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