The Berlin Wall - How it worked | DW Documentary
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ก.พ. 2018
- The Berlin Wall stood from 1961 to 1989, dividing the city of Berlin. 30 years later, a trip back in time exploring the division of East and West Germany when Berlin was walled in.
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It's amazing how a nation could go through all this trouble to prevent it's people from leaving, and not think "Are we the bad guys?"
Agreed! The Socialist States were also known as the Iron Curtain - the wall was built to keep the citizens in, supposedly to live in a Socialist Paradise - of course it was anything but.
It's not that amazing. Leftism never considers ventures into totalitarianism as immoral if at their core, such ventures are "for the good of the collective". Anything can be justified in your mind if it's always a so-called "greater good". Individual, God-given, inalienable rights derived from merely being a human never were a tenet of leftism.
You mean thankx to Russia n America. We should do the same to Russia n America see how they like it.
I was in my 20,s when this wall came down. I own a piece of the wall in a collection. After Stalin died it was the best thing to happen. There is a great difference between the USSR and the Russian federation. It's easy to sit back and judge. For all of us. The Russian federation is no longer Communist but the world still has them painted as such.
Same as everyone knows Communism is an utter murderous disaster ideology but still to this day people are drawn to it. Like progressive politicians in America and Western Europe today
This video is very educative, I did not know the wall was this complex.
Same, I just thought it was a wall.
@@Neilukuk Me too. I thought its just a wall and guards on patrol but it doesn't make much sense as crossing would be easy if they are around 50 Germans and they kill the guards before escape.
Communism was so good that they needed to keep people by force to live in such paradise.
What amazes me is this was still around in the 80s when I was in my 20s because it didn't cease to exist until November 89
@@Wildernessba never thought about it that way ? lol 🤣
I served in US Army in Berlin HHC 3rd BN, 6th US Inf. 1967/1969 Surreal duty station
Thank you John Taylor for your service ❤️
thank you for your service
hopefully it saved ya from vietnam
Ty for your service
God bless
Thank you for your service !!
East German borderland: death, death, death, and deadly force
West German border area: watch tower, McDonald's, a little door hole to see what's up, top tourist Spot.
I know right, the best example of the difference between socialism and capitalism :p
@@paul_k_7351 I think you're a bit confused there bud. Communism is Communism, even if they tell or call themselves "socialist". I would think you would know that since even Hitler and his regime self designated their fascist regime as "socialist" too. Btw: present day Germany is a social democracy and capitalist economy.
@@paul_k_7351 Being 'left or right' basically means you are not looking for the truth in the proper way, thus you are already fundamentally on the wrong path ; a better statement would be that the truth does not care about 'sides' and thus to find/see/understand the truth you as well need to stop seeing things in terms of 'us vs them'
@Steveyboii liar. Then why trap people? They can choose for themselves
Allies were soft. Many Germans surrendered to them on purpose cause they know what's gonna happen if the Soviet Union capture them. Not to mention the Soviet Union had many reasons to treat them harshly as they lost almost all of their men during the war to the point that they trained kids for the battlefield and to guard Stalingrad
I like how Björn and Simmi added their own little touch to the animation at the 4:59 mark. Well done, guys.
I saw that too!!
Our teacher actually use it :)
Good spot! 🧐😃
I lived with this wall in Berlin on the western side for 8 years before it finally came down. I was also well acquainted with the part where the Church of Reconciliation stood. I can therefore say that the animation at least depicts the true depressive atmosphere that the Berlin Wall emitted if not entirely the details. At the time the church stood there the Wall was not made of concrete slabs, it consisted of the left over redbrick facades of the demolished tenant houses that formally stood along the border. Their windows were bricked up and the bricklayers had not even bothered to remove the curtains before hand leaving them protruding from between the bricks. Only after the church was demolished was the Wall "up dated" to the infamous white concrete slabs.
I can't imagine living somewhere and knowing people were getting shot, spiked and arrested trying to flee communist totalitarianism only meters away.
Did you ever see those flares go off?
The church was on Bernauer Straße, been there 1988 & 2014, many changes.
Wow. Thanks. How long did it take to build the wall
@@darius670 In the 28 years that the Berlin Wall stood it had always been a work in progress. In that time the East German regime constantly invested heavily in improvements, especially where escape attempts had been successful.
I once saw East German plans for how they wanted to improve and strengthen it even more, which of course became obsolete after the German reunification. Part of the plan was to increase the wall's height from 3.2 meters to a towering 6 meters!
@@mikethespike7579 West Berlin had always baffled me. How did west berliners travel outside the city that they lived in??? How was the city itself supplied with food, construction materials, etc., for example, how did trucks or trains enter and exit it? It sounds like it was besieged for the whole duration of the Cold War.
I remember as an american how I grew up watching the news at night . They would celebrate anyone who made it accross the wall.I know exactly what I was doing the moment I heard the wall was coming down.. Later in my life I met a woman from east berlin who was a couple of years younger than me. I asked her what it was like for her.she said that a teacher at her school encouraged the students to travel to see the world. She then said something profound . She said" It was very emotional for my parents who had known freedom and had it taken away. I had been born without freedomand it took me a while to adjust to what that meant"
Wow!
Thank you so much for sharing this. I feel like here in the US we are more and more taking our freedoms--and our respect for freedom as a human right--for granted, and forgetting how lucky we are, and how fragile it is. Your anecdote is so profound to me.
Wouch…
😢
superb animation, totally captivated me
Animation was good because it was made by a hacker
9:57
This is an amazing animation depicting and explaining how the Berlin Wall worked in the 1980s. Wow! Very nice shots and smooth movement! Perfect for using it in class! Bravo guys!!
Very informative and educative . After watching so many videos on Berlin Wall finally I got to know how complex it was. Thank you!
When i was growing up my dad was in the army spent 8 years of my life over there watched the wall get torn down with my own eyes and brought a piece of it home so now in port huron Michigan there sits a piece of the berlin wall.
This is the best description of the Berlin wall I've ever seen.
Very clear and thorough explanation - all in just ten minutes.
I was a U.S. Army Russian Linguist & Intelligence Analyst in Berlin from December 1983 to 1984. One of the best years of my life...
How old are you now?
So sad what humans would do to harm each other.
Humans are stupid, I should know, I'm one of them
Communism is the ideology of envy and social failure. Led by petty bourgeoisie who have gone wild, relegated people try to come to power without qualifications. Once there, they are the worst fellow hogs.
Bruh thats like every single living being on this planet. We all wake up in the morning and choose violence
All in the name of power
EXTREMELY SAD, INDEED ! BUT... Not all of us are like that, y'know ! There are still a lot of good people in this world.
as a tourist in 1982 i went through the wall in to west berlin.on the eastern side i seen about six civilians watching .in those days citizens were only allowed to go so far near the wall .they looked at me as if to say i wish i could go through there with you .i felt sorry for them .seven years later the wall came down
do not BS every east German could go to W .Berlin when finish 40 years . Its logical that he could not go earlier if monthly salary in West was 1500 $ and in East about 50 dollars, very wise move on part of the East to have this wall. I as an citizen of other Socialist country could visit West Berlin and the worst problems which I had were from West ugly customs not East.
@@bigjohn742only half of your sentences make sense.
Try North Korea?
The city of Berlin went through an astonishing amount of changes in the 20th century - from mass destruction from World War II, to this absurd wall.
Im from Germany and already visited Berlin for in depth sight seeing. However, even I didn't know how sophisticated the walls defense system was...not to that degree of detail shown and explained here...great video and at the same time very shocking, even after all these years since the reunion happend. Unbelievable that this really existed for so long... thank god I was born in West-Germany back then...
really well put together thanks
I lived there before during and after the wall. Happiest time of my life. Berlin was the place to be.
It's strange that people say life was okay over there when some people felt motivated to go through all this to get out of it.
Bravo and thank you to the creators (on every level) - this was very special.
I just realised something. Imagine being born in 1925 in what would become East Germany. You're 8 when Hitler rises to power in 1933. In 1935 you're admitted to the Hitlerjugend, and you're 20 when WW2 ends. You've been bottled up with Nazi ideology -- all of a sudden the new rulers clear your mental slate, and you're to adopt a whole new ideology and set of values. In 1949, when you're 24, the GDR is born.
The years go by. November 1989 you're 64 years old, and 65 at time of reunification. Thanks to good health and good genes you live on for another 30 years, until in 2020 you die at the age of 95.
In your whole long life, your time in the GDR was kind of a little intermission or chronological set of brackets....
And to think . . . in 2029 (8 years from now) it'll be as many years since the fall of the Berlin Wall as GDR itself managed to exist (i.e. 40 years). Rather mind-blowing when you think about it.... 😮😮😮
My grandparents were displaced from Czechoslovakia in 1945 (the Czechs were on a killing spree at this moment)....escaped into the GDR and led a normal life afterwards. No one bothered them with any "ideologies". They were neither "nazi", nor "communists". But yes, the real nazis were executed in the East. While the US and West Germany protected them and allowed them to continue their work (doctors, scientists especially).
It's mind- blowing and it's what happened to my grandpa.
Excellent animation. Most informative, thank you.
Hi @Gary Oliver,
Glad it was helpful! Thanks for watching and commenting.
Best,
The DW Documentary Team
Excellent graphics. I’ve spent the last 5 days in Berlin and haven’t understood the exact set up of the wall and security strip until I watched this video.
That's a LOT of barriers to keep people IN!!!!
To keep them in the Socialist "paradise"...😄
In 1988 I was working on a British tv documentary that involved a week's filming in East Berlin. A rather decrepit old E German mini-bus with E Berlin 'trusty' driver arrived at our W Berlin hotel to take us across the border, disappointingly not through Checkpoint Charlie. We and all our luggage was given a very thorough going over, and the sound recordists radio microphones were confiscated and sent back to our W Berlin hotel. We were supplied with some ungainly GDR radio mics of indeterminate age that worked surprisingly well, that came with 3 people. One was in charge of the transmitter, one looked after the receiver and the third man made sure the other two didnt get too friendly with the decadent Western film crew. We weren't able to source the extensive lighting kit we needed in E Berlin so we were allowed to get it from the West. The latest in big Arri lights arrived in an immaculate lorry accompanied by several West Berlin electricians in very expensive cars. As the film was about classical architecture on one day we wanted to film at and around the Brandenburg Gate. Permission from high was granted, and under strict but polite supervision we were allowed right up to the gate itself, way past anywhere that ordinary East Berliners were permitted to go. We were told where it wasnt safe to walk, for fear of anti-personnel mines and other lethal devices, which we were told were to keep the W Berlin fascists out, of course, but we were otherwise allowed pretty much free rein.
Next day we were back in W Berlin, filming just across the Wall from where we had been the day before. As the cameraman and I rose to a great height in the cherry-picker we were using to get a high wide shot of the B Gate, we could see the E German border guards eyeing us with their binoculars, and I'm sure they were saying to each other, 'Hey, comrade, it's the British film that were here yesterday.'
Two years later I was back in Berlin on another film and simply walked through the Gate, and over the 'Death Strip' to my heart's content. I wondered if the blokes selling E German memorabilia had only two years before been guarding the 'anti-fascist wall'.
I was an American Air Force Security Police Specialist in Berlin during 1979 to 1982. This is the best description for the wall and the people who were in the East. I worked 500 yards from the wall and would talk and give the DDR soldiers hand signs 😂😂 Berlin was a beautiful city with the exception of the Wall. I returned to Berlin in 2018 with my children and showed them how it was. They have a memorial park that still has a section of the wall , guard towers and pictures of the 138 victims
A must visit if you are in Berlin.
Thank you for this video, it provided important information and amazing animation.
Hi @Jessie,
Glad it was helpful!
Best,
The DW Documentary Team
Proud to serve there with the US Army's Berlin Brigade. 1983-1986. I use to patrol the Wall in a Gun Jeep. The East German troops in the towers would wave back and dangle their dog tags if you waved at them. I remember when that Church was torn down. The West side had protests when it happened.
US Troops were allowed to go into East Berlin. We had to have special orders, be in uniform and be out by midnight. At the time one US dollar equaled 21 East German Marks. We would go over for shopping, a nice meal and hit a pub or two.
Major Arthur D. Nicholson (7 June 1947 - 24 March 1985) was a United States Army military intelligence officer shot and killed by a Soviet sentry in East Berlin while engaged in intelligence-gathering activities as part of an authorized Military Liaison Mission which operated under reciprocal U.S. - Soviet authority.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences.
Thank you for your service
100 west mark was 400 east mark , 100 west mark was 50 dollars, not 1 dollar to 21 east mark.
@@bigjohn742 Probably it was "black market" rates.
Wow! I didn’t know the US Soldiers weee allowed to travel to the East.. Sad story about the Major. I would love to read more about that situation
The video was fantastic, thanks
Very Educational and Well Done Video
Berlin was a great place to get stationed at in the 80s! Spent some time at TCA when I was in the Air Force (1987-1988). Unlike any other assignment I ever had.
Wow. Thats some animation 👌
Having spent time there as a soldier 1988-90, I can say this is a fantastic video. Full of good information
Thanks for watching!
Very nice job with the animations! Gives a good visualisation on how it was back then! I would like to see more from the second world war and the cold war, keeps amazing me
This is a wonderful presentation. Thank you.
Thanks for watching and for the positive feedback!
thank you great video
Excellent job!
Good, informative!
Excellent informative video
amazing video!
Informative video with good attention to detail. Can DW re-upload this master piece in full HD. This topic deserves much discussion even in today's time when neo fasist forces are trying to break the western civilization.
I find this part of history so interesting.
@@springchickena1 what’s funny muppet 🐸
Excellent
We need a wall like this but in our south border to prevent drug dealers, rapists and murders enter.
Very educational!!!
Good one guys! Thanks
Thanks for watching!
Nb:
Sangat Menarik serta Bagus..
Untuk ,, Skripsi dan Kliping..
Tugas Mata Pelajaran Sejarah!!
👍👍👍
Its amazing the lengths man will go to take another man's freedom away. The time and money wasted on this wall is a depressing ugly thing.
Íts so interesting video - I want to know which side s residents life like !
Arrived in Germany the year before the wall came down, still have a piece of it in my shed! The guys on the RAF base gathered some of the Trabants abandoned when they came through and used them to run around the base in.
A very interesting documentary
Indonesia.
Sangat Menarik Sekali dan Bagus Banget...untuk.. Pembelajaran Sejarah Dunia...
👍👍👍👍
Thanks sir
My grandmother was born in 1938 , she was 86 years old...my grandfather was born in 1936 ,he passed away in 2021 ,he was 87 years old...Both my grandparents were born during the second World War... They were born in villages of the Assam Province, British India...
A very interesting documentary. It really shows how pathetic the DDR regime were, the 'Party of the People' were prepared to kill their own men, women and children in the name of a 'socialist belief'. Those responsible for the construction and operation of this border should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves, but the corrupt politicians are never ashamed of what they do.
Communism is the ideology of envy and social failure. Led by petty bourgeoisie who have gone wild, relegated people try to come to power without qualifications. Once there, they are the worst fellow hogs."
And to think that we allied with the communists to destroy Germany rather than the opposite, what were we thinking.
@@rosesprog1722 Because destroying both was too tall an order, and what Hitler had done was pretty bad. What the commies were about to do was still a question mark. Siding with Hitler and his gas-chamber operating cronies was not really an option, was it?
This had nothing to do with a “socialist belief” .. people too often conflate communism and socialism with authoritarianism. Currently the socialist party in Germany is in power. The last two presidents of France were members of the socialist party, along with the current mayor of Paris. Oligarchs from around the globe have gone to great lengths to spread misinformation and keep this misunderstanding alive.
@@lostboy583 How many times do you want to try "real communism" before we can stop dragging this failed ideology from the historical scrap heap? How many lives have to be destroyed before you're satisfied?
Socialism cannot stop corruption and centralization of power and nepotism. You can successfully equate communism and socialism with authoritarianism because the former will always and has always lead to the latter.
The oligarchs have succeeded enslaving your mind. You will never escape their mental plantation by clamoring for more taxing and more centralized government power, which is necessarily what socialism entails.
I visit this wall to see the old memories of Berlin people they suffered from second world war
How can any country really believe that its citizens will believe its lies when you have to keep them prisoners within your borders? If your political system is that great, you don't have to fear your people leaving.
what are u BS ing , because of Hilters war and other economical system until 40 you could not go there and that is it .Was 100 other countries .
The Rolling Stones' career has lasted twice as long as the wall stood, 12 years longer than the entire Eastern Bloc, and 18 years less than the entire Soviet Union XD
That's why they are now called The Rolling Bones.
i was in East Berlin back in 73. Still have the visa. E. Germany had a pretty good hockey team back then . some games on utube
thanks for the cool facts
Good work. Which software?
I like to see a video of BMW and Volkswagen
Great animation, especially for a video over 10 years old.
Nice to see a few Trabis feature in this mini documentary.
insane animation
Well done and very educational! Hopefully we will get to see a video like this after North and South Korea unites to form one nation-state.
Was there in 1985 got into east Berlin for few hours, it’s look like the time stop in 1945 .
Normal life your imagination was sick , normal country with very good economy among Socialists countries .
Why was some of the restraining devices, such as the automatic firing weapons, removed in 1983?
Why people always say communism vs democracy. It should be communism vs capitalism and democracy vs authoritarianism
i was in Berlin a few years ago There are still reminders of the wall. Cool city Great food
When people forget what happened, history will repeat itself
Many people only take history serious when they get to see/touch it or it's remains
Germany has learned from it's mistakes and did everything to change. We are now more accepting and free than at any other point in time and even more than many other western countrys
raymond daubney the fuck have you been smoking and where can I get some?
After watching this I am thankful to our freedom.
freedom lol
Relative freedom, if you are lucky...
Little price for such crime
you do not have any freedom u have censorship , lies , and rainbow which serve to sexually break kids. Western ugly lies .
The video begins along Bernauerstraße, Berlin. The church (Kirche) shown early in the video was destroyed (that is, blown up) by the DDR. You can see the outline of the church today at a memorial site.
I was stationed in West Berlin Germany from 1980 until 1986. On McNair. Traveled to the East many times . Wonderful City, Great people, miss the friends i made.
crazy to think that you were stationed there closer to ww2 than to today
@g2a793 absolutely,
@@DS-jp9cy î was born in west berlin and grew up there in the 2000s so it is fascinating to see people from across the world having a closer connection to the berlin wall than me, thank you for serving, i grew up a few hundred meters away from what mcnair is nowadays
@g2a793 I was assigned to McNair but lived one Straussenbahn stop down . In a home owned by a zehlendorf polizi commissioner. That he rented to the military. I was 19yrs old when I arrived and 26yrs old when I left. Much of my character was developed during that time.
this is very well done and as a document to show how to control human being, it is so sad that people had to be separated from their loved ones. Freedom is good and beautiful let the world breathe
I remember watching the wall fall on tv 📺
thank you to the camera man
We left the Berlin Wall on 31/01/20 🇬🇧
i feel like i’m playing medal of honor
There are lots of such walls around the world.
I traveled from Hamburg to Berlin by train in the winter of '90/'91. It was only a few months after the Berlin wall came down. As soon as the train crossed the (former) west-east border, it was as if time transported me back to 1945. It was surreal. The landscape was desolate, with almost no cars or people in sight. The train stations were no more than big-size huts--tile-roofed, delapidated and grey
and run-down.
Interesting
I grew up in a divided Europe. My parents only went on vacation to Yugoslavia once which was behind the wall. However it's leader Tito fought against Communism they hated being a communist country. Most countries in Eastern Europe did.
However any resistance against the U.S.S.R would be quickly put down.
I am Dutch and it sounds a lot like German to a foreigner I remember my parents being asked if they were German, after they said they were from the Netherlands they were Treated very nice but Germans in the same hotel were not. Yugoslavia never forgave Germany for what happened during and after the 2nd world War. There fate was decided for them by the American and Russian governments they divided Europe in half, for a peace treaty that in the end led to the cold war.
I also remember that my father who's hobby was taking pictures did not take one picture during that vacation.
I went to Yugoslavia again after my marriage to an American Air Men. We both had to to OSI the Air Force investigation office for a briefing and debriefing.
I noticed during that vacation that everyone working in the hotel wore the same shoes, it was like this in every hotel.
Everyone in the tourist industry wore the same clothes. Almost like in the military.
We were stationed in Las Vegas when the wall came down.
I remember a frantic call from my mother both my parents were children during WWII, she was frantic that a united Germany would lead to another war.
It did lead to the war in Bosnia Herzegovina.
We were stationed in Germany after the wall came down, I worked in a German hotel, one of my co workers was from east Germany and 2 were from Hungary they had fled to the west as soon as they could out of fear the wall would be rebuild.
My coworker from east Germany was extremely traumatized.
She was afraid of anything having to do with the government.
She told me in east Germany you had to be a member of the party to get work.
She also said nobody trusted anyone because they could be in the Stasi, neighbors would inform on neighbors to get better paying jobs or nicer housing. She had been a victim of a Stasi interrogation and was hit so hard she had lost an eye.
She also said many east Germans committed suicide out of fear of becoming part of what they were taught the fascist west.
It was discovered after the wall came down that Honniker as well as the higher ups in n the communist party lived an almost western lifestyle in luxury homes and western food and films and utter luxury.
While the average citizens had to stand in long food lines for one thing that was being sold in stores that day.
many so called ''socialist'' things, are like mafias, they say one thing and do themselves another thing. Not surprising that most of the ex-USSR countries have mafia past and future. Very very patriarchal societies.
loved it ,would love too see it
Spoiler alert: They tore the Wall down starting in 1989.
Cool
What happened in 1983 to remove land mines and the trip wire devices to shoot?
A lot of money from west germany arrived in order to remove those things
That was pretty cool
Thanks for the detailed video . But why was berlin only half soviet, considering it was entirely located in Eastern Germany?
a im cuban and i cry everytime i see this
si terrible....donde esta ud ahora?
wrong that what u see is ugly western prop. in East was very rich life they could travel to other countries do not buy West prop . its ugly part of the world. Was there in East Germany one of the best countries .
@@bigjohn742 You forgot to mention that the other countries that East Germans could visit were only other Warsaw Pact countries like Poland, Romania, etc. They couldn't go to France, UK, US, and other such countries. Even if they wanted to visit relatives in West Germany, part of the family had to stay behind so that the travellers had a very strong incentive to return since they didn't want the family left behind in East Germany to be punished if they chose to stay in the West.
Hay quá
Excellent video. Nevertheless, I have a doubt regarding the part where you said West-Berlin was part of the FRG. As far as I know, it was NOT formally part of the Federal Republic of Germany, but it was indeed politically aligned.
when you need to set up all these arrangements just to prevent people from fleeing, you know you on the wrong side. lmao
no u west created this world on one side ppl earned 50 dollars on the other 1500 $.your freedom is BS . Your censorship is ugly .
Clearly a superior system, where people cannot leave without threat of death.
Think of the costs of keeping 12,000 security guards housed and fed !
I see a flaw in the system. Let's just say my lepus impersonation is pretty darn good.
Nice very nice keep up the good work K-9 0Ut...
Fun Fact, the wall was around Westberlin..
You have a great visual video of how the divided a nation from Aug 1961 to November 1989
DW documentary 👏👏👏👏👏
I mean you don’t need to go through the wall or the iron curtain, you can just go to poland and highjack a plane and fly it to Tempelhof
but the kagebist boys permeated Poland.
Can you image that these nutters would build a wall around your home and decide your destiny? Madness.
madness was hitlers war ! and that was punishment and economical logic if on 1 side u have 1500 $ a month and other 50 dollars a month u can not allow ppl go en masse to other side u west were at least in half responsible for cold war . Your freedom is Empty Easter Egg .