US American REACTS - The Inner German Border
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ต.ค. 2024
- Hello friends!
I hope you enjoy today's little history lesson! And if you have any stories of family or friends who lived near the border I'd love to hear about it.
Thank you for watching!
Original Video -- • Walled in: The inner G...
I was in A-Troop 1/11 ACR from 86-90, I learned german really fast, got married and was living off post when the wall fell, I was watching german tv and ended up being the first American to know what was happening, called my platoon leader and told him what was up, we went full alert and headed up to point Alpha. While up there the 7 Corps commander flew in, he gave me a Bordet Coin, 3 days off and I got to fly back to Fulda in his Blackhawk. After about 3 days Fulda was flooded with trabis and east germans buying all the bananas and ketchup, was pretty crazy back then.
you can see these concrete roads at the former patrol routes along the fence line still today
I was born in 1977 and grew up in east germany in a small town relatively near the border, but not as close as Hötensleben. Although i was only 12 years old when the wall came down i remember that day very vividly. And i remember some vague situations in the time before, i.e. once we came back from summer vacation and were driving to our hometown, heading west so to say, and were multiple times stopped and checked by police while not being anywhere near the border. I remember a teacher in school 5th grade asking what the clock on tv looks like, to find out which students' parents watch "Westfernsehen".
Hi Nate. Spent some time in the Harz region last year. We and the Mrs went looking for the remains of the border. Apart from an ocasional sign, there is nothing left! It has been erased, nothing left. I found one lamp post that would have had a camera, that was it. Even finding a map on line acurate enough to go hunting was hard. I think they want to forget it.
Several years ago, there was a distinct 'feeling' when you crossed to the other side, but the govenment has done such a job on the infrastructure it is all now seamless.
Good luck hunting for it.
Point Alpha has a great museum with a bit of fence and towers and basically a miniature section of how it was back in the day.
Yepp, the German government wanted to remove the border as a symbolic act to show that Germany is reunited, without any remnants remaining. That didn't work as well as intended, but at least it was with good intentions. I also remember that back then the Bundeswehr got a small handfull of demining tanks that plowed through the inner German death strip to get rid of the minefields as they were often INTENTIONALLY marked to be at the wrong spots, just in case somebody intending to flee got their hands on a map of the minefields. We're talking about really sick paranoia here.
I used to live in Hungary near Lake Balaton. That lake has artificial beaches and tourist resorts around the edge. It was one of the few places where east Germans could meet west German friends and family members. I don't know how it worked but I dare say there were systems in place to make sure those from the east did not use it as a way to get to the west.
it was used as such way though in many, many cases
Yepp, that's how my (West German) dad got to know one of his East German friends, a painter from Halle. We remained good friends with them since the early 1960's. They both met on the beach of a Hungarian lake during their holidays. BTW: I have to give credit and thanks to both the Polish and the Hungarians for opening the flood gates back in 1989 by opening their borders and allowing refugees from the embassies to flee. That was the beginning of the end for the SED regime. Without you guys history might have turned out a lot differently.
Oh boy, Germans and walls.. Der (Berliner) Mauer, Ostwall, Westwall, Atlantikwall.. Indestructible barriers, luckily time proved different.
I was born in East Germany in 1988, so I was lucky and didn't have to consciously experience this madness.
Wenn man bedenkt, dass sich viele genau DAS zurück wünschen! 🙈
I really appreciate your knowledge and curiousness about germany and history - you may be a good example for an intelligent American, thank you!
there is a german movie out (its older and i dont remember the name) where 1 or two families together escape that madness with a selfmade balloon fired by gas. its a true story , if you are digging a bit you will find alot of stories like this. some endet good some not.
i lived near goslar when the fall happened. the next day the only car you could see at the streets was a trabbi, no fruits more available in the complete region, complete chaos for a few days/weeks.
greetings
"Ballon" by Bully Herbig 2018
@@arnodobler1096" Mit dem Wind nach Westen" ist eine ältere TV Version. Beide Filme sind aber top.
@@RodgG.001 Danke 👍
Der Film hieß:"Mit dem Wind nach Westen"Die neuere Version , von Bulli Herwig heißt einfach "Baloon"
As a german, I can only recommend all us american´s out there to watch this video closely: That´s the blueprint how to build an wall to stop people effectively from crossing an border... ( other examples are the north-south-korean-border or (to an lesser extend) the "fence" around guantanamobay...) - if you us citizens out there think (like Mr. Trump and his friends) that immigration on the US-Mexico-Border is such an big threat to the security of the USA and the US-way-of-life - only an wall/fortified border of this kind can effectivly stop (but still not at 100%!) unwanted migration across an border. and if you investigate a bit in german history books, you will see that building, maintaining and guarding/manning such an system costs an awfull amount of money... So, dear US citizens, think bout it: Is the "danger" and the financial "burden" of all those "illegal immigrants" (I think some 99+% of them only want to work for (too) few Dollars to make a living in the USA) really so big that such an enormous amount of investment is really economic? And think about it, it´s an investment for decades if not centuries...! And the more effectiv any "secured/guarded" border will become, the more it will also be an "ethic" problem for the society that builded it - such an border dont works if there is not at the end someone with deathly weapons to guard it ... and someone with a bloody mind to command these troops, and someone with blood on his hands that pay all this. Learn from the mistakes of our german history - and try to find an other (more intelligent and more human) way to solve the problems at the US-mexican-border. Building defensive walls has never worked and will never work to stop migration (ask the roman empire, ask the chinese empire(s), ask the germans, etc. etc.)...
Greetings
post scriptum: The border between west- germany and east-germany: 1300 km = 870 miles
East-german military unit guarding the frontier "Grenztruppen" ( = "border-guards") 32.000 men
The border us-mexican border: 3,145 kilometers = 1,954 miles.
5:45 Nope, NO-ONE in East Berlin worked in West Berlin after the wall came up. The same applied to anyone on the eastern side of the inner German border from the coast of the Baltic Sea south to Bavaria.
Simply NO-ONE. Period.
Before the wall was built, yes, many east Berliners did work in West Berlin, because they simply had the whole of East Germany to cross, and couldn't usually get on planes in West Berlin anyway.
But afterwards, nope, none. Most buildings directly on the border were torn down as soon as the first real wall was erected.
As an east German adult you had to apply for a travel visa and permit many months, often more than a year before you intended to travel. During this time your 'behavior' and your family background was checked. If you didn't have any family members back in the east, you wouldn't get a permit, because you might just stay in the west. Yes, there were always a handful of people allowed to move west each year so the East German government had their propaganda machine point to their "freedom of travel", but it was just that: a propaganda tool.
Even if you had family members their background and your own relationship to them was scrutinized by the StaSi, the Staatssicherheit, the East German 'secret' police. They had incredibly broad rights of invading your privacy at any time, often listening in on phone calls from the west, checking incoming or outgoing snail mail (no internet back then), and even establishing listening posts in apartments neighboring people suspected of harboring anti-socialist leanings. In the beginning even having a TV antenna on your roof pointed westwards meant you could suffer repression or even jail time for listening to western radio, or watching western TV. Later, when the SED government noticed that it was a lost cause because EVERYONE also watched west TV they stopped their reprisals just for having a west-facing antenna on your roof. We had friends in Dresden and in Halle who got to visit us once or twice each in over thirty years. The incredible noteworthy visit was when the married couple from Dresden got an exception to travel together to visit us but only because their granddaughter loved them deeply and would be heartbroken if they didn't return. Also all three of their kids were still back home and looking for a job. If they didn't return, the granddaughter would have suffered reprisals throughout her school years. Their own adult kids would have probably been under constant scrutiny then, and would probably loose their jobs.
Just to give an example from the western perspective.
The case of the old lady was when the wall was put up, and buildings right on the border were still standing, the ground and first floor exits and windows were bricked over. People still tried to escape by climbing out second floor windows and jumping down. Often they were caught by people who waited for them on the western side, but some couldn't wait. Even such an attempt was punishable by prison time, so people usually had exactly ONE attempt to flee, and some were desperate. Like that old lady.
BTW: the official SED name for the Wall was "Antifaschistischer Schutzwall" or "anti-fascist protection wall" in official legalese. They claimed that it protected the East from the fascists still living in West Germany and beyond. Everybody else just called it The Wall, even inside East Germany. Everybody knew what it was really about.
The soldiers patrolling on the Inner German border often were just paired up in the beginning, with one being a 'morale officer' in high SED standing. Later after too many two man patrols decided to escape together, even this was upgraded to four soldiers in a patrol, with one being a known 'morale officer' and potentially another undercover StaSi operative, obviously secretly.
The tragedy is that "walls" like this still exist but on a much, much larger scale in the world's most developed "democratic and free" Western countries.
I am thinking of the imaginary walls that cut off citizens from nature, from beaches and from lakes. In some countries, you even have the right to shoot live ammunition at those who cross these borders.
Perhaps the reason I think this is so awful is because I was born in a country that has "The freedom to roam" as an unwavering and self-evident civil right.
(I visited Berlin the year after the wall fell and it was a very powerful experience.)
In the late 70s and into the 80s the Army had field trips to see the actual border. I went to see it for the first time near Hof (and oddly enough a town named Hell). We we told to be on our Ps and Qs because we would be photographed constantly (e.g. no flipping off the commies lol). I think the thing that struck me most is the way the sunken part was constructed. It was quite obvious that it was built to keep vehicles (and people) from leaving, but our tanks could roll through handily. I went several times to the border (once with my basic load). You're spot on about the lack of reporting about the longer border barrier. Some towns were actually split in half.
Later, I had a good friend stationed in Berlin. I went up there several times before and after the wall came down. Oh, the East Germans had built a nicer area right where most folks crossed, but if you went a few blocks away from there the scene was very different. Some roads had poorly filled potholes that I'm fairly certain were from WWII artillery impacts - in 1989. Yep, I have a piece of the wall at the house. A real one snagged by me friend there. My memories of the wall falling are still pretty vivid. I was in Frankfurt, my friend in Berlin, everyone's eyes were on AFN, CNN or one of the German networks. Coverage was continuous, and it was a day I didn't think would come for another 15-20 years.
I suspect that a major reason for all this was the brain drain from the East. From the end days of the war folks tried by hook and crook to get to the West. That didn't end with the war, and those with marketable skills leaving left a vacuum.
Cool video! Love me some DW.
so glad to be from west germany. #teamwestside 😉
My mother grew up in Helmstedt/Lower Saxony and therefore I still know the inner-German border quite well... The most important border crossing to the GDR and transit route to West Berlin ran directly above the city. A few years ago I visited the area again, there is nothing left of the actual border except the former patrol path. The Helmstedt Marienborn border crossing is now an open-air museum and memorial. The village of Hötensleben is located not far south of Helmstedt. There, the former border fortifications, as you can see them here in the video, are still completely preserved as a memorial site. The visit is free and very interesting. There I also had the opportunity to talk to a nice older resident, who told me something about his life in the former restricted area. He recounted how he had deceived a Stasi employee when he secretly hooked up a West German television receiver under his bed. 😅😁
Uh, red-devils fan, ey?
Ich bin Ende der 50er geboren und in Frohnau im französischen Sektor von Berlin (West) etwa 300m von der Mauer entfernt aufgewachsen.
Eigentlich gab es zwei verschiedene Arten der Einmauerung!
Einmal die, die die Bürger von Ostdeutschland davon abhalten sollte nach Westdeutschland zu kommen und dann die andere Art, die Berlin (West) betraf. Denn es waren die Bürger dort, die tatsächlich eingemauert waren, denn die Mauer ging um ganz Berlin (West) herum!
Beide innerdeutschen Grenzen wurden vom Osten „antiimperialistischer Schutzwall“ genannt.
Damit sollte angeblich der „imperialistische Feind“ abgehalten werden.
Nur,…
… die Bürger aus dem Westen durften zu Besuchen in den Osten einreisen, nicht jedoch umgekehrt die Leute aus dem Osten in den Westen!
An der Berliner Grenze gab es meines Wissens nie Landminen, denn es hätten im Falle von Explosionen Menschen im Westen verletzt werden können. Aus dem selben Grund war es wohl auch den ostdeutschen Grenzsoldaten verboten auf Flüchtlinge zu schießen, wenn Projektile über die Grenze gelangen konnten. Trotzdem:
Eines der letzten Todesopfer der Mauer starb nur etwa 2,5km von unserem Haus entfernt.
Ich habe hier ganz bewusst immer "Berlin (West)" geschrieben, denn das war die offizielle Bezeichnung!
Es gäbe noch unendlich viele Geschichten zur Mauer zu erzählen, aber das würde jeden Rahmen sprengen...
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I was born at the end of the 50s and grew up in Frohnau in the French sector of Berlin (West), about 300m from the Wall.
There were actually two different types of walling!
Firstly the one that was supposed to stop the citizens of East Germany from coming to West Germany and then the other kind that affected Berlin (West). Because it was the citizens there who were actually walled in, because the wall went around the whole of Berlin (West)!
Both inner German borders were called “anti-imperialist protective walls” by the East.
This was supposedly intended to keep the “imperialist enemy” away.
Only,…
... citizens from the West were allowed to visit the East, but not the other way around, people from the East to the West!
As far as I know, there were never landmines on the Berlin border because people in the West could have been injured in the event of explosions. For the same reason, East German border guards were probably forbidden from shooting at refugees if projectiles could get across the border. Despite it:
One of the last victims of the wall died only about 2.5km from our house.
I deliberately always wrote “Berlin (West)” here because that was the official name!
There are still endless stories to tell about the Wall, but that would go beyond the scope...
Ich war mal bei Point Alpha, dort ist jetzt eine Art Museum.
Die Baracken ,der Soldaten am Fulda Gap, Teile der Mauer oder besser des Zaunes . Und der Fahrweg der Grenzsoldaten trecht interesant. Der Fahrweg ist jetzt ein guter Wanderweg.
When I was 16 years old, we travelled to the border with the school, financed by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
We also spent 1 day in the GDR, it was like travelling to a prison. Watchtowers, roadblocks, heavily armed personnel. Everything faced inwards, not like a normal border.
That day, and the day in Dachau, are etched in my memory. That's why I get angry when people tell me how nice it was.
Until I was about 16 we rode to the border with our bicycles, sometimes on the weekends. Climbed on a wooden observation deck for tourists and looked if we could see a border soldier in the east. Far away there were some rooftops of a small village.
And with 16 we had our exchange Amis and took them to Berlin. Even a day on the eastside. Group photo at the closed Brandenburger Tor. Was it even more weird for them? Or less because it wasn’t their country and everything was different than at home anyways?
Moin Arno! Ich habe auch, meine Erfahrungen mit der DDR gemacht, war von 90' bis 92' Fahrdienstleiter für einen Staatsanwalt und einen Notar die beide, mit und für die Treuhandgesellschaft tätig waren!!! Ich habe die ganze DDR kennenlernt und es war alles grau und kaputt! 220Kmh ,mit Trabis zusammen auf der Autobahn 😮 mit 3,5T gepanzerte Fahrzeuge welch eine verrückte Zeit! Hab tolle Leute kennengelernt aber du weißt ja auch, Arschlöcher gibt es überall 😊Oh ja der Feigensenf war echt lecker!!!
@@wietholdtbuhl6168 Freut mich. Es ist lecker.
Wir waren alle so 16 und luden eine Gruppe 20 jähriger DDR Bürger zum Kaffee und Kuchen in ein Café ein. Wir befragten sie über ihr Leben in der DDR. Bei jeder Antwort sahen sie sich jedes mal erstmal um.
Wir schenkten ihnen am Schluss unser gesamtes DDR Geld, das wir eh nicht ausgeben konnten! *
Im nachhinein eine seltsame, etwas peinliche Begegnung für beide Seiten.
*100 DM Zwangsumtausch in DDR Geld 1 zu 1. Das Bier kostete 0,56 DDR Mark.
In einem DDR Kaufhaus sah ich in der Herrenabteilung eine einzige Hose im Angebot.
Ich war in einem Plattenladen, da ich Karat Fan war, fragte ich nach einer Platte der Band. Der Blick der Verkäuferin werde ich nie vergessen, als wäre ich vom Mars.
Wenn du verzweifelst versuchst Geld auszugeben!!!
@@wietholdtbuhl6168 I'm delighted. It's delicious.
We were all about 16 and invited a group of 20-year-old GDR citizens for coffee and cake in a café. We asked them about their life in the GDR. Every time we answered, they looked round.
In the end, we gave them all our GDR money, which we couldn't spend anyway! *
In retrospect, it was a strange, somewhat embarrassing encounter for both sides.
*100 DM forced exchange into GDR money 1 to 1. The beer cost 0.56 GDR marks.
In a GDR department stores', I saw a single pair of trousers on sale in the men's department.
I was in a record shop and, as I was a Karat fan, I asked for a record by the band. I'll never forget the look on the shop assistant's face, as if I were from Mars.
When you're desperate to spend money!!!
Thanks!
This was a great video! Usually US vidoes do not show the whole story.Very profound.Loved go watch it.
Graphics are pretty good for such a old upload.
Its not just American kids that did not get much in depth details about the Berlin Wall, but here as well in the UK in my 80s when I went to school.
We where taught about why the wall was erected, and what sectors of Germany was divided in to what country, but that was about it.
However it may be the fact that we kids where just to board about such history, as it had nothing to do with us in that time, like my dad being put out of work due to the mine being shut down by Thatcher and her Government............we lived through hard times, at least as a child could understand.
Anyone who has had to build something like this and maintain it for almost half a century can only go bankrupt.
A single budget guzzler of an economy that had already reached its limits in the 1970s and had to be continuously supported by the social-market-economy state of the same nation through credits.
The border in Berlin was only interesting because that border ran through a city.
In reality, half of Europe was behind the Iron Curtain.
I (*1965) grew up in Vienna/Austria.
At that time, Eastern Austria was bordered in the north/east by the CSSR, in the east by the People's Republic of Hungary and in the south/east by the non-aligned communist Yugoslavia.
That was the quietest, most protected, crime-free time of my life.
Not a single criminal would have dared to cross the Iron Curtain back then.
But today....O tempora, o mores 🤮
In 1983 my brother and I hitchhiked to Hungary.
After the border control in Austria, there was another 2 kilometers of no-man's land with several armed controls by Hungarian patrols until we reached the Hungarian border controls.
Only then did we enter communist Hungary.
Ok, first objection: this border wasn't only interesting because it ran though a city. It was a major city, a large city - Germanys capital city.
But not just this - it was also a border that split families and friends from one another and preventend them from being together or even freely contact each other. There might be some instances, where this was also true for the rest of the Iron Curtain in Europe, but nowhere this extreme as in Germany.
I assume you're someone were parts of your family or friends were not trapped behind this border, or you wouldn't be so disrespectful in this regard. This was seriously painful for many people. A wound that did not heal to this very day and propably never will.
I generally agree with your part regarding: "... the quietest, most protected, crime-free time ...", but you're not even mentioning the permanent threat of the largest war in history potentially getting hot. If it would have, than this, where we live, would have been ground zero. It is easy to forget this 34 years later and feel nostalgia for the positive things, but I don't want to switch back to this.
Also this border imprisoned millions of people and stopped freedom of movement on all sides of it. This wasn't right. Freedom for all of them is much more important.
Yes, today it is getting exploited by criminals, who freely move between countries and "escape" to the safety of their east European home. But this is not a flaw of this border or a lack there of. It's a political problem. The vast majority of people who cross these borders are fine folks. Do you seriously want to imprison millions against their will, just to stop less than 1% of criminals to cross it? I suggest you to get your government to invest more in border protection and enable the police to hunt them down, before they ever escape instead.
@@dnocturn84 Es wird nichts so heiß gegessen, wie Sie es kochen. Mit zunehmenden Alter und Lebenserfahrung, sehe ich Probleme der heutigen Generation nicht mehr so verbissen Ernst wie Sie. Alles halb so wild. Heute würd man sagen "chill out". Die Legalisierung vom Betäubungsmittel Cannabis in Deutschland würde dir dabei helfen.
@@claudiaberger9639 Ich habe jetzt überhaupt keine Ahnung, wo genau diese Antwort jetzt herkommt und warum Sie zu "Lebenserfahrung" und "Problemen der heutigen Generation" abdriften. Darum ging es hier doch überhaupt nicht.
Das getrennte Deutschland ist schon ein eigenes Kapitel im Bezug auf den Eiserenen Vorhang. Hier war der Effekt deutlich drastischer und schmerzhafter, als igendwo sonst in Europa. Getrennte Familien und Freundschaften, die sich Jahrzehnte lang nicht mehr sehen durften (und oft dabei kaputt gingen). Aber auch in Bezug wie hart diese Trennung umgesetzt wurde, war in Deutschland mitunter am Heftigsten. Immerhin wurden Flüchtlinge hier bis zuletzt mit dem Schussbefehl getötet. Andere Osteuropäische Länder entwickelten einen deutlich freundlicher Umgehensweise und mehr Offenheit, als in Deutschland.
Aber ist schon ok, dass Sie das so betrachten. Immerhin waren Sie als Österreicherin ja nie wirklich von den negativen Konsequenzen betroffen. Nur schade - ein bissel mehr Respekt gegenüber denen, die unter dem Eisernen Vorhang oder der deutschen Mauer zu leiden hatten, wäre vielleicht doch angebracht. Das muss jetzt nicht negativ verstanden werden, denn es ist auch nicht negativ gemeint. Servus und Ihnen noch einen schönen Abend!
@@claudiaberger9639
Sorry, Sie sind in Wien aufgewachsen und wollen andeuten, Sie wüssten, wie das Leben in Berlin (West) damals aussah?
Lachhaft!
Sie haben keinerlei Ahnung, das beweist schon Ihre Antwort!
Klar, gab es damals keine Grenzübertritte von Ost nach West durch Kriminelle. Die gab es aber durchaus von den westlichen Nachbarn in die Bundesrepublik und in Gegenrichtung. Allerdings war das Leben insgesamt damals in ALLEN Belangen weniger international!
Thanks for great reaction videos Nate! I'm from Sweden and Germany is one of my favourite countries, and I'm very interested in german history. Specifically the East/West German history. For me it's a little like a love/hate history topic. I like the tension between the east and west block, but in the same time I feel sorry for all of those that lost their lives in the East. Not only the ones that died lost their lives. The ones that lived all their lives also lost their lives in some kind of way, not beeing able to fulfill their dreams in life. I was born in 1981 and in this case I wish i was born ten years earlier so that I could have expericenced mor of this part of history, maybe visiting Berlin on year befor the fall of the wall, beeing 18 years old instead of eight.
Have a great time Nate and enjoy Germany!
El 90%de la poblacion mundial no puéde cumplir sus sueños en la vida porque hay un muro invisible pero que se siente y es el que rodea a quienes manejan la economia..la politica y los medios en el mundo y ese muro es la proteccion de sus intereses.
Tacos and Mexican beans causes comspiracy theories :-)
@@ClaudiaGarcia-we6ps
Just as a thought experiment: What would the Trump border wall to Mexico look like?
Don’t show him that video.
He could not effort it.
Zum Glück . Aber wartet sollte Mexiko das nicht bezahlen?
Building a wall over a totally tunnelled area is Drump clever.
There are also funny videos of them climbing over it.
@@arnodobler1096 did you expect anything others? He is the greatest President of all times. Zumindest denk er das von sich selbst .
Und der Kerl hat tatsächlich noch mal die Möglichkeit ins Weiße Haus einzuziehen. Gott steh uns bei . Beim nächsten Mal ruiniert er die ganze Welt.
@@Thomasg1404 what if he let „illegals“ do the work? That should be less expensive 🤔