August 21, 2014 • 44 mins
It's hard to believe now, but just over 25 years ago there was a giant concrete wall separating East and West Germany. In this episode, Chuck and Josh get into the fascinating story of the Berlin Wall.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry and
this Stuff you Should Know the podcast Tear Down the Wall.
(00:22):
Tear down the Wall? Can you say in German? No,
it would be more authentic. Yeah, tear down the wall. Yeah,
I think that's it. Yeah, that's right. I should know
what that is in German. It's tear down the wall. Yeah.
I remember this stuff man. That was you do too,
to a certain degree. Oh yeah. We both grew up
(00:44):
in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, but several thousand
miles west. It's crazy though to think about it now. Um,
if you're of a certain age, the concept of walling
in the city seems probably really strange and unlikely. Yeah,
you know, if you're like under thirty, probably like what
one of the things that then this is a grab
(01:04):
star article, so it has the stank of quality on it. Um.
That I learned from this article was that there were
a lot of people in power at the time who
were very relieved when the Berlin Wall went up. Yeah,
quietly relieved because things were coming to a head between
two nuclear superpowers in the city of Berlin. Yeah, even
(01:25):
they couldn't really say it out loud, but even Western
leaders were like, all right, well, this maybe not the
worst thing for now. Ah yeah, exactly, give me a
scotch because world leaders drink scotch? Should they do? Yeah?
And they were dark socks. What's up with that? I
don't know. It's so you want to get down to
(01:46):
business here about the Berlin Wall. Um, there's a there
was long a discrepancy over how many people were killed
at the Berlin Wall. Yeah, trying to uh defend or escape,
depending on which way you want to look at it. Yeah. Um.
And the exact number stands right now at one thirty six.
(02:07):
That so many have been confirmed, plenty have been um denied.
I guess, um there were some something Some people said
like as many as three hundred were killed. Some people
said as low as ninety eight. But definitely one thirty
six people were killed at the Berlin Wall, either trying
to escape or that included border guards who were killed
(02:29):
by people who were escaping, And it also sadly included
thirty people who were just trying to cross the border
and weren't trying to escape, but we're killed accidentally. Yeah,
it doesn't sound like a super high number, and I
guess it's not in the grand scheme of things, but
it didn't need to be. Like when those first people
and we'll get to who they were. When those first
people were killed, it's in a very strong message like
(02:51):
do so it tried it at your own risk, you know,
because you might get shot in the back exactly. Um,
And there were trials. The exact numbers for the people
who were killed at the at the Berlin Wall came
out of documents that were used in trials to try
people who were responsible for basically issuing shoot to kill orders.
(03:13):
And yeah, it wasn't clear from the get go just
how poors the border was, even though there was a wall.
But yeah, when they started shooting people and putting in
land mines, it became clear like this is a you
you try to cross this border now at the risk
of your own life. They're not messing around. Apparently a
pregnant woman was shot and killed trying to defect. So yes,
(03:36):
we'll talk about them, but there's plenty of this wall,
the Berlin Wall that I didn't understand. Um. And I
guess I didn't really understand the context. And again, the
graphs are did a really good job of like getting
down to the nitty gritty of like where the whole
thing started, and it finds its roots back in World
War two, at the end of World War two, specifically
after Germany surrendered on May seven? Are we getting in
(04:01):
the way back machine? Oh? You want to? Yeah, we
gotta blow the dust off of this thing. This is
a dangerous time we're going back to. Just before one.
You have to go prime the the engine as well.
Pumped that little bubble because it's been a while. Start
her up. It sounds like it's working all right. So yeah,
(04:27):
it is a little scary where we are and the
end of World War two very uncertain time. Rememb Berlin.
That's right, And like you said, Germany has surrendered. Uh,
but things were a little dodgy before that because Russia
was initially against the Allied forces, which were the United
States and France and Britain. Yeah, they had a treaty
(04:48):
with Germany. Yeah, but then Germany, like you know, Hitler
was one to do, changed his minds and you know what,
I'm gonna invade you guys too, which is pretty stupid, because,
as everyone knows, you don't did you don't start a
land war in Russia. It didn't work out too well
in the end. But what it did was it flopped Russia. Um,
not super willingly, but it kind of flopped them over
(05:10):
the Allied side, even though things were so different in
our two countries. It was a little bit weird that
they did that, right, we we should their hand. It
was one of those the enemy of my enemy is
my friend kind of thing. Yes, so so so the
Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin was like, hey, guys, remember
(05:30):
how were just fighting on the same side. Well, my
teammate just attacked me, so can I come over and
hang out with you dudes for a while? What was
weird was that this is a total Terryan communist regime
asking democratic countries to come fight on their side. They
were probably like, but how about that Hitler guy? Forget
about us for a minute, Like we should all get
(05:51):
together and stop him. Says a lot about how much
everybody hated Hitler. Yeah. Um, but like we said, in
Germany did surrender and uh, oddly, and it's still strange
to think about it. They decided um to divide Germany
up into four zones, and then within one of the
(06:12):
communist zones, the East German Zone, they divided the city
of Berlin up into four zones. Right, such an odd idea. Well,
the thing is is the Soviets had a seat at
the table at the Yalta conference because they were one
of the victors, was one of the Allied victors at
the end of the war. And even though the Allies knew,
like this is really weird having the Soviets there, Who knows,
(06:33):
maybe you can generate goodwill. We don't know what's gonna happen.
So they get an even piece of the pie. And
that's what they did. They divided Germany up into four zones,
and France, Britain and the US eventually merged their zone
and that became the Federal Republic of Germany also known
as West Germany UM. And the Soviets said, we're just
(06:54):
gonna keep total and complete control over our side of Germany.
We'll call it the German Democratic Republic UM, and we're
going to start a puppet stayed in there. I think
the thing that really surprised the Allies though, was that
the Soviets took the chaos at the end of World
War Two as an opportunity to invade and occupy a
(07:15):
bunch of other formerly independent countries. That's what really caught
everybody by surprise. Yeah, and that uh they basically formed
what was to be known as the Iron Curtain, this
isolation that they UH basically put on all these countries
that they invaded. They just cut them off from the
rest of the world. And that was the Eastern Block
(07:36):
and American everyone else was like, huh, I didn't see
that coming. Yeah, but there was an anomaly to the
Iron Curtain, like it was sealed, like all the borders
and all of the Eastern Bloc countries were closed and guarded,
and so there was this Iron curtain between the Soviet
Block and the West. But there was this one little
(07:56):
pocket like as part of the Yalta Conference, Berlin, which
is totally in East Germany, was also divided up into
four quadrants, and the in Britain, France and the US
merged there together, and that was West Berlin, and there
was also East Berlin. Soviet controlled East Berlin. So within
Soviet controlled East Germany was a little island called West
(08:20):
Berlin that was controlled by the UH. Well, the West
German government, the Allies, and there you have it. I
don't think it wasn't a recipe for long term success, No,
And I don't think anyone thought it would be. I
don't know. I mean, why would you go to the
trouble if you thought it wouldn't be I don't know,
maybe just a temporarily quell things. I mean, surely they
(08:42):
didn't think that would be like that forever. Well, it's
almost like they went in after yalta whistling with the
powder keg and just set it down in the middle
of East Germany and paid out some fuse and lit
it and whistled as they walked away. That's what they
did when they divided East in West Berlin. Yeah, and
there wasn't um Like the Western nations weren't thrilled with
(09:06):
all this, but there wasn't much we could do because
they had nuclear bombs and we had nuclear bombs, and
no one wanted that to happen. So there was a
lot of spying and a lot of name calling, a
lot of speeches and rhetoric. There was also a lot
of kidnaps, a lot of bureaucratic delays, a lot of
feet dragging, but in the end, there was no it
wasn't going to lead to another war. No, because like
(09:29):
you said, both sides had nukes, so nobody could step
up and provoke one another militarily, right, No, I mean
not to that degree. So life was really weird in
um Berlin, in West Berlin, in particular, in East Berlin
it was just part of the rest of East Germany.
But again, West Berlin was this little island in East
Germany and there was rail and UM highway, um connections
(09:56):
to the west. Well, they shared an infrastructure. Yeah, it's
a weird thing to do, like a mail system, trains,
it's it's like, it's very you can't it's a hard
thing to divide a country like that city within the country, right, Yeah,
that made it even weirder. Um, And I guess it
carried on like that for a little while, and then
the Soviets were like, yeah, we really didn't mean anything
(10:17):
when we agreed to this, so we're gonna cut off
all this transportation in and out of the city and
um they basically blockaded West Germany from being helped by
the West through rail and through car. But the Allies
could still land planes in and out of West Berlin. Yeah,
(10:40):
whether they were trying to choke them out basically and
just say good luck without food and supply. Yeah, we're
going to take over the city now. And the Americans said,
oh yeah, how about the Berlin Airlift, buddy, how about
sorties landing every two minutes, twenty four hours a day,
bringing in all the supplies you need, the very tight corridor.
It's difficult, but whether you essay, and we can do
(11:00):
it because we can fly planes. And it worked. Yeah.
Apparently the Allied forces who were supplying West Germany just
enough to keep the city going. We're bringing in more
than two hundred thousand tons of cargo a month at
the peak of the airlift, and they kept it going
for it almost a year. They were basically like, you're
not gonna You're not taking over West Berlin. Yeah, we
(11:23):
had planes and we got lots of gas, lots of pilots.
And eventually the Soviet England was like, all right, well,
I guess that didn't work, so let's go ahead and
open up those uh the rail traffic in the roads again. Right,
They lifted the block hayde Um, so things were cool
for a little while, but the Soviets hadn't really forgotten anything,
(11:43):
and UM tensions were just increased more and more after
the Berlin Airlift UM, and I think things were getting
just more and I get the impression that we were
getting closer and closer to the threat of nuclear war
right there in the middle of East Germany UM, and
(12:06):
apparently no one knew what to do about it. One
of the biggest things that was provoking these tensions was
the UM massive amounts of defection from East Germany to
West Germany, because if you were an East Berliner or
in East German, all you did was trot right into
West Berlin. There's nothing to stop you catch a plane
(12:26):
out of West Berlin and fly out to wherever you wanted.
And a lot of people did it, Yeah, and it
was a real divide between the old Guard and the
New Guard. It was mostly young professionals that saw the
riding on the wall. UM. East Germany finally realized they're
in big trouble when they started looking at the number
of doctors leaving and realized they couldn't train enough doctors
(12:48):
UH to support the country that were there that we're exiting.
So by n more than two hundred thousand East Germans
had left, and uh, East Germany knew they were in
trouble because in West Germany didn't love it either, because
there was a big economic strain put on them by
having all these people to show up all of a sudden,
say hey, we're here now, like help us out, take
(13:11):
care of us, right exactly, and you know, not just
take care of us, but help us take care of ourselves. Yeah,
some of them wanted to stay in Berlin. I'm sure
plenty of them wanted to just leave Germany altogether. But
the point is in the West you have this infrastructure
that's being tested by the number of defections, and then
in the East you have this huge brain drain going on,
(13:32):
and so it was causing more and more tension because
the Western forces, the United States and all weren't doing
anything to stop these defections. And probably we're being a
little smug about the whole thing because it suggests like, well,
why do all of your people want to leave in droves.
Maybe you're doing something wrong, Maybe you should just give up.
(13:54):
And the Soviets said, we're not going to give up.
Nice try, uncle Sam, but we're not going to do that. Instead,
we're gonna wait till nightfalls on August twelfth, nineteen sixty one,
and we'll get to what happened there right after this
break all right, Josh, It's auguste code name Wall of
(14:16):
China from the orders of Nikita Kruschev Um but spoken
by what some call a puppet leader, Walter ulbrick Um.
Other people say he wasn't so much a puppet and
it was his idea. I'm not really sure what the
truth is there that actually, but at any rate, they said,
you know what we're gonna do. We are going to
(14:37):
in the dead of night turn off all the street
lights and we're gonna start building the wall out of
concrete post and barbed wire. And when people wake up
all over the world, they're going to be surprised to
see about five miles of wall through central Berlin. And
everyone was surprised, including President Kennedy. Was like a wall, right,
(15:00):
And at first it was kind of a skimpy wall.
It was, I mean not not just symbolic like there
were coils of um razor wire and that kind of thing,
like it was intended to block people, but it was
nothing like the construction that would follow. And a lot
of East Berliners, um saw the writing on the wall
and said, if we have now have a narrow chance
(15:22):
of escaping, so we're gonna try it. Yeah, and um,
at that point, the initial few days, they closed sixty
eight one checkpoints, seal bows off, put armed guards at
the rest of them, and uh, they closed the train stations. Yeah,
close the train stations. And then they began in earnest
what was called the first generation wall was the initial phase,
(15:43):
and it was crude and it didn't even have the foundation.
They basically used bricks from bombed out buildings and mortar
and just kind of started putting up whatever they could
to form the initial wall. Right. And then how long
after that until they started to build what we came
to understand as the Berlin Wall, I think a few years.
(16:07):
I mean they had to get that first initial phase
fully built, and then I think they a few years
later they started work on fortifying it and making it
like a real wall. So, um, like when we say
this happened overnight, it literally happened overnight. And there were
some unfinished parts here there in some pockets that you
could consumably like make a run for it, a literal
(16:28):
last ditch attempt to run through UM, but it was
put up fast enough in in a substantial enough amount
that people were trapped on either side, Like overnight, if
you had a one night stand with a lady on
the other side of the wall, and you woke up
and you're like, I gotta do the walk of shame
back over to my apartment, you were met with barbed
(16:49):
wire fence and guns like and that was that, and
you married that lady. There was a there was a
woman who gave birth to a son and UM ended
up on different sides a few weeks after her son
was born, and he was basically raised in West Germany
and she was thrown into a prison in East Germany
for a while. UM. There were a lot of stories
(17:10):
of people who were just just separated overnight from their families.
A lot of parents suspected that this that some sort
of border enforcement was going to be put up at
some point, so they're like, well, we need to get
over to West Germany. But they tried to do it right.
They went over and they rented an apartment, left their
kids back there, got jobs, started to save money until
(17:32):
he could move their kids over. And some families were
cut off because they didn't get their kids over in time. Yeah,
and again this was all um violated. They alto agreement.
I mean it was all these treaties were completely violated
and it was illegal. But um once again quietly a
lot of like it was a burning kettle, a boiling kettle,
(17:55):
burning and boiling kettle, and things were not looking good.
So everyone was kind of like, all right, maybe this
will at least quell things for now. And it's not
the worst idea in the world, because don't quote me
on that. No, And if you were West Berliner or
an East Berliner, but especially at West Berliner, you did
think it was the worst idea in the world. And
(18:15):
when it became clear that America and NATO weren't going
to do anything about this, there was a deep sense
of betrayal by West Berliner's. They were like, but this,
this spot in East Germany where the Soviets had been
hemorrhaging face had been cauterized for now, and like you say,
(18:36):
the West was secretly relieved. One of the things about
this wall that I didn't know until this article was
that it wasn't just a straight line. It was a circle. Yeah,
the actual the one that enclosed Berlin enclosed fully in
a circle of West Berlin. Yes, And the reason why
is because remember West Berlin was an island in the
(18:56):
middle of East Germany. So you couldn't just cut off
East Berlin from West Berlin. You had to cut off
all of each Germany from West Berlin. And the only
way to do that was to encircle West Berlin with
the wall. That's right, like a prison almost. Um. All right, well,
I guess we should talk a little bit about the wall,
the physical wall, and what it was like. Um. Eventually
(19:18):
when they got to the fine well, it evolved over
the course of you know, many many years. But the
second phase was when they had the legit twelve to
fifteen foot concrete uh studded rebar walls with guard towers
and guns. Uh. They were topped with the tubes so
(19:39):
make it hard to get ahold. There are really two
walls there was. There was the first uh run of
barbed wire and these tank traps. If you saw saving
Private Ryan, you've seen those those big like jaggedy things
like on the beach. Tank traps and they're like huge jacks. Yeah,
that's why, yeah, pretty much. Uh, and thanks can't run
(20:03):
over him, which is I think is a key. It's
like all traps um. So there was that area, and
then there was about thirty to forty yards depending on
where it was of just They called it the what
the death strip where they put chemicals on the ground
to kill all the vegetation. They got German shepherds and
(20:23):
put them on um extra long leaders that basically brought
them nose to nose but didn't allow them to get
into it with each other. But there were no gaps,
you know, you had to encounter a German shepherd and
then if you got through all that junk, you got
to the actual concrete wall, and then on that wall
the actual At some part there were guard towers with
(20:44):
searchlights and they were crafty little um communists. They had
um They would use like standard gravel for the walkways. Well,
Germany is stand, so they would just use the ground,
but they would keep it very well raked um smoothly
rake so that you could see footprints very easily. And
everything was painted a bright white so anything would show
(21:07):
up against it very clearly. Yeah, and that's on the
east side. On the west side it was painted with
graffiti and art. And because they were just crazy free people, well,
they could walk right up to the wall too. They
didn't have to go through German shepherds or razor wire
tank traps. They just walked right up to the wall
and show their disdained for it by using graffiti or
(21:28):
peeing on it. Probably, I'm sure the Berlin Wall was
paid on more than once. I guess that Ronald Reagan
famously did. Uh. There were trip wires that were hooked
up to automatic uh machine gun fire for a while.
Eventually they um agreed to take those down. Um. And
apparently it was tough to even get guards on this
(21:51):
thing because they first had to weed out they didn't
want any guards that had ties to West Germany at all.
A lot of a lot of guards defected in the
early days. Yeah, they realized we got to get guards
that have no family over there, no affinity over there,
and that really narrowed the pool down. And then, uh,
I'm sure there were some guards that were GungHo, but
a lot of them were alcoholics and did not like
(22:14):
their post and didn't want to be there and didn't
want to have the orders to shoot to kill. They're
what they might have seen is still their fellow countrymen. Yeah,
I'm sure, a lot of them did. And we should
say also that not everybody was trapped in East Germany.
There were There was a strong sentiment after the war,
especially that um, West Germany was the part that was
(22:37):
much more associated with the Nazi regime, the some of
the worst atrocities were carried out and what was now
West Germany and in the East there was a perceived
separation from that physically and now historically. Um, that was
one reason some people like to stay in East Germany. Yeah,
and I got the impression that definitely was a sort
(22:59):
of a divide between the old and young. Yeah. Um,
as far as the older people thinking, you know, maybe
this communism thing will take care of everybody, right, and
the young were like, no, no, no, no, freedom, that's
where it's at. So there was a socialist bent among
some people. So there were people who were UM, at
least at first and probably throughout, but definitely at first,
(23:19):
UM happy to be living in a Soviet Bloc country. Yeah.
What struck struck me as super weird was that as
a western, uh West German, you could travel into East
Germany pretty much freely back and forth, which I never
knew that. I thought it was just completely sealed off.
If you were West German, Yeah, yeah, you were. You
(23:39):
were supposed to be allowed passage through pretty simply. Yeah.
And back to West Germany. There were special plates for
people who lived in West Germany. Oh yeah, I feel
like there. I don't care what operas in East Germany.
I'm not going over. I'll get a new dentist um.
And there were actually some standoffs. There was a there
(24:02):
was a really big standoff in nineteen sixty one because
the East Germans didn't allow uh egress like they were
supposed to. Two people with plainly marked cars. Actually American
diplomats and tanks ended up on either side of the
border at Checkpoint Charlie for a full day, Soviet tanks
and American tanks just facing one another, and luckily everybody
(24:24):
stood down um and called the whole thing off. But
it was it was tents there for a little bit,
and the Americans were intentionally testing the Soviets to see
if they would let them let them pass without stopping,
and the Soviets didn't. Like four or five times in
the two day period tank showed up and at the
checkpoint Charlie was the main gate there at Berlin, right
(24:47):
by NATO in the west. Right. That was the gate
between West Berlin and East Berlin. But it wasn't the
only gate. There were other ones. So going from West
Germany into East Germany it was checkpoint Alfa, yeah, and
then from East Germany into West Berlin was checkpoint Uh
was it Beta? I think it's Baker Alpha, Bravo, char
(25:11):
thank you. And that's where I get lost. Well, yeah,
I think it may It might have stopped after Charlie. No.
I used to know that alphabet though, Oh the what's
it call? I can't remember the name of the alphabet.
Now we'll have to ask Jeff Tweetie what. Oh remember
Wilco in the numbers stations? Yeah, yeah, do you know
Jeff Tweetie. I've met him before, Oh, at the rally
(25:34):
to restore Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he's a nice guy.
That's awesome. I thought to meet Jeff Tweete. He's a
good guy. Look at you. And that wasn't even a
name drop because I asked, actually did drop the name,
but you didn't drop it in the way that you
knew him exactly, and that doesn't count. Uh. So there
are lots of awful stories about um people trying to
(25:56):
get across and getting killed. But we talked about and
I will highlight a few of those right after this break.
So one of the problems with UM building a wall
is that it's not necessarily going to follow the you know,
(26:18):
the easiest path. So there was a street called barn
Our Street where there were literally apartments that we're straddling
the Berlin Wall. So like, if you were standing in
your window and like you leaned your head out the window,
your head was hovering above airspace of West Germany and
your feet were in East Germany. And eventually they evicted
(26:39):
all those people living in the apartments and sealed up
the windows because people would go in the front door
and leave the back door. And the fact, yeah, like, hey,
that was pretty easy. So they made it a multi
pronged uh. They addressed the issue of multi pronged fashion. UM.
They bricked up the first story stuff and I guess
vastly underestimate needed the will of people who wanted it effect,
(27:02):
because they quickly found out that people were willing to
jump out of second and third story windows. And what's
cool is Westboro Winners UM would frequently help defectors UM
and so sometimes they would stand there with blankets like pulled,
taught to catch somebody jumping from a second or third
story windows so they could defect more easily. Yeah, there
(27:22):
was this one lady and this you can actually watch
footage of this. It's startling. A seventy six year old
woman named Frieda Schultz. There's footage of her being pulled.
She's hanging from a window, uh well not from a window.
She's hanging from out of a window by East German
policeman and there's Western Germans West Germans pulling her by
(27:44):
the feet. So the East German cops are trying to
pull her up into the window of the West Germans
are trying to yank her down, the seventy six year
old lady, and she was eventually yanked down, which is
the goodness, I guess. But you can like watch that.
It's file footage exists. It's creepy. She's what's her name,
Frieda Schultz. There's I mean, there's a ton of great
(28:06):
documentaries on this, but I'll watch one from History Channel. Well,
it's a pretty nutso event in world history, not so
several decades long event, you know. Um so once the
border was really kind of sealed and the East German
guards had shown like no, you're you're gonna you're we're
(28:28):
gonna shoot at you to try to kill you if
we catch you trying to cross. People kind of settled
into UM, I guess, a pretty dreary existence from what
I understand, which it's probably true because you remember when
we were being raised, and we were raised in the
Cold War, and we were fed a boatload of propaganda
(28:50):
on a daily basis, and then once Iron Curtain fell,
we were able to see like, oh wait a minute,
those people aren't like they are not all coming over
to kill us. They never to kill us in the
first place. There's just other people. And there we were
lied to a lot, and the Red Scare was just
it's crazy when you think about it. But the fact
that history still in the twenty one century, long after
(29:10):
the Cold War and we're all adults now, UM still
stands up that living in the Democratic Republic of UM
Germany UM was a really drabbed, dreary, hard existence. It
must have actually been that way, Yeah, I mean, that's
why someone would risk their life too to get out
(29:30):
the first person that was killed we mentioned, you know,
how many people do you say it confirmed d thirty six.
The first one was going to Litwyn Litvin and he
tried to swim over canal and was shot and that
sent a message, um. But the big one was Peter
Fecht nice do you like that? In nineteen sixty two
(29:50):
he was shot in the back climbing the wall and
he was just a boy maybe yeah. And he was
right there at Checkpoint Charlie and shot in the back
and uh laid there on the ground crying out for
help for hours and American soldiers are right there, German
soldiers are right there, and both of them feared gunfire
(30:12):
if they tried to do anything to just let this
guy die screaming in the streets, bleeding out, and it
took They left him there for an hour before the
um East German guards came and dragged his body away.
And there's still a memorial to this day, like almost
immediately when I was put up and it was installed permanently,
UM years later, but it's been ongoing ever since. There's
(30:34):
a memorial to him on that wall where he died.
I'm dying to go to Berlin, I mean neat, Yeah,
I've never been. UM, I did Munich but um, I've
heard Berlin. It's just awesome. It hurts a lot of fun.
Just a history there, it must be crazy. Yeah, And
I would love to hear um from people over there,
like the lasting repercussions. I'm sure it's I mean, it
(30:54):
wasn't that long ago. I'm sure things are still strange
in some ways. Well yeah, plus I mean even be
on strange, it's it's I think still Germany would probably
be a lot further along today had it not been
divided between UM Soviet and Allied rule. It said it
back quite a bit. Apparently the drag on the East
(31:16):
German economy UM was enough that when the two did
reunite eventually we'll talk about that in a minute. Um,
the West had to assume this beleaguered economically devastated half
of its former country. And that kind of kind of
like Homer Simpson, like adding water and then salt to
(31:37):
keep pinching, and the goldfish alive and the aquarium tank
we're both just kind of floating there, half alive. That's
what happened with Germany after reunification. That that is the
reference that I've gone to more than any other. I
think that just that kinchy one. Yeah, I don't think
I've ever remember using that. Wow, that's like the fifth time.
(31:59):
All right, that's my fault. Um. So by nineteen sixty three, actually,
that have your answer from earlier. That's when the second
phase solid wall was fully complete. Uh. And that's when
they also had like grills through the rivers and canals, uh,
and metal grills in like sewer systems, and when they
(32:19):
really ratcheted up to the point where there was no
way to get out unless you tunneled. So people tried
to tunnel. Dude, there's a guy who killed the guard
for trying to stop him evacuating his family out. Yeah,
through a tunnel between an empty lot in West Berlin
into somebody's house in East Berlin. Yeah. The guy made
(32:41):
it and then came back for his family and some
guards tried to stop him, and dude shot him. Man,
he got a year suspended sentence years later after reunification.
Who the soldier, No, the soldier was killed. Oh I
thought you meant, you know, the guy who was getting
his family out shot and killed. The soldier was trying
to stop him. Oh that's great. Yeah, and that's what
I'm saying. He got a year suspended sentence for murder
(33:03):
after reunification. Wow, it's a nice little slap on the wrist.
All right, Well, speaking of unification, I guess we're there, right, Yeah,
things were just kind of going along and seemed totally intractable,
not just in Germany, but but but between throughout the
whole world. It was an utterly polarized world between the
(33:25):
USSR and the US, and I think by the mid
eighties to the idea of the wall coming down was
in a lot of people's heads on both sides. Well,
thanks to a dude named Gorby, Remember him, Yeah, there
was a point in time where he was more popular
than the Pope and Ronald Reagan. Yeah, there's some time
(33:45):
survey or pole and uh, Gorby was at the top
of the list because everybody like the cut of his
jim because he was saying, you know what, this whole strangle,
whole thing we have on people's lives, like maybe we
should rethink that. He started talking about reform, which was
I don't know if he meant it that way, but
it was the beginning of the end. If he didn't
mean it, sure got away from him. He instituted something
(34:07):
called glass Nows which is openness, which basically says, you
know what we want to hear from you. That's not
a very Russian thing to do. We're putting a giant
suggestion box outside of all your local government office and
we want you to tell us how you really feel
about your life and your life underneath our author authoritarian rule.
And it's not a trap, it's not a bomb. When
(34:28):
you dropped the thing in the suggestion box, a lot
of people thought it was Yeah, but um glass noos
went over very well, and um, people on the western
side had a lot to say. People on the Eastern
side were still a little reticent for obvious reasons. And
then they set up the Sinatra Doctrine, which I hadn't
heard of until basically the the Soviet Union said this
(34:51):
is what we've decided, So all of you Eastern Bloc governments,
this is your decision to like, you have to do
exactly what we say. And the Sinatra Doctor, which was
named after the my Way song. Um, it could also
call it the sid Vicious Doctrine, which would have been
pretty cool. Yeah that's true. Have you heard his his rendition? Yeah,
it's great. Yeah, I'm a sinatraca. Um well, you can
(35:13):
like both anyway. The Sinatra doctrine, UM said, you Eastern
Block governments, you have a lot more authority in deciding
what you want to do. And so that led UM Hungary,
because they, like all Eastern Block nations, had a close
border with their neighbor to the west, which was Austria.
They said, you know what we're it's we're gonna start
(35:36):
allowing people UH to get into Austria. And if you
could get into Hungary, then you could go to Austria
and presumably anywhere else you wanted to and you could
get into Hungary because it was an Eastern Block country.
It basically was a passageway all of a sudden, and
it worked, and they went, oh, it's things are starting
to deterior right now. Yeah, because people by the trainloads
(35:59):
were leaving every day to Austria through Hungary and so
UM things started to crumble. People started to feel a little,
a little close, a little less fearful of assembling, and
they started to this UM. This group in East Germany,
UM formed the new forum, the newest Forum Neius Forum UM,
(36:23):
and they basically started demonstrating in the streets of East
Berlin and they ran up against the East German chancellor.
His name was Eric Hohenecker and he was a hard liner.
He said, you can take years in Gorby's reform and
shove it. We're not changing anything. And the German Communist
Party said, we're going to replace you with the Liberal
(36:45):
because the rallying cry was strong at that point, like
hundreds of thousands of people shouting tear down the wall
in German Yeah, and in the streets at the same time,
not one at a time over the course of many years,
all at once in one place. Yeah, And the writing
was on the wall. It was and uh, in a
(37:06):
very unceremonious way. Um. In fact, they didn't even tell
the guards that they were doing this, which was led
to a lot of chaos and they're lucky it didn't
lead to people getting shot and killed. But they didn't
even inform the guards that they On November nine nine announced, um,
you know what, you can start traveling abroad. You're gonna
(37:29):
be allowed permanent departure. People like, wait a minute, are
you saying what I think you're saying. It sounds like
we can leave now, and they all went and assembled
at the gate in the same official was like wait,
I haven't read off the poor futures prices yet. That
was my next announcement. And the guards that they did
gather at the gates like en mass and the guards
were like, what's going on here? We didn't get any
(37:51):
memo of any free passage um, but at that point
it was kind of too late, and people basically stormed
the gates and took out their little hammers and started
tearing that thing down themselves. And I remember freshman in college, man,
it was huge and awesome, like I had no stake
in this fight other than believing in freedom, and it
(38:13):
was a powerful thing to watch. That was amazing. I
watched the two was begging my mom to like hop
a flight to Berlin that I was like, let's go.
This is so huge, said maybe let's wait a little bit. Well,
you know what was cool was if you were an
East Berlin or who came over to West Berlin that day,
you were greeted with a welcoming gift of a hundred marks,
(38:34):
and they gave out eight million marks. The no eighty
million marks, because there were eight hundred thousand people who
were each given marks. They gave out eighty million marks
to people coming over there and they went to the
first spear garden they could. They reinvested it right back
into their new economy, and shortly after that, within a
(38:56):
couple of years, the Soviet Union collapsed. And if this
rang your bell, you should continue things on by going
and listening immediately to the Who Won the Cold War episode.
Yeah it's a good one. Yeah, we got a nice
little batch of that time period, nice batch of podcasts. Yeah,
it's good. We should do keeping Missile Crisis at some
point and Bay of Pigs. Okay, that time period is
(39:19):
so fascinating to me. I just read maybe definitely in
the top five, but maybe the best magazine article I've
ever read about elevators. No, that's the best one about elevators.
This one again is in the New Yorker. You know,
The New Yorker has its archives open through the summer.
They're trying to get you hooked so that when they
put up a paywall, you'll subscribe. I subscribe for a while.
(39:43):
But they started stacking up, and itidated with the Economist. Man,
those things that they they started accumulating quick because you
can't it's not a quick read, but you can get
a digital subscription. Um but The point is, I've been
reading a lot of New Yorker lately and I read
this one article called The Yankee Commandant, and it's about
an American who traveled to Cuba to fight along Castro
(40:05):
as this idealist freedom fighter and just his plight. It
was amazing. But he was there for like the Bay
of Pigs and like it just it was pretty amazing stuff.
We're totally worth reading, and it's free right now. That's
a movie waiting to happen. I can't believe it's not
a movie yet, because this is the sixties that we're
talking about, late fifties, early sixties. Whoever wrote that needs
(40:26):
to talk to Josh Bierman, say how do you do this? Buddy? Yeah,
I can't believe it's not in the works already. It
might have, bet it is. What was his name? Do
you remember? His name was? William Morgan? Bill Morgan? Interesting
Yankee Commandant, Leo DiCaprio perhaps maybe, yeah, maybe, I guess?
So who did you cast in your head? I cast
(40:48):
Bill Pullman for a second because he kind of looked
like him. With Bill Pullman's he's just too old. This
guy was like late twenties, early thirties. Yeah, so who's
the twenties Bill Pullman? That's a tough one. You mean
Pullman or Paxton Pullman Pullman? Okay, I know the difference
between the two bills. Yeah, I was just making sure. Um,
why don't you guys let us know. Well, we'll do
(41:09):
a call on in a minute, which one? Which one? Who? Who?
Who plays Bill Pullman as a late twenties early thirties? Okay? Uh.
If you want to know more about the Berlin Wall,
you can look up this article on how stuff works
dot com by typing those words into the search bar. Uh.
And since I said search far, it's time for listener mail.
I'm gonna call this Favorite Day Stories. Remember you put
(41:31):
out a call for that people's best day and this
was pretty good. This from actually immediately thought of the
day that I met my best friend. Was in the
fifth grade and my parents were building a pool in
the backyard. We hadn't filled it yet, though, and the
lots of new friends show up those circumstances. Oh no,
this sticks of a sad turn here. We hadn't yet
(41:51):
filled it though, and the cats that we had would
have a nasty habit of falling in at the empty
pool and not being able to get back out without
our help. One night, it aimed a lot filled the
pool up. Some My cat, my childhood companion, ran into
the pool and drowned. Oh no, I know. I was
reading this thinking, how's this your best day? Be some
kind of a sick sick person? She continues, I didn't
(42:14):
really like the cat and necessarily really handled the problem
that I had had for a while. She does say parenthetically,
trust me, the story gets a lot better, I promise.
I woke up to my dad telling me not to
go outside because Rosie had drowned. I went to school
not really knowing how to feel, and as my teacher
was giving the morning announcement, I burst into tears. She
asked what was wrong. I told her what happened. She
(42:36):
didn't know what to do with me, and none of
the other kids would even make eye contact with me.
I had never felt so alone in my entire life.
That is, until someone reached out and held my hand.
It was this girl in my class, but I've never
really noticed before, but she took my hand and said
it's gonna be okay. Uh, And that has been my
best friend for eleven years now. That is very sweet.
(43:00):
So that was my all time favorite day. Guys, keep
up the fantastic work. And that is from that is
from Harry. I'm sorry, and Ashley is the best friend
got so Harry, uh Jankie, Well you're really This took
a weird twist at the end. I just don't know
how to pronounce it. J A h n k E
Harry Johnka Honka Honka. Who knows Harry Harry j I
(43:25):
think Harry Honka is the best name ever. So that's
what I'm gonna go on up. Okay, Well, thanks a lot, Harry.
We appreciate you writing in and letting us know. And Ashley,
that was very very nice thing you did. It really
is you got a best friend out of it. That's
a that's a great story. Um well again, if you
could tell us who is the late twenties early thirties
Bill Pullman, We want to know? You can tweet to
(43:46):
us at s Y s K podcast. You can join
us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
Discovery dot com, and as always, you can join us
at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
Visit how stuff Works dot com. MHM,
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry and
this Stuff you Should Know the podcast Tear Down the Wall.
(00:22):
Tear down the Wall? Can you say in German? No,
it would be more authentic. Yeah, tear down the wall. Yeah,
I think that's it. Yeah, that's right. I should know
what that is in German. It's tear down the wall. Yeah.
I remember this stuff man. That was you do too,
to a certain degree. Oh yeah. We both grew up
(00:44):
in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, but several thousand
miles west. It's crazy though to think about it now. Um,
if you're of a certain age, the concept of walling
in the city seems probably really strange and unlikely. Yeah,
you know, if you're like under thirty, probably like what
one of the things that then this is a grab
(01:04):
star article, so it has the stank of quality on it. Um.
That I learned from this article was that there were
a lot of people in power at the time who
were very relieved when the Berlin Wall went up. Yeah,
quietly relieved because things were coming to a head between
two nuclear superpowers in the city of Berlin. Yeah, even
(01:25):
they couldn't really say it out loud, but even Western
leaders were like, all right, well, this maybe not the
worst thing for now. Ah yeah, exactly, give me a
scotch because world leaders drink scotch? Should they do? Yeah?
And they were dark socks. What's up with that? I
don't know. It's so you want to get down to
(01:46):
business here about the Berlin Wall. Um, there's a there
was long a discrepancy over how many people were killed
at the Berlin Wall. Yeah, trying to uh defend or escape,
depending on which way you want to look at it. Yeah. Um.
And the exact number stands right now at one thirty six.
(02:07):
That so many have been confirmed, plenty have been um denied.
I guess, um there were some something Some people said
like as many as three hundred were killed. Some people
said as low as ninety eight. But definitely one thirty
six people were killed at the Berlin Wall, either trying
to escape or that included border guards who were killed
(02:29):
by people who were escaping, And it also sadly included
thirty people who were just trying to cross the border
and weren't trying to escape, but we're killed accidentally. Yeah,
it doesn't sound like a super high number, and I
guess it's not in the grand scheme of things, but
it didn't need to be. Like when those first people
and we'll get to who they were. When those first
people were killed, it's in a very strong message like
(02:51):
do so it tried it at your own risk, you know,
because you might get shot in the back exactly. Um,
And there were trials. The exact numbers for the people
who were killed at the at the Berlin Wall came
out of documents that were used in trials to try
people who were responsible for basically issuing shoot to kill orders.
(03:13):
And yeah, it wasn't clear from the get go just
how poors the border was, even though there was a wall.
But yeah, when they started shooting people and putting in
land mines, it became clear like this is a you
you try to cross this border now at the risk
of your own life. They're not messing around. Apparently a
pregnant woman was shot and killed trying to defect. So yes,
(03:36):
we'll talk about them, but there's plenty of this wall,
the Berlin Wall that I didn't understand. Um. And I
guess I didn't really understand the context. And again, the
graphs are did a really good job of like getting
down to the nitty gritty of like where the whole
thing started, and it finds its roots back in World
War two, at the end of World War two, specifically
after Germany surrendered on May seven? Are we getting in
(04:01):
the way back machine? Oh? You want to? Yeah, we
gotta blow the dust off of this thing. This is
a dangerous time we're going back to. Just before one.
You have to go prime the the engine as well.
Pumped that little bubble because it's been a while. Start
her up. It sounds like it's working all right. So yeah,
(04:27):
it is a little scary where we are and the
end of World War two very uncertain time. Rememb Berlin.
That's right, And like you said, Germany has surrendered. Uh,
but things were a little dodgy before that because Russia
was initially against the Allied forces, which were the United
States and France and Britain. Yeah, they had a treaty
(04:48):
with Germany. Yeah, but then Germany, like you know, Hitler
was one to do, changed his minds and you know what,
I'm gonna invade you guys too, which is pretty stupid, because,
as everyone knows, you don't did you don't start a
land war in Russia. It didn't work out too well
in the end. But what it did was it flopped Russia. Um,
not super willingly, but it kind of flopped them over
(05:10):
the Allied side, even though things were so different in
our two countries. It was a little bit weird that
they did that, right, we we should their hand. It
was one of those the enemy of my enemy is
my friend kind of thing. Yes, so so so the
Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin was like, hey, guys, remember
(05:30):
how were just fighting on the same side. Well, my
teammate just attacked me, so can I come over and
hang out with you dudes for a while? What was
weird was that this is a total Terryan communist regime
asking democratic countries to come fight on their side. They
were probably like, but how about that Hitler guy? Forget
about us for a minute, Like we should all get
(05:51):
together and stop him. Says a lot about how much
everybody hated Hitler. Yeah. Um, but like we said, in
Germany did surrender and uh, oddly, and it's still strange
to think about it. They decided um to divide Germany
up into four zones, and then within one of the
(06:12):
communist zones, the East German Zone, they divided the city
of Berlin up into four zones. Right, such an odd idea. Well,
the thing is is the Soviets had a seat at
the table at the Yalta conference because they were one
of the victors, was one of the Allied victors at
the end of the war. And even though the Allies knew,
like this is really weird having the Soviets there, Who knows,
(06:33):
maybe you can generate goodwill. We don't know what's gonna happen.
So they get an even piece of the pie. And
that's what they did. They divided Germany up into four zones,
and France, Britain and the US eventually merged their zone
and that became the Federal Republic of Germany also known
as West Germany UM. And the Soviets said, we're just
(06:54):
gonna keep total and complete control over our side of Germany.
We'll call it the German Democratic Republic UM, and we're
going to start a puppet stayed in there. I think
the thing that really surprised the Allies though, was that
the Soviets took the chaos at the end of World
War Two as an opportunity to invade and occupy a
(07:15):
bunch of other formerly independent countries. That's what really caught
everybody by surprise. Yeah, and that uh they basically formed
what was to be known as the Iron Curtain, this
isolation that they UH basically put on all these countries
that they invaded. They just cut them off from the
rest of the world. And that was the Eastern Block
(07:36):
and American everyone else was like, huh, I didn't see
that coming. Yeah, but there was an anomaly to the
Iron Curtain, like it was sealed, like all the borders
and all of the Eastern Bloc countries were closed and guarded,
and so there was this Iron curtain between the Soviet
Block and the West. But there was this one little
(07:56):
pocket like as part of the Yalta Conference, Berlin, which
is totally in East Germany, was also divided up into
four quadrants, and the in Britain, France and the US
merged there together, and that was West Berlin, and there
was also East Berlin. Soviet controlled East Berlin. So within
Soviet controlled East Germany was a little island called West
(08:20):
Berlin that was controlled by the UH. Well, the West
German government, the Allies, and there you have it. I
don't think it wasn't a recipe for long term success, No,
And I don't think anyone thought it would be. I
don't know. I mean, why would you go to the
trouble if you thought it wouldn't be I don't know,
maybe just a temporarily quell things. I mean, surely they
(08:42):
didn't think that would be like that forever. Well, it's
almost like they went in after yalta whistling with the
powder keg and just set it down in the middle
of East Germany and paid out some fuse and lit
it and whistled as they walked away. That's what they
did when they divided East in West Berlin. Yeah, and
there wasn't um Like the Western nations weren't thrilled with
(09:06):
all this, but there wasn't much we could do because
they had nuclear bombs and we had nuclear bombs, and
no one wanted that to happen. So there was a
lot of spying and a lot of name calling, a
lot of speeches and rhetoric. There was also a lot
of kidnaps, a lot of bureaucratic delays, a lot of
feet dragging, but in the end, there was no it
wasn't going to lead to another war. No, because like
(09:29):
you said, both sides had nukes, so nobody could step
up and provoke one another militarily, right, No, I mean
not to that degree. So life was really weird in
um Berlin, in West Berlin, in particular, in East Berlin
it was just part of the rest of East Germany.
But again, West Berlin was this little island in East
Germany and there was rail and UM highway, um connections
(09:56):
to the west. Well, they shared an infrastructure. Yeah, it's
a weird thing to do, like a mail system, trains,
it's it's like, it's very you can't it's a hard
thing to divide a country like that city within the country, right, Yeah,
that made it even weirder. Um, And I guess it
carried on like that for a little while, and then
the Soviets were like, yeah, we really didn't mean anything
(10:17):
when we agreed to this, so we're gonna cut off
all this transportation in and out of the city and
um they basically blockaded West Germany from being helped by
the West through rail and through car. But the Allies
could still land planes in and out of West Berlin. Yeah,
(10:40):
whether they were trying to choke them out basically and
just say good luck without food and supply. Yeah, we're
going to take over the city now. And the Americans said,
oh yeah, how about the Berlin Airlift, buddy, how about
sorties landing every two minutes, twenty four hours a day,
bringing in all the supplies you need, the very tight corridor.
It's difficult, but whether you essay, and we can do
(11:00):
it because we can fly planes. And it worked. Yeah.
Apparently the Allied forces who were supplying West Germany just
enough to keep the city going. We're bringing in more
than two hundred thousand tons of cargo a month at
the peak of the airlift, and they kept it going
for it almost a year. They were basically like, you're
not gonna You're not taking over West Berlin. Yeah, we
(11:23):
had planes and we got lots of gas, lots of pilots.
And eventually the Soviet England was like, all right, well,
I guess that didn't work, so let's go ahead and
open up those uh the rail traffic in the roads again. Right,
They lifted the block hayde Um, so things were cool
for a little while, but the Soviets hadn't really forgotten anything,
(11:43):
and UM tensions were just increased more and more after
the Berlin Airlift UM, and I think things were getting
just more and I get the impression that we were
getting closer and closer to the threat of nuclear war
right there in the middle of East Germany UM, and
(12:06):
apparently no one knew what to do about it. One
of the biggest things that was provoking these tensions was
the UM massive amounts of defection from East Germany to
West Germany, because if you were an East Berliner or
in East German, all you did was trot right into
West Berlin. There's nothing to stop you catch a plane
(12:26):
out of West Berlin and fly out to wherever you wanted.
And a lot of people did it, Yeah, and it
was a real divide between the old Guard and the
New Guard. It was mostly young professionals that saw the
riding on the wall. UM. East Germany finally realized they're
in big trouble when they started looking at the number
of doctors leaving and realized they couldn't train enough doctors
(12:48):
UH to support the country that were there that we're exiting.
So by n more than two hundred thousand East Germans
had left, and uh, East Germany knew they were in
trouble because in West Germany didn't love it either, because
there was a big economic strain put on them by
having all these people to show up all of a sudden,
say hey, we're here now, like help us out, take
(13:11):
care of us, right exactly, and you know, not just
take care of us, but help us take care of ourselves. Yeah,
some of them wanted to stay in Berlin. I'm sure
plenty of them wanted to just leave Germany altogether. But
the point is in the West you have this infrastructure
that's being tested by the number of defections, and then
in the East you have this huge brain drain going on,
(13:32):
and so it was causing more and more tension because
the Western forces, the United States and all weren't doing
anything to stop these defections. And probably we're being a
little smug about the whole thing because it suggests like, well,
why do all of your people want to leave in droves.
Maybe you're doing something wrong, Maybe you should just give up.
(13:54):
And the Soviets said, we're not going to give up.
Nice try, uncle Sam, but we're not going to do that. Instead,
we're gonna wait till nightfalls on August twelfth, nineteen sixty one,
and we'll get to what happened there right after this
break all right, Josh, It's auguste code name Wall of
(14:16):
China from the orders of Nikita Kruschev Um but spoken
by what some call a puppet leader, Walter ulbrick Um.
Other people say he wasn't so much a puppet and
it was his idea. I'm not really sure what the
truth is there that actually, but at any rate, they said,
you know what we're gonna do. We are going to
(14:37):
in the dead of night turn off all the street
lights and we're gonna start building the wall out of
concrete post and barbed wire. And when people wake up
all over the world, they're going to be surprised to
see about five miles of wall through central Berlin. And
everyone was surprised, including President Kennedy. Was like a wall, right,
(15:00):
And at first it was kind of a skimpy wall.
It was, I mean not not just symbolic like there
were coils of um razor wire and that kind of thing,
like it was intended to block people, but it was
nothing like the construction that would follow. And a lot
of East Berliners, um saw the writing on the wall
and said, if we have now have a narrow chance
(15:22):
of escaping, so we're gonna try it. Yeah, and um,
at that point, the initial few days, they closed sixty
eight one checkpoints, seal bows off, put armed guards at
the rest of them, and uh, they closed the train stations. Yeah,
close the train stations. And then they began in earnest
what was called the first generation wall was the initial phase,
(15:43):
and it was crude and it didn't even have the foundation.
They basically used bricks from bombed out buildings and mortar
and just kind of started putting up whatever they could
to form the initial wall. Right. And then how long
after that until they started to build what we came
to understand as the Berlin Wall, I think a few years.
(16:07):
I mean they had to get that first initial phase
fully built, and then I think they a few years
later they started work on fortifying it and making it
like a real wall. So, um, like when we say
this happened overnight, it literally happened overnight. And there were
some unfinished parts here there in some pockets that you
could consumably like make a run for it, a literal
(16:28):
last ditch attempt to run through UM, but it was
put up fast enough in in a substantial enough amount
that people were trapped on either side, Like overnight, if
you had a one night stand with a lady on
the other side of the wall, and you woke up
and you're like, I gotta do the walk of shame
back over to my apartment, you were met with barbed
(16:49):
wire fence and guns like and that was that, and
you married that lady. There was a there was a
woman who gave birth to a son and UM ended
up on different sides a few weeks after her son
was born, and he was basically raised in West Germany
and she was thrown into a prison in East Germany
for a while. UM. There were a lot of stories
(17:10):
of people who were just just separated overnight from their families.
A lot of parents suspected that this that some sort
of border enforcement was going to be put up at
some point, so they're like, well, we need to get
over to West Germany. But they tried to do it right.
They went over and they rented an apartment, left their
kids back there, got jobs, started to save money until
(17:32):
he could move their kids over. And some families were
cut off because they didn't get their kids over in time. Yeah,
and again this was all um violated. They alto agreement.
I mean it was all these treaties were completely violated
and it was illegal. But um once again quietly a
lot of like it was a burning kettle, a boiling kettle,
(17:55):
burning and boiling kettle, and things were not looking good.
So everyone was kind of like, all right, maybe this
will at least quell things for now. And it's not
the worst idea in the world, because don't quote me
on that. No, And if you were West Berliner or
an East Berliner, but especially at West Berliner, you did
think it was the worst idea in the world. And
(18:15):
when it became clear that America and NATO weren't going
to do anything about this, there was a deep sense
of betrayal by West Berliner's. They were like, but this,
this spot in East Germany where the Soviets had been
hemorrhaging face had been cauterized for now, and like you say,
(18:36):
the West was secretly relieved. One of the things about
this wall that I didn't know until this article was
that it wasn't just a straight line. It was a circle. Yeah,
the actual the one that enclosed Berlin enclosed fully in
a circle of West Berlin. Yes, And the reason why
is because remember West Berlin was an island in the
(18:56):
middle of East Germany. So you couldn't just cut off
East Berlin from West Berlin. You had to cut off
all of each Germany from West Berlin. And the only
way to do that was to encircle West Berlin with
the wall. That's right, like a prison almost. Um. All right, well,
I guess we should talk a little bit about the wall,
the physical wall, and what it was like. Um. Eventually
(19:18):
when they got to the fine well, it evolved over
the course of you know, many many years. But the
second phase was when they had the legit twelve to
fifteen foot concrete uh studded rebar walls with guard towers
and guns. Uh. They were topped with the tubes so
(19:39):
make it hard to get ahold. There are really two
walls there was. There was the first uh run of
barbed wire and these tank traps. If you saw saving
Private Ryan, you've seen those those big like jaggedy things
like on the beach. Tank traps and they're like huge jacks. Yeah,
that's why, yeah, pretty much. Uh, and thanks can't run
(20:03):
over him, which is I think is a key. It's
like all traps um. So there was that area, and
then there was about thirty to forty yards depending on
where it was of just They called it the what
the death strip where they put chemicals on the ground
to kill all the vegetation. They got German shepherds and
(20:23):
put them on um extra long leaders that basically brought
them nose to nose but didn't allow them to get
into it with each other. But there were no gaps,
you know, you had to encounter a German shepherd and
then if you got through all that junk, you got
to the actual concrete wall, and then on that wall
the actual At some part there were guard towers with
(20:44):
searchlights and they were crafty little um communists. They had
um They would use like standard gravel for the walkways. Well,
Germany is stand, so they would just use the ground,
but they would keep it very well raked um smoothly
rake so that you could see footprints very easily. And
everything was painted a bright white so anything would show
(21:07):
up against it very clearly. Yeah, and that's on the
east side. On the west side it was painted with
graffiti and art. And because they were just crazy free people, well,
they could walk right up to the wall too. They
didn't have to go through German shepherds or razor wire
tank traps. They just walked right up to the wall
and show their disdained for it by using graffiti or
(21:28):
peeing on it. Probably, I'm sure the Berlin Wall was
paid on more than once. I guess that Ronald Reagan
famously did. Uh. There were trip wires that were hooked
up to automatic uh machine gun fire for a while.
Eventually they um agreed to take those down. Um. And
apparently it was tough to even get guards on this
(21:51):
thing because they first had to weed out they didn't
want any guards that had ties to West Germany at all.
A lot of a lot of guards defected in the
early days. Yeah, they realized we got to get guards
that have no family over there, no affinity over there,
and that really narrowed the pool down. And then, uh,
I'm sure there were some guards that were GungHo, but
a lot of them were alcoholics and did not like
(22:14):
their post and didn't want to be there and didn't
want to have the orders to shoot to kill. They're
what they might have seen is still their fellow countrymen. Yeah,
I'm sure, a lot of them did. And we should
say also that not everybody was trapped in East Germany.
There were There was a strong sentiment after the war,
especially that um, West Germany was the part that was
(22:37):
much more associated with the Nazi regime, the some of
the worst atrocities were carried out and what was now
West Germany and in the East there was a perceived
separation from that physically and now historically. Um, that was
one reason some people like to stay in East Germany. Yeah,
and I got the impression that definitely was a sort
(22:59):
of a divide between the old and young. Yeah. Um,
as far as the older people thinking, you know, maybe
this communism thing will take care of everybody, right, and
the young were like, no, no, no, no, freedom, that's
where it's at. So there was a socialist bent among
some people. So there were people who were UM, at
least at first and probably throughout, but definitely at first,
(23:19):
UM happy to be living in a Soviet Bloc country. Yeah.
What struck struck me as super weird was that as
a western, uh West German, you could travel into East
Germany pretty much freely back and forth, which I never
knew that. I thought it was just completely sealed off.
If you were West German, Yeah, yeah, you were. You
(23:39):
were supposed to be allowed passage through pretty simply. Yeah.
And back to West Germany. There were special plates for
people who lived in West Germany. Oh yeah, I feel
like there. I don't care what operas in East Germany.
I'm not going over. I'll get a new dentist um.
And there were actually some standoffs. There was a there
(24:02):
was a really big standoff in nineteen sixty one because
the East Germans didn't allow uh egress like they were
supposed to. Two people with plainly marked cars. Actually American
diplomats and tanks ended up on either side of the
border at Checkpoint Charlie for a full day, Soviet tanks
and American tanks just facing one another, and luckily everybody
(24:24):
stood down um and called the whole thing off. But
it was it was tents there for a little bit,
and the Americans were intentionally testing the Soviets to see
if they would let them let them pass without stopping,
and the Soviets didn't. Like four or five times in
the two day period tank showed up and at the
checkpoint Charlie was the main gate there at Berlin, right
(24:47):
by NATO in the west. Right. That was the gate
between West Berlin and East Berlin. But it wasn't the
only gate. There were other ones. So going from West
Germany into East Germany it was checkpoint Alfa, yeah, and
then from East Germany into West Berlin was checkpoint Uh
was it Beta? I think it's Baker Alpha, Bravo, char
(25:11):
thank you. And that's where I get lost. Well, yeah,
I think it may It might have stopped after Charlie. No.
I used to know that alphabet though, Oh the what's
it call? I can't remember the name of the alphabet.
Now we'll have to ask Jeff Tweetie what. Oh remember
Wilco in the numbers stations? Yeah, yeah, do you know
Jeff Tweetie. I've met him before, Oh, at the rally
(25:34):
to restore Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he's a nice guy.
That's awesome. I thought to meet Jeff Tweete. He's a
good guy. Look at you. And that wasn't even a
name drop because I asked, actually did drop the name,
but you didn't drop it in the way that you
knew him exactly, and that doesn't count. Uh. So there
are lots of awful stories about um people trying to
(25:56):
get across and getting killed. But we talked about and
I will highlight a few of those right after this break.
So one of the problems with UM building a wall
is that it's not necessarily going to follow the you know,
(26:18):
the easiest path. So there was a street called barn
Our Street where there were literally apartments that we're straddling
the Berlin Wall. So like, if you were standing in
your window and like you leaned your head out the window,
your head was hovering above airspace of West Germany and
your feet were in East Germany. And eventually they evicted
(26:39):
all those people living in the apartments and sealed up
the windows because people would go in the front door
and leave the back door. And the fact, yeah, like, hey,
that was pretty easy. So they made it a multi
pronged uh. They addressed the issue of multi pronged fashion. UM.
They bricked up the first story stuff and I guess
vastly underestimate needed the will of people who wanted it effect,
(27:02):
because they quickly found out that people were willing to
jump out of second and third story windows. And what's
cool is Westboro Winners UM would frequently help defectors UM
and so sometimes they would stand there with blankets like pulled,
taught to catch somebody jumping from a second or third
story windows so they could defect more easily. Yeah, there
(27:22):
was this one lady and this you can actually watch
footage of this. It's startling. A seventy six year old
woman named Frieda Schultz. There's footage of her being pulled.
She's hanging from a window, uh well not from a window.
She's hanging from out of a window by East German
policeman and there's Western Germans West Germans pulling her by
(27:44):
the feet. So the East German cops are trying to
pull her up into the window of the West Germans
are trying to yank her down, the seventy six year
old lady, and she was eventually yanked down, which is
the goodness, I guess. But you can like watch that.
It's file footage exists. It's creepy. She's what's her name,
Frieda Schultz. There's I mean, there's a ton of great
(28:06):
documentaries on this, but I'll watch one from History Channel. Well,
it's a pretty nutso event in world history, not so
several decades long event, you know. Um so once the
border was really kind of sealed and the East German
guards had shown like no, you're you're gonna you're we're
(28:28):
gonna shoot at you to try to kill you if
we catch you trying to cross. People kind of settled
into UM, I guess, a pretty dreary existence from what
I understand, which it's probably true because you remember when
we were being raised, and we were raised in the
Cold War, and we were fed a boatload of propaganda
(28:50):
on a daily basis, and then once Iron Curtain fell,
we were able to see like, oh wait a minute,
those people aren't like they are not all coming over
to kill us. They never to kill us in the
first place. There's just other people. And there we were
lied to a lot, and the Red Scare was just
it's crazy when you think about it. But the fact
that history still in the twenty one century, long after
(29:10):
the Cold War and we're all adults now, UM still
stands up that living in the Democratic Republic of UM
Germany UM was a really drabbed, dreary, hard existence. It
must have actually been that way, Yeah, I mean, that's
why someone would risk their life too to get out
(29:30):
the first person that was killed we mentioned, you know,
how many people do you say it confirmed d thirty six.
The first one was going to Litwyn Litvin and he
tried to swim over canal and was shot and that
sent a message, um. But the big one was Peter
Fecht nice do you like that? In nineteen sixty two
(29:50):
he was shot in the back climbing the wall and
he was just a boy maybe yeah. And he was
right there at Checkpoint Charlie and shot in the back
and uh laid there on the ground crying out for
help for hours and American soldiers are right there, German
soldiers are right there, and both of them feared gunfire
(30:12):
if they tried to do anything to just let this
guy die screaming in the streets, bleeding out, and it
took They left him there for an hour before the
um East German guards came and dragged his body away.
And there's still a memorial to this day, like almost
immediately when I was put up and it was installed permanently,
UM years later, but it's been ongoing ever since. There's
(30:34):
a memorial to him on that wall where he died.
I'm dying to go to Berlin, I mean neat, Yeah,
I've never been. UM, I did Munich but um, I've
heard Berlin. It's just awesome. It hurts a lot of fun.
Just a history there, it must be crazy. Yeah, And
I would love to hear um from people over there,
like the lasting repercussions. I'm sure it's I mean, it
(30:54):
wasn't that long ago. I'm sure things are still strange
in some ways. Well yeah, plus I mean even be
on strange, it's it's I think still Germany would probably
be a lot further along today had it not been
divided between UM Soviet and Allied rule. It said it
back quite a bit. Apparently the drag on the East
(31:16):
German economy UM was enough that when the two did
reunite eventually we'll talk about that in a minute. Um,
the West had to assume this beleaguered economically devastated half
of its former country. And that kind of kind of
like Homer Simpson, like adding water and then salt to
(31:37):
keep pinching, and the goldfish alive and the aquarium tank
we're both just kind of floating there, half alive. That's
what happened with Germany after reunification. That that is the
reference that I've gone to more than any other. I
think that just that kinchy one. Yeah, I don't think
I've ever remember using that. Wow, that's like the fifth time.
(31:59):
All right, that's my fault. Um. So by nineteen sixty three, actually,
that have your answer from earlier. That's when the second
phase solid wall was fully complete. Uh. And that's when
they also had like grills through the rivers and canals, uh,
and metal grills in like sewer systems, and when they
(32:19):
really ratcheted up to the point where there was no
way to get out unless you tunneled. So people tried
to tunnel. Dude, there's a guy who killed the guard
for trying to stop him evacuating his family out. Yeah,
through a tunnel between an empty lot in West Berlin
into somebody's house in East Berlin. Yeah. The guy made
(32:41):
it and then came back for his family and some
guards tried to stop him, and dude shot him. Man,
he got a year suspended sentence years later after reunification.
Who the soldier, No, the soldier was killed. Oh I
thought you meant, you know, the guy who was getting
his family out shot and killed. The soldier was trying
to stop him. Oh that's great. Yeah, and that's what
I'm saying. He got a year suspended sentence for murder
(33:03):
after reunification. Wow, it's a nice little slap on the wrist.
All right, Well, speaking of unification, I guess we're there, right, Yeah,
things were just kind of going along and seemed totally intractable,
not just in Germany, but but but between throughout the
whole world. It was an utterly polarized world between the
(33:25):
USSR and the US, and I think by the mid
eighties to the idea of the wall coming down was
in a lot of people's heads on both sides. Well,
thanks to a dude named Gorby, Remember him, Yeah, there
was a point in time where he was more popular
than the Pope and Ronald Reagan. Yeah, there's some time
(33:45):
survey or pole and uh, Gorby was at the top
of the list because everybody like the cut of his
jim because he was saying, you know what, this whole strangle,
whole thing we have on people's lives, like maybe we
should rethink that. He started talking about reform, which was
I don't know if he meant it that way, but
it was the beginning of the end. If he didn't
mean it, sure got away from him. He instituted something
(34:07):
called glass Nows which is openness, which basically says, you
know what we want to hear from you. That's not
a very Russian thing to do. We're putting a giant
suggestion box outside of all your local government office and
we want you to tell us how you really feel
about your life and your life underneath our author authoritarian rule.
And it's not a trap, it's not a bomb. When
(34:28):
you dropped the thing in the suggestion box, a lot
of people thought it was Yeah, but um glass noos
went over very well, and um, people on the western
side had a lot to say. People on the Eastern
side were still a little reticent for obvious reasons. And
then they set up the Sinatra Doctrine, which I hadn't
heard of until basically the the Soviet Union said this
(34:51):
is what we've decided, So all of you Eastern Bloc governments,
this is your decision to like, you have to do
exactly what we say. And the Sinatra Doctor, which was
named after the my Way song. Um, it could also
call it the sid Vicious Doctrine, which would have been
pretty cool. Yeah that's true. Have you heard his his rendition? Yeah,
it's great. Yeah, I'm a sinatraca. Um well, you can
(35:13):
like both anyway. The Sinatra doctrine, UM said, you Eastern
Block governments, you have a lot more authority in deciding
what you want to do. And so that led UM Hungary,
because they, like all Eastern Block nations, had a close
border with their neighbor to the west, which was Austria.
They said, you know what we're it's we're gonna start
(35:36):
allowing people UH to get into Austria. And if you
could get into Hungary, then you could go to Austria
and presumably anywhere else you wanted to and you could
get into Hungary because it was an Eastern Block country.
It basically was a passageway all of a sudden, and
it worked, and they went, oh, it's things are starting
to deterior right now. Yeah, because people by the trainloads
(35:59):
were leaving every day to Austria through Hungary and so
UM things started to crumble. People started to feel a little,
a little close, a little less fearful of assembling, and
they started to this UM. This group in East Germany,
UM formed the new forum, the newest Forum Neius Forum UM,
(36:23):
and they basically started demonstrating in the streets of East
Berlin and they ran up against the East German chancellor.
His name was Eric Hohenecker and he was a hard liner.
He said, you can take years in Gorby's reform and
shove it. We're not changing anything. And the German Communist
Party said, we're going to replace you with the Liberal
(36:45):
because the rallying cry was strong at that point, like
hundreds of thousands of people shouting tear down the wall
in German Yeah, and in the streets at the same time,
not one at a time over the course of many years,
all at once in one place. Yeah, And the writing
was on the wall. It was and uh, in a
(37:06):
very unceremonious way. Um. In fact, they didn't even tell
the guards that they were doing this, which was led
to a lot of chaos and they're lucky it didn't
lead to people getting shot and killed. But they didn't
even inform the guards that they On November nine nine announced, um,
you know what, you can start traveling abroad. You're gonna
(37:29):
be allowed permanent departure. People like, wait a minute, are
you saying what I think you're saying. It sounds like
we can leave now, and they all went and assembled
at the gate in the same official was like wait,
I haven't read off the poor futures prices yet. That
was my next announcement. And the guards that they did
gather at the gates like en mass and the guards
were like, what's going on here? We didn't get any
(37:51):
memo of any free passage um, but at that point
it was kind of too late, and people basically stormed
the gates and took out their little hammers and started
tearing that thing down themselves. And I remember freshman in college, man,
it was huge and awesome, like I had no stake
in this fight other than believing in freedom, and it
(38:13):
was a powerful thing to watch. That was amazing. I
watched the two was begging my mom to like hop
a flight to Berlin that I was like, let's go.
This is so huge, said maybe let's wait a little bit. Well,
you know what was cool was if you were an
East Berlin or who came over to West Berlin that day,
you were greeted with a welcoming gift of a hundred marks,
(38:34):
and they gave out eight million marks. The no eighty
million marks, because there were eight hundred thousand people who
were each given marks. They gave out eighty million marks
to people coming over there and they went to the
first spear garden they could. They reinvested it right back
into their new economy, and shortly after that, within a
(38:56):
couple of years, the Soviet Union collapsed. And if this
rang your bell, you should continue things on by going
and listening immediately to the Who Won the Cold War episode.
Yeah it's a good one. Yeah, we got a nice
little batch of that time period, nice batch of podcasts. Yeah,
it's good. We should do keeping Missile Crisis at some
point and Bay of Pigs. Okay, that time period is
(39:19):
so fascinating to me. I just read maybe definitely in
the top five, but maybe the best magazine article I've
ever read about elevators. No, that's the best one about elevators.
This one again is in the New Yorker. You know,
The New Yorker has its archives open through the summer.
They're trying to get you hooked so that when they
put up a paywall, you'll subscribe. I subscribe for a while.
(39:43):
But they started stacking up, and itidated with the Economist. Man,
those things that they they started accumulating quick because you
can't it's not a quick read, but you can get
a digital subscription. Um but The point is, I've been
reading a lot of New Yorker lately and I read
this one article called The Yankee Commandant, and it's about
an American who traveled to Cuba to fight along Castro
(40:05):
as this idealist freedom fighter and just his plight. It
was amazing. But he was there for like the Bay
of Pigs and like it just it was pretty amazing stuff.
We're totally worth reading, and it's free right now. That's
a movie waiting to happen. I can't believe it's not
a movie yet, because this is the sixties that we're
talking about, late fifties, early sixties. Whoever wrote that needs
(40:26):
to talk to Josh Bierman, say how do you do this? Buddy? Yeah,
I can't believe it's not in the works already. It
might have, bet it is. What was his name? Do
you remember? His name was? William Morgan? Bill Morgan? Interesting
Yankee Commandant, Leo DiCaprio perhaps maybe, yeah, maybe, I guess?
So who did you cast in your head? I cast
(40:48):
Bill Pullman for a second because he kind of looked
like him. With Bill Pullman's he's just too old. This
guy was like late twenties, early thirties. Yeah, so who's
the twenties Bill Pullman? That's a tough one. You mean
Pullman or Paxton Pullman Pullman? Okay, I know the difference
between the two bills. Yeah, I was just making sure. Um,
why don't you guys let us know. Well, we'll do
(41:09):
a call on in a minute, which one? Which one? Who? Who?
Who plays Bill Pullman as a late twenties early thirties? Okay? Uh.
If you want to know more about the Berlin Wall,
you can look up this article on how stuff works
dot com by typing those words into the search bar. Uh.
And since I said search far, it's time for listener mail.
I'm gonna call this Favorite Day Stories. Remember you put
(41:31):
out a call for that people's best day and this
was pretty good. This from actually immediately thought of the
day that I met my best friend. Was in the
fifth grade and my parents were building a pool in
the backyard. We hadn't filled it yet, though, and the
lots of new friends show up those circumstances. Oh no,
this sticks of a sad turn here. We hadn't yet
(41:51):
filled it though, and the cats that we had would
have a nasty habit of falling in at the empty
pool and not being able to get back out without
our help. One night, it aimed a lot filled the
pool up. Some My cat, my childhood companion, ran into
the pool and drowned. Oh no, I know. I was
reading this thinking, how's this your best day? Be some
kind of a sick sick person? She continues, I didn't
(42:14):
really like the cat and necessarily really handled the problem
that I had had for a while. She does say parenthetically,
trust me, the story gets a lot better, I promise.
I woke up to my dad telling me not to
go outside because Rosie had drowned. I went to school
not really knowing how to feel, and as my teacher
was giving the morning announcement, I burst into tears. She
asked what was wrong. I told her what happened. She
(42:36):
didn't know what to do with me, and none of
the other kids would even make eye contact with me.
I had never felt so alone in my entire life.
That is, until someone reached out and held my hand.
It was this girl in my class, but I've never
really noticed before, but she took my hand and said
it's gonna be okay. Uh, And that has been my
best friend for eleven years now. That is very sweet.
(43:00):
So that was my all time favorite day. Guys, keep
up the fantastic work. And that is from that is
from Harry. I'm sorry, and Ashley is the best friend
got so Harry, uh Jankie, Well you're really This took
a weird twist at the end. I just don't know
how to pronounce it. J A h n k E
Harry Johnka Honka Honka. Who knows Harry Harry j I
(43:25):
think Harry Honka is the best name ever. So that's
what I'm gonna go on up. Okay, Well, thanks a lot, Harry.
We appreciate you writing in and letting us know. And Ashley,
that was very very nice thing you did. It really
is you got a best friend out of it. That's
a that's a great story. Um well again, if you
could tell us who is the late twenties early thirties
Bill Pullman, We want to know? You can tweet to
(43:46):
us at s Y s K podcast. You can join
us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
Discovery dot com, and as always, you can join us
at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
Visit how stuff Works dot com. MHM,
Stuff You Should Know News
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Josh Clark
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.