mean 'terrible.' Or 'evil.' Not good.
@@your_averageboi9083 He's saying the cold war was a bad thing I think. Cause the OP accidently said "As all good things do"
@@your_averageboi9083 Basically what Cursed Fate said.
@@cursedfate838
I thought he was making a comparison that it ended the way something good would
"And the breakup of Yugoslavia would roil the Balkans for over a decade" That's an understatement if I've ever seen one.
for over a century
@@Joso997 The breakup of Yugoslavia was 30 years ago
@@mpitt0730 yea and people are still not ower it.. people either miss yugoslavia or are nationalistic and consider every other nations of YU as lazy pople who exploited them and in the end tried to kill them...
@@mpitt0730 It'll be unstable for 70 more years. Count on it
FreeStyle lol
"And they were met by West Germans holding flowers and champagne."
Sometimes... people don't completely suck.
Edit: All I really want out of people is for them not to suck. I don't feel like it's a lot to ask.
@@josephschultz3301 Sadly... the ones who suck (the deliberate assholes and antagonists) are reacted to like they're "just telling it like it is" and "just being real"
Meanwhile, the ones who don't suck (the open, honest, friendly, and considerate ones) are treated with suspicion, like "no one can be that nice, it must be an act" and even called "creepy"
... what a world we live in...
Internet corrupted humanity, those were other times, plus hard times make strong people, and these time sure are creating weak, sensitive individuals
ReNixMaR OK Boomer
I thought u said flamethrowers and champagne.
Hey guys on November 9th 1989 let's rush the Berlin wall the stasi can't stop all of us
#stormeastberlin
I see what you did there😆
Ight let's go
Chances are, if they wanted they probably could've stopped all of them.
Surely if we naruto run it will work, right ?
This is the original "They Can't Stop All of Us" event.
The proto-Raid of Area 51, right?
What about D-Day
@@DC2007A That was troops "they can't stop us all" is civilians storming giver ant facilities or buildings
The Inca fighting the Spaniards, at Cajamarca forty-five to one.
@@Leadvest i would say Zulu's but they did stop them
I always cry when I hear about the falling of the Berlin Wall. The moment families are reunited and become whole again is so moving I just always end up crying
I admit I teared up a little at that point
Unfortunately, the mess that came afterwards is still causing suffering today.
Everytime I hear about the Berlin wall, I can't help but be reminded of my many friends living outside Venezuela, and about how similar it feels to me. There's no literal wall, but there's a whole bunch of miles separating us.
i likee your style :)
Meanwhile in the third world families are torn appart thanks to the still ongoing crossfire between capitalists and communists.
Lovely episode for this important and happy anniversary!
I really like that you showed the role of Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia in the process. BTW the Polish elections in June 1989 weren't actually 100% free, but the Solidarity made the most of the compromise negotiated in the Round table Talks preceding the elections, effectively ending the one-party dictatorship. The whole thing could really be its own episode or even series.
Which I'd love to see
Yeah, I would be interesting to see more episodes about historical events in Central and Eastern European countries.
Storm Checkpoint Charlie so we can see them Oranges
They can’t stop us all
Rush C! Rush C!
To quote a famous Bowl of Petunias, “Oh no, not again”
I would rather see melons.
For once they actually can’t stop them all.
We should talk about your user XD
my teacher was one of the american soldiers at the fall of the berlin wall and he was one of the people that handed out oranges and he told this story to my class multiple times about handing oranges to kids that didn't know what they were
Lucky person !
Really sad what socialism does
@@aryaaswale7316 i belive they were communist, and communisem can work....... on the most miniscule of scales. the problem is that its just not a system built to handle large populations
@@aryaaswale7316could you just not be American for 5 seconds
Hey just wanted to say that my history class at school uses your videos, especially those on medical history. They are extremely educational and fun, even the students who continuously complain and mess around can’t help but watch in silence! Thanks!
Hopefully the teacher watches the Lies episodes to explain what they didn't get right.
This puts a smile on my face!
@@dankdreamz or better yet, checks in on historians discussing the episodes. Even with the corrections episodes, EH does not have a very good reputation. They are very engaging storytellers, but poor researchers.
@@neeneko they condense and sometimes heavily trim the subject they're presenting, because it's just way to complex to explain every detail in such a short time. TH-cam is *NOT* an educational institution, neither is this channel (nor do they claim to be!!!), it's there to spark interest in history and give some basic and rough summary of a historical subject. Which I think they do pretty well. If you want a 100% correct deep dive, grab a book or research papers from a historian who specialises in the subject.
If only 5% of the children who watch this channel are inspired to learn some more because of these videos, they've done a good job.
It isn't just the condensing. The criticism I've seen from professionals is, besides not being willing to actually cite their sources (even when asked), for several of their series they seemed to have gone from a single 'accessible' but known problematic text. So they do not seem to be consulting historians about which source materials are respected vs iffy.
The lack of citing is borderline unacceptable at this point since other edutainment channels, even ones with much smaller staffs, have moved over to including references in all their videos.
This Episode means so much to me...
My mother's family was torn due to the Wall. One of my granduncles was a Border Guards that time, but on the side of East Berlin.
My grandma was living in the West with her mother and two sisters, while my granduncle was trapped with his brother and my greatgrandpa on the other side.
When the Wall was falling, they had reunited after being seperated during the last 3 years before Hitler's death.
My grandma and great-grandma fled germany, they ended up in a crossfire between german troups and french-american troups.
They got seperated and my two granduncles and my greatgrandpa got captured and taken to Berlin.
Grandma didn't know up until they returned to Westberlin 3 years later and got contacted by a friend of my greatgrandpa.
When the Wall came down, it was the first time in ages that the entire family could reunite.
It was also the day when my grandma met my grandpa.
A day we remember foundly, because none of us would be here if this Wall had stayed :,3
Take down that wall like the Kool-aid man.
Oh yeah!!
OHHHH YYYEEEEAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!
You two need yoga, you need a shower
OH Yeah (fire my big guns)
💥🚢
@@StevenFox80 and all of you need to learn how to handle real power
Fun fact: if you visit the remains of the the berlin wall you can see one graffiti saying thank you gorbachev
That's beautiful!
@@ankaplanka it really is isn't it
"They had torn down a wall, now they could build a future."
Best line in the video
This is some charismatic shit rigth there
and then global warming ruined everything about 50 years later....
Merkel:
'Muricah, take notes please!
I wonder if that’s what China will have to do...
So, the Cold War ended with a party?
That is honestly one of the coolest things I've heard all week.
The Communist one ended, but the overall Russia US Cold War is still going on
@@Abdirahman_Mohamed Communist China is very much in a cold war with the US.
@@juanmam.2113 It's better than the very real threat of a WW3. Even though there is still some threat of that, it's much less than before.
Ww2 ended with a party too.
"Democracy isn't perfect. But we never had to put up a wall to keep our people in."
-John F. Kennedy
Yet.
Now we do it because nobody else is allowed to be desperate for a better life. The so called line takes years and very fat checks and perfect paperwork.
Moritz Nesbigall 😅
@@leokennedy7624 Moritz is right
In fact, it's been suggested that we build a wall to keep people who want to take advantage of our society out...
Oh, but that opinion is politically unpopular and offensive... 😜
Without these events I would not know my wife and my daughter wouldn’t exist. You guys have me in tears …
"-would toil the Balkans for over a decade" well yeah 30 years is technically over a decade.
The divisions were already there. Yugoslavia was just the Serbs being so brutally repressive that they achieved the illusion of unity.
But the man who led Yugoslavia and kept unity and brotherhood wasn't even Serbian. Don't pin this on us. Most Serbs were supportive of the monarchy, not the communist state.
@@misterkrazy8401 Frankly I don't know what he's on about, the unity we had wasn't an illusion it just takes a bit longer to erase hundreds of years of idiotic national pride we just didn't last long enough cause we're pathologically allergic to success.
@Luís Filipe Andrade That's... a gross oversimplification of a very complex clusterfuck.
One doesn't get the nickname "the powder keg of Europe" without deserving it...
Ok, I don't get emotional easily, but no matter how many times I hear it or who I hear it from the story of the wall coming down always gets me on the edge of tears.
Thanks, Extra History.
Samwiz?!
1:06 can't believe Walpole is still around to graffiti the Berlin Wall lmao.
Well spotted! :'))
License plate at 10:10 as well
He has a vanity plate, too, at 10:09
Walpole was never gone
I had a little time to myself to doodle a bit. ;)
I remember the fall of the Berlin Wall. Dad hushed me for talking during the news. Now that was normal, but there was something about his hushing that was different that day, and looking at the TV, somehow I understood that something really important was going on. Why else would so many people be out at night?
„Ich bin ein Berliner“
- JFK with a heavy accent.
@UCSHzKs1BS0a0nwNt5_23vrg It's a common 'fact' that a Berliner is a German jelly-filled pastry. People keep translating 'Ich bin ein Berliner' as 'I am a jelly-filled donut'.
It's actually more complicated than that; JFK probably misread a line. Though I read somewhere that he said it correctly; it's everyone making the donut joke that's wrong.
EDIT: Yep, confirmed BS. Snopes confirms he said it correctly, it's an urban legend he said it wrong. www.snopes.com/fact-check/jfk-doughnut/
"Ich bin ein Berliner"
- His translator a few seconds later without an accent
What is the ch sound in Berlin? I heard it varies on the region. I learned it as ç and a rolled k, and my teacher had lived in Baden-Würtemburg.
@@protester2706 As dane living in Berlin, I can say: I am a danish.
...the whole sentence was "...2000years ago, the greatest you could say was: "I'm a Roman", but today it's the gratest to say "Ich bin ein Berliner"...!"
"This episode is sponsored by World of Tanks" Literally dying lmao
RIP Sophie.
Didn't Someone ram a tank through the wall?
Gorbachev at January 13th 1991 in Lithuania be like: ,,This night was sponsored by World of Tanks get your body crushed by one today !”
I was 15 at that time, living in West Germany. I still remember the pictures of hungary opening the border, of East Germans climbing the fence of the West German embassy in Prague, of foreign minister Genscher announcing he‘d arranged their safe passage, and then months of peaceful protests meeting less and less resistance by the police…and then this evening when the wall fell by accident. People not in Berlin were stuck to their TVs watching the events unfold. A TV crew was there that was supposed to film the first people applying for visa the next day and now had to do a live report. It was amazing. Thank you for this episode!
Südlicher Nachbar hier, und ja, wir haben auch wie gebannt auf die Mattscheibe gestarrt, als die ersten Feuerwerkskörper aufflammten. Es war..surreal, fast wie ein Märchen, eine wahrgewordene Utopie. Es war ohrenzerfetzend laut und doch irgendwie verhalten und ruhig, dieses symbolische Ende des Kalten Krieges.
Ich denke es ist an der Zeit, die nächste Mauer niederzureissen.
Thanks for sharing your story!
This episode has me tearing me up. I remember watching it on TV, as all of Europe, if not the world, looked to Berlin as the Wall fell, this symbol of opression and war, and for one tiny, fleeting moment, I like to think that we as a whole believed that this time, mankind would finally get it right.
Don't think I am sugarcoating anything; due to the vaccum left by Russia, during the Balkan War there was an unprecedented amount of genocide, inhuman cruelty and bloodshed akin to Stalin's rule or any concentration camp. Its effects still reverberate throughout Europe, and then, just like now, the Kurds suffered in the aftermath.
In 2003, Israel errected a wall separating Palastina from Bethlehem.
Lesson not learned.
But the dream still lives.
Me too. Its an emotional fucking story.
Me (to a German): Did you storm area 51?
The German: Nah, I stormed the Berlin wall
The original (and much more successful) "they can't stop us all"-movement.
make this one of the 10 most liked comment's on youtube!
Well, America stormed all of western Germany and many walls and barriers.
6:24 "Erich Honecker, the man who build the wall" this is not accurate. His Predecessor, Walter Ulbricht initiated the construction.
Extra history getting something wrong? That’s never happened
Every flag ever
It is true that Walter Ulbricht was in office when the wall was build, but (as far as I know), Honecker was at that point already a high figure in the SED. He was one of the main driving forces behind the idea of building a wall, and further was the person in charge of overseing the construction.
I think they meant the 3rd phase of the wall
"Niemand hat die Absicht eine Mauer zu errichten. (Nobody has the intention to build a wall.)"
~ Walter Ulbricht, shortly before the wall was built.
Ah, Walter Ulbrich, the Second-worst dictator Germany has ever seen. A lot of people don't remember him, for the same reason that no one knows what Buzz Aldrin said when he stepped on the moon.
He (Ulbricht) did beat down peaceful protests with frikkin tanks tho
"Democracy is not perfect, but we've never had to build a wall to keep our people in."
-JFK, shortly after the wall was built
that's because canada and mexico aren't walking distance
@@sabotabby3372
Don't see too many people moving from Taiwan to mainland China.
@@sabotabby3372 Depends what state you're in.
Preston Jones Yeah because you'd have to swim for DAYS.
Also I don't see many people moving into Africa. Does that make them communist as well? No. It's just because they're poor.
So when you have two germanys, one having shoved money into their asses through the marshall fund to make them a buffer zone against soviet russia, and the other one reduced to a agricultural society by stalin out of fear that germany will rise a third time and invade russia again (a fear americans and britains probably can't relate to because they didn't constantly get invaded by their neighbors with millions killed, citys and villages burned down etc.) where they even unbuild the factorys that were undamaged by the war, packed them into boxes and transported them out of germany elsewere.
So if you have two germanys like this, one richer, one poorer, even when they have the same political system what do you think how will migration turn out?
Dominique Martinez I live in Detroit it literally is in Walking Distance, every state that borders Canada or Mexico has towns and sometimes cities in walking distance.
But still for some reason no one ever really wants to leave the US, in fact we have issues of too many people wanting to come in... huh? It’s like we live in a society that offers opportunities to those willing to put the effort in.
"Babe come over"
"I can't i'm in East Germany"
"My parent's arent home"
9:00
-memes
“The Cold War ended with a street party” seems like a end to a early 2000s movie
We’re ALL IN THIS TOGETHER
This is the first EH that made me tear up a little. I love these touching one shots. This and the WW1 Christmas ones are my favorites.
You had an special episode just for this day planned? How amazing :D
Anyone else cry like a baby watching this? I remember how exciting this was (I was 14; an American) and so many things seemed to be changing - optimism was in the air. I didn't really know all of the details then, so this was very interesting to watch!Takes me back to those optimistic feelings... 😊
10:09 of course it's Walpole. Don't you think you can hide on that license plate!
Nice catch
and also as graffiti on the wall
@@aednil You're right I can't believe I missed that!
Woop, woop, woop!
@@johncao6516 Thats because you didnt had a plan
Reporter: Effective when?
Schabowski: Immediately I think.
Population of East Berlin: *drops faster than my grandma down the stairs*
*A nation divided, people in the streets hoping to finally reunite with their beloved ones.*
*Most of the party leaders were at the opera.*
It shows how much they "care" for the people...
And Communists accuse the powerful people in other societies of being detached and indifferent to the lives of the people... 😒
@@TopsideCrisis346 The 1% is the same everywhere. They just use different names to confuse the 99%. :)
@@TheAtb85 Maybe. But the 1% in Capitalism got there through competence, diligence, and wisdom. The 1% in Communism got there because they stole what everyone else had worked for. Capitalism at least makes joining the ranks of the 1% a viable goal, y'know, so they won't be just 1% anymore. Communism automatically casts wealth as evil, and then proceeds to wonder how it made everyone equally impoverished.
The moral of the story: you get what you pursue.
@@TheAtb85 Truer words were never spoken.
God I love history World War 1 started with a teen eating a sandwich the cold war ended with a street party with sledgehammers
The 80(ish) years of horror would start with a sandwich and end with many
Sandwich? could you elaborate?
OHHHHHHHH YEAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! totally dont have a history test tomorrow
At the time the border between East and West Germany fell, I was about one year old. A few days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, my parents drove with me into “The West” - more specifically to Hof, a town in Bavaria. I have no memory on this, but they say it was awesome. Everywhere people were cheering when they saw someone from the “other” side. Families were handing out presents to visiting children. And some child (just a random stranger basically) gave me a plush toy - a little pink bunny. That was my favorite toy and until I was approximately a first grader wherever I went, my “Häschen” (German for bunny) would go to…
Sadly I don’t have that toy anymore. But those sure were wild times :)
Yay i always wanted you guys to cover the Berlin wall
"Woodstock with Sledgehammers" - that sounds a lot like us german :D Thank you for the great storytelling :)
this is one of those moments in world history that brings a proud tear everytime. the sheer jubilation from both sides was so beautiful to have witnessed.
I can still remember the fall of the Berlin Wall. It's one of my first real memories - I was 5, too young really to understand what I was seeing. I can remember watching people hacking lumps out of the wall, the big party atmosphere, and I thought 'This is big. I don't understand why this is big and important, but it is'
Love to see that thing in Korea.
Please do a series on the Korean War.
The DMZ when it falls,Will probably be the greatest thing in the whatever decade
It would be a public service for America but it would need to be in like 10 parts.
I've never cried the way I just did through one of your videos before. Great work, simply beautiful.
Watching the video with the announcement that made the wall come down gave me chills. So important in history, such a large impact and yet so small. The TV moment of the 20th century.
I I will never forget that. I was driving and heard it in the radio .... I rushed home to put the TV on. I never never never thought that this could happen during my live. I always thought Germany will only be unified in an atomic apocalypse. In the year I was born the wall was build. And no one of my children has experienced the divided Germany.
Unbelievable.
I'd actually love to see a video / series on Gorbachev's reforms, they're quite interesting to me.
It's hard to judge his reforms. On the one hand, they utterly failed to save the Soviet Union, and in truth hastened its demise. On the other hand, it was likely the best outcome, as the USSR was likely beyond saving by the time he came to power.
Gorbachev quite possibly saved the world. If he wasn't the premier of the USSR the collapse f the Soviet institutions would have been a hundred times more bloody.
I feel like it would've been quiet interesting to see a USSR where his reforms were actually put into place without collapsing the entire country. I'm not some Soviet fanboy, but its cool to think about
I remembered the news from the NRK (Norsk Riks Kringkastning / Norwegian National Broadcasting) before going to bed for the night. I was 6 years old at the time, that people from west and east Berlin gathered at the Brandenburg Tor (Gate) and climbed up the wall, singing and cheering with flags, dancing, hugging and kissing. Fireworks flew over the night sky, it was a party after all. November 9th and 10th was immortalized on those days of 1989. The song: Hand in Hand by Koreana during the 1988 Summer Olympics final lines: "breaking down the walls
that come between us for all time hand in hand (breaking down the walls between us) hand in hand (breaking down the walls)" Coincidence anyone? maybe, maybe not. It was 30 years ago then and I was only 6 years old. As always Extra Credits fantastic
work and drawings and keep up the good work!
8:39 How we think the Area 51 Raid will go
8:14 What actually happens during the raid
Lol
So I'm from Germany, to be more precise Leipzig in Saxony, which is in the former DDR and the one of the City with the biggest Monday demonstrations. And while I'm to young to have witnessed it myself I always love hearing my dad or grandpa telling stories of when they went. Like that in the beginning my grandpa went there without telling anyone out of fear what might happen. And that later on they'd walk with the children in the front, gambling that the soldiers wouldn't dare to shoot them.
It always is a interesting listening to these stories and it feels somehow nice and motivating knowing that people in your family helped changing something in history.
My dad wrote his dissertation on East German economics (he's a professor of political science) and was actually there in 1989 when it came down. He isn't even German (we're American), but he didn't miss the opportunity to pick up a hammer and have at it with the rest of 'em. He even kept a fist sized chunk with some graffiti on it, which sits on his desk to this day. I am so damn proud of my dad I don't even have the words to describe it.
A little late to the party here but still, thanks so much for making this video! It really struck a chord with me...
My mother grew up in East Germany and though she told some stories of what happened to her and her family under the system - such as how hard it was to get a decent car or manage the family's "Volksegeigener Betrieb" ("Nation-owned Business") - she hasn't really opened up much about how it all panned out. She and her brother escaped (after the family was apprehended and subjected to extensive questioning before being sent home while on a legit holiday trip) about 2-3 weeks before the wall came down.
One of her stories I remember fondly though is about those 'deconstruction workers' chanting "Die Wand muss weg! Die Wand muss weg!" ("The wall must go! The wall must go!")
"Woodstock with sledge hammers.". What a party! 😂😂😆
Thank you for that episode. Such an incredible, crazy and wonderful time. For us young West-Berliner (I was 12) it was also a new freedom - we saw the other half of our city for the first time and discovered the surrounding countryside. It might be hard to imagine to live in a city - but there is no countryside. For us it was weird to suddenly be able to cross the boarder and visit all of these fields, forests and villages.
Thank you for enlighting everyone about one of the most beautiful and most heart-warming resolutions to a global crisis.
"they had torn down the wall and could now build a future... thank you to world of tanks (images of tanks shooting),,," XD man my stomach hurts from laughing on that timing XD
Yaaayy! Greetings from Germany, everyone 🇩🇪🇩🇪❤️
My high school German teacher was actually there that day as a student visiting from America. She got to chip off a piece of the wall and showed it to her classes each year. :) I miss that woman.
Great episode! Love extra history in general, but this one was especially good as, for once, its something in history that is positive, i.e, not war.
“A street party with sledgehammers”- what a brilliant summary!
Thank you, american youtubers, for disproving the popular claim in the US that reagans "tear down this wall" speech had an impact on the fall of the wall
The reunification wasnt easy but the pictures from that one night still brings pipi into my eyes
I love how the Berlin Wall fell because someone was like “when will people be able to go to West Berlin” and my guy was just like “i don’t fuckin know mate”
I Hope Someday, Oneday, one video to be uploaded on this Channel.
"After several Decades DMZ has broken down"
As a Korean, I sincerely hope one day my ethnic race will be reunited as Germany did.
We're rooting for you!
It will happen one day. Just wait, go with the flow and everything will soon come to pass. It may not happen in my lifetime, but the Kim dynasty cannot last forever. One day, they will finally open their eyes and see the Kim family for they are. Tyrants who use fear to put the people in line. I would bet that their kingdom will soon come crashing down and the rest will take of itself. Not by the outside but from within. I will root for you.
Gunter Schabowski: “As far as I know immediately, without delay.”
Everyone in East Berlin: *Aight, imma head out*
One of my favorite posters is where someone painted "Mother, Should I Trust The Government?" on The Wall. It was photographed on July 4th, 1989. My poster copy is pretty trashed, but I still carry it with me wherever I move.
justin thomas Pink Floyd’s Mother
"I am a Jelly-donut"
-JFK
Ich bin Berliner
😂
Custard fried dough ball
"Gorby save us! Gorby save us!"
Subscribed.
"Niemand hat die absicht eine Mauer zu errichten."
"Nobody wants to build a wall." Walter Ulbricht
My girlfriend's dad gifted me a piece of the Berlin wall as I'd mentioned it was a childhood dream of mine to own a piece, probably my most favorite random thing lying around my office
I was 14 when this happened. Along with the Challenger explosion and Operation Desert Storm, defined my youthful years.
Ah... Bringing back the good old outro music. I have loved that outro since I first heard it in one of your guy's videos from over a year ago. Keep doing what you're doing.
Thank God someone noticed
I’ve been wanting a Berlin Wall episode since Cuban Missile Crisis series. I’m happy now.
"Woodstock with sledgehammers" I like that! And David Hasselhoff singing for the crowd. The greatest Christmas present ever.
Bismark: Germany will not be unified with speeches and treaties but by iron and blood.
Germans (1989): how about some guys with sledgehammers and a big party?
Bismarck is Walpole
Well sledgehammers have iron in them and even Bismarck wouldn't scoff at sweat instead of blopd so yeah
I remember when this happened, seeing this on TV.
It was one of the most victorious moment of civil freedom in my life time.
They say, on quiet nights, you can still hear the people partying.
My partner is a historian and a geographer, and he clearly remembers when the wall came down. He was describing it to me this morning, and I decided that rather than confuse my brain (which was seriously injured in early 1988 so my memories from that time period are vague to nonexistent) I would wait a few hours to vies this video. Your description sounds a lot like what he described observing, and I'm glad to have heard it from two unique perspectives.
The Berlin Wall coming down feels almost like a scene in a film.
Just a few days ago I watched a few videos about this same event, they were fine but no other content bring my tears as you guys with your narration and cartoons. You are great
The East Germans are still pissed that they essentially got annexed by west germany.
It involved a whole lot of actually profitable East Germany companies being destroyed and divided by West German companies.
Those West German companies saw no reason to keep production there, and instead moved it westward.
Also, that was an interesting pronunciation of Leipzig.
Americans always have a lot of trouble differentiating IE from EI, i found.
as a person who is old enough to still remember this thank you for sharing this with another generation they need to know with all the style and skills good story tellers and historians like yourselves can muster, this is a perfect example of why walls are never the answer
Walter Ulbricht build the Wall with the infamous words: "Keiner hat die Absicht eine Mauer zu errichten!"
I'm an American by birth, but in Frankfurt in the late 80s. This video made me cry, because I had forgotten about The Pink Lady.
Three extra history episodes in one week? Damn, that's like winning the lotto! 😀
“Who brought down the Berlin Wall?”
10:09 I know!!!
10:08 Oh hey, a Trabant.
And a Walpole license plate
@@acebalistic1358 Thank you. I was not awake enough when watching this to figure out why I had a lightbulb moment over the plate. xD
@@Cemi_Mhikku no problem
I remember I was an exchange student from germany sitting in an american history class about 10 years ago. There my teacher claimed the Berlin Wall was no more than a wire fence and when I confronted him after class he said that his students wouldn't have understood the real thing. Maybe he just should've shown this video instead.
I friggin love this channel
"-would toil the Balkans for over a decade" Speaking of which I'd absolutely love to see a series on the Balkan wars.
Awesome! This must’ve been fun to destroy the wall
just look up some of the videos from the time, people literally threw a party and took turns with sledgehammers, chisels, even just kicking the wall because they could. Was wild to see on the news.
@@TheMichigami It was; every single 'European' station stopped all their programs and swtched over to the fireworks, the cheering, the tears of happiness, gratitude and relief, the destruction -for once entirely positive - and the proof that for one moment in time we ended a war beyond wars in a good way.
Erich Honecker didn't built the Wall. that was his predecessor, Walther Ulrich. He, however, kept enforcing it into the one that then got torn down.