I have been interested in the Cold War, Iron Curtain and Berlin Wall since I was a child. I am half German and my grandmother originally was from East Germany, hence my fascination for this topic.
Over the last 20 years, I have been reading books, visiting museums & monuments and I have been making pictures and video recordings of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. It makes more fun to share your passion with others and not keep everything for yourself. The idea for starting this channel was born.
I found out that there currently is no other RU-vid channel about East Germany in English language. This is a shame, of course, as the history about East Germany must not be forgotten and should be shared all over the world!
I just finished her book. It does a phenomenal job of examining East Germany's history in a fair manner. History is always more complex and nuanced than popular media and activists like. I do think that the way East German society evolved over the decades, the nation's fall was inevitable. As the standard of living increased, this led to ever increasing dissatisfaction with restrictions on travel and with the limited availability of consumer goods - especially when people could see what lay outside of the socialist world.
You left out an interesting tidbit: the allies replanted basically the entirety of the Tiergarten, which had been cut down for heating and cooking fuel. They flew in...200k trees?
The real tragedy was in the unified government demilling all the Small arms, ammunition of the GDR and giving it to farmers as fertilizer rather than selling it as surplus ammunition to the virtuous American public
A few original east german "Plattenbau" - projects were even carried out by gdr contractors in West Germany. I've been living in one such block for the last 11 years; the only "DDR-Plattenbau" in Schleswig Holstein (the northern-most federal state of germany). It was built by the "VEB Gesellschaftsbau Halle" in Bad Segeberg from 1984 to 1985. A local real estate investor had lured them in by promising he'd be abled to give them contracts for up to 5000 apartment units. In the end only this one WBS70 was built with 48 apartments. All heavy equipment had to be brought in from the gdr by trucks. Workers came by bus and/or train. The construction site was completely fenced in and there were StaSi-employees amongst the workers. They weren't allowed to leave the site or even talk to the locals through the fence. In the end both the investor and the gdr building company grew frustrated by each other. Also local construction companies, unions and the general public took issue with what was perceived as wage dumping. So after the completion neither the investor nor the gdr - company tried to get any more contracts going. There has been a mini documentary about this odd little piece of history on the state owned "NDR" - television channel in 2019. But sadly it is no longer available on their web page. Otherwise I would have linked it here. Had I not seen that little tv-docu I would not even have known this was an original "Plattenbau". I've lived in 5 other apartments prior to this, all in ordinary west german brick-and-mortar apartmentblocks, two of which were even newly built. But the most quiet flat I've had so far is here in this old WBS70. And this despite multiple families with small children living next to me. And the building has neither been renovated nor retrofitted with extra insulation. Makes me wonder what they've done differently compared to the non-export version.
My father was by the German Border Gard (Bundesgrenzschutz) from 1954 -1961. Later from 1961 - 1992 Customer Last rang was seargent first class (Zollhauptsekretär).
Ik woon zelf dicht bij grens en doe best wel vaak boodschappen in Duitsland, ik ga even kijken of ik een paar 'voormalige' Oost Duitse producten kan vinden 👌🏻
Mooi initiatief. Niet volledig: naast het uniform van de NVA wat volledig geinspireerd was door dat van de Wehrmacht onder Hitler, waren de helmen zelfs de ongewijzigde, onder Hitler ontwikkelde opvolger van de bekende Duitse helm uit WO2. Fout: de tekst spreekt van een Mig 29 maar de foto is alles behalve een Mig 29 (15:00).
Thank you for bringing this information to an English-speaking audience! I wish this was still there. Einstürzende Neubauten performed a concert there in 2004. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-p2aRgGUAxQw.htmlsi=zklscDCHry58fcnq
My grandfather was a part of this uprising in Berlin. He was arrested. He later escaped with his family to the west. They left everything behind, even the breakfast dishes on the table so if they were apprehended, it would look like they planned to return.
I was a British army tank crewman, posted to Paderborn in the middle 1970’s. Now I’ve found this channel, it’s fascinating how the so called “enemy” operated, both civilians and military!
Love your podcasts. Lived in West Berlin in the 80s. The girls out numbered the guys by so much. The best of time’s. Sad what’s happened to Deutschland now. I’ve given up travelling. Merkel and the Starsi got their way
I've watched several of your videos and am impressed at how well-documented and well-executed they are. And your German is 100% (I believe you remarked your mother was German in one video). My major was German Studies and I got to see both Germanies up close before and after the Wende.
The involvement of the KVP in the June 1953 uprising is not correctly portrayed. They were most definitely mobilized to secure key cities and infrastructure around the country. How I know this as a fact? Well, one of my grandfathers was in the KVP and later NVA. At the time of the uprising, he and his family was on vacation and he got ordered back to his unit.
Makes perfect sense why they did not want to re build it for deacdes beacuse why would you re build the eork of the tryants eho have destroyed the peasents for thousands of yrs?
Great video - architecturally I prefer the new schloss and I guess that the old building would have been very expensive to maintain. Sooner or later it would have been demolished. It also turns a page for Germany which no longer has to pretend that it cares for anything other than aristocratic status symbols and wealth for the few, rather than the feast of activities that were available inexpensively inside the communist building.
NVA is a joke of history. Being German and dressing like the Wehrmacht but at the same time being on the same team as the Russians 🙂More than one NVA soldier lost his father on the Eastern Front, and more than one Russian lost his father at the hands of the Germans. Friendship was for show. In fact, both nations do not like each other very much. It's similar with Poles. We can be in NATO with Germany or go to work for them, but we don't trust them.
This is the problem with . The mentality of .. " if you're not doing anything wrong then why are you worried " & were gonna use a.i to run biometric scans of people's faces / outfits etc to profile them and use some kind of fake and bizarre " credit Karma esk system of control" . This mentality has so many problems and is very unrealistic to the average person first and foremost it's dystopian , it's unnatural unnecessary and will lead to psychological problems in folks who are aware and just want privacy and deficits in the already unaware people ( form of narcissism 🤳) bruh I didn't go crazy ( temporarily) because I was on drugs ( that didn't help ) but I went a lil wild because I was being followed everywhere and didnt know why and worse than that when i went to friends family and some authorities tryna explain this stalking most of them didnt even want to hear it bro being followed everywhere from the moment you leave your house is a life and death situation minimum ( especially because it looked like cartels / government agency) it puts someone that becomes aware of it in a state of fight or flight and then the gas light then by saying they're crazy or they start to lose trust with friends and family and employment opportunities just makes it worse it looks like it was on purpose . # I'm not a felon and my record of trouble making mischief really only happened the last 3 years by me just tryna not be followed and watched / harassed for just going about my day . # we / us are not slaves to they / them and we never will be . # btw they told me because I hanged out with some of these fools sometimes and used various ( Jedi mind tricks ) to get answers out of them and I don't like naming names but.. scouts honor they told me they don't like Mr. Musk or Trump or Putin and idk why because those are three very different people .
Thanks for the nuanced view. In school I've learned that the DDR was basically a miserable police state, while west Germany was the free and democratic part. Now that I'm reading about the DDR I'm forced to navigate through both sides of the cold war capitalist/communist propoganda and biases.
Could you do a video on the Military leadership of the GDR such as Heinz Keßler, Heinz Hoffmann, Vincenz Muller and Willi Stoph. I think it would be interesting to see all of them especially Keßler had an interesting path leading up to his post of heading the Volksarmee in 1985, following Hoffmanns death.
So since most of these were made BEFORE the East-West split, can you *really* call them GDR products? They are the same German products, just under occupation.
Another good anecdote about the voice and saxon dialect of Ulbricht: The later head of the foreign intelligence department of the Stasi was Markus Wolf. He worked as a Berlin radio journalist during the late 1940s, and asked Ulbricht to speak standard German because people from other places than Saxony may not like his talk just because of the dialect. Ulbricht got upset and insisted to talk the way he liked. Markus Wolf was indeed correct 😉
Guys the history is very well documented in countless scholarly works, there is a huge public record on the subject lol. Yes the democratic allies had no plan of making their administrative zones into separate countries but the Soviet Union did for obvious economic reasons, it had to lock the DDR workers in or it would collapse. And Putin worked in the DDR during his KGB years and now he and his cronies are in power in Russia sadly. Sad how the far right and far left are growing in the former East Germany now, just like the rise of the far right nationalist Putin regime in the former Soviet Union. The departure of one authoritarian government appears to leave a vacuum that can sadly invite new ones. In Germany fortunately there was a large body of democratic law to prevent a Putin type situation but culturally you do see the far right and far left still making inroads there and pro Putinism etc and all that surrounding propaganda and revisionism. And the aggressive anti-democracy propaganda has made inroads everywhere, in the third world of course but also heavily targeting the leading democratic countries through social media etc. Also well documented. It’s a shame.
