The Logistics of German Reunification 

get off youtube and get it finished! haha

​@@peterise192 They're a project manager, they sit and watch RU-vid all day anyways 🤣

I'm sorry but to me this sounds more like a classic example of state inefficience than about "the complexities of reunification". No technical challenge could excuse so many decades of delay.

@@peterise192 haha, I wish I could speed it up but my main involvement will start only next year in autumn.

@@LordSesshaku there for sure were delays, but the reason it takes so long is because of existing infrastructure and the German law. Politicians were/are very hesitant to enforce compulsory expropriation, so getting the land for these projects takes time. Also the track has been in use throughout, but now the final stages are being finished while still holding traffic. Completely blocking the track from longer periods of time is simply not feasible.

The one factory builds boilers etc for many heritage trains around Europe now I believe

Gotta luv Russification😍 want your country to regress 60 years, open up to the Russians

@@himaro101 That's actually kind of cool. Even if the tech is effectively redundant, it's so historically important that we should keep this tradition alive.

@@himaro101 and boiler tubes and flues.

While locomotive shops in old East Germany are still important to the steam industry, they aren’t the only places where steam locomotives can be repaired. Many heritage lines throughout the world have the capability to repair their own locomotives, and some like the Durango and Silverton in Colorado and Strasburg in Pennsylvania are open to contract repair work. Places like the Ffestiniog in Wales are also fully capable of building new locomotives. Ffestiniog just completed the locomotive “James Spooner” which entered service this year

out of curiosity did your mother get out before they build the wall encircling west berlin? I have heard about a lot about families getting out before the wall was build. also my german teacher told me a story about a trusted east german that managed to get his wife out because he had the privilege of travelling & he always came back. The government then allowed him when asked If he could bring his wife. he then went straight to canada & never came back.

Rest in peace.

Wonderful. Thanks for sharing this. Respect from Nigeria

@@skylineXpert She and her parents were in West Germany at the time, not far from Mannheim. It was her dad's family that got trapped in East Germany.

Great

Lahn-Dill had to take the L

@@0topon And the D. And the K. ... Donkey Kong?

And we are very grateful that we got that single letter license plate and honestly it makes more sense to give it to a big city. I was born in 1992 and never knew a time when that wasn't the case.

Lahn-Dill…sounds like some pickled food.

@@xelaxander Lahn and Dill are rivers (though Dill is also a herb). LDK thus stands for Lahn-Dill-Kreis (Kreis = one level of government, perhaps like a county). For decades, the L and some other one letter codes had been reserved, "let's keep them free, in case East Germany joins", in case here L for Leipzig, C=Chemnitz, J=Jena. Eventually they concluded "won't happen", and gave the L to Lahn-Dill-Kreis. Bummer.

Hence there is little to no chance Korea reunifies. It will probably take North Korea to reform like China did first and get to a similar economical level as South Korea before any talk of reunification there is realistic.

If they ever attempt it, the social reunification will be hard and a long process. I was born after German reunification to an East German mother and West German father, and family holidays often escalated into fights about East and West. Mind you the two Germanys were still rather connected by media compared to the two Koreas during their division, and the Koreas have now been divided for even longer and even more difference between them. It will take generations to heal if it is even possible at all.

The Koreas has been split for longer and have even less infrastructure that is even close to what they have in South Korea which would be the standard they would need to meet because that's how the world is today. Reunification would be a Herculean effort.

The economic differences are insane. South Korea is a Cyberpunk tech land. North Korea is as poor as a sub-Saharan African nation.

@@irtwiaos it's also why as time has gone on reunification has been steadily dropped in support with people in the South. East Germany was repressive and poorly managed but North Korea is way more repressive and way more poorly managed to the point that North Korea is more like a medieval state ruled by a bronze age style god-king and bits of outdated but recent tech.

Bisschen spät, aber danke für deinen Dienst! Und das ist ne echt interessante Geschichte, war bestimmt eine komische Situation damals, oder?

wow, that's interesting! thank you for sharing

"no means of communication" ... you could send letters and parcels. But yes, telephone lines were very limited.

Cool, thanks for sharing!

​A bit pedantic mate. No one except you had any difficulty understanding his meaning. And English is his second language, so maybe lighten up a bit. How's your German? ​@@TylerDurden-pk5km

I think the best way forward for NK is to stay as sovereign state, but slowly reintegrating itself with the rest of the world. Later they can talk again about joining as one (or maybe as a federation of two states) once the gap tighten.

@@zeroyuki92 That was one possible way forward for Germany as well back in 1989/90 and seemed even more likely for a short time. The problem was: Too many people living in the East didn't want to stay and wait for their home to prosper. Instead they came over to the West for jobs and everything they had only seen on TV and dreamt about before. That quickly looked like a big problem for both countries. Therefore, it seemed better to promise the now infamous "blühenden Landschaften" (blossoming landscapes) in the East. I imagine, Korea would face the same problem.

You're completely right, But reintegration is sadly a bit improbable. NK will never merge with SK, with China in the picture (they don't want NATO ally on their doorstep), and NK will have a really hard time to become a normal-ish semi-hostile dictatorial country without changing nearly everything. Maybe with China's aid, NK can be under Xi's sphere of influence and become a place for China to dump construction projects, and NK can become more productive and trade with China. Doesn't help much with the geopolitical issue, but the impoverished people can be slightly less impoverished

@@jati I think what zerouiki92 meant was: Step 1: North Korea will remain very dictatorial for a long time (~40y), but they simply do some* trade now, and become less* millitaristic, and less* oppressive (like China's flavor of censorship), as the people become less dirt poor. The problem of North Koreans (East Germans) rushing to prosper in South Korea *Will* need to be dealt with at Step 2, when they reintegrate with eachother, but we aren't even close to normalization yet. If reintegration was to ever happen. I doubt either will happen in anyone's lifetime (but perhaps normalization or some minor thaw)

The real problem is not the division. The real problem is East Germany had to deal with 4 decades of thuggish "communism". And North Korea has been a brutal dictatorship with a brainwashed population for 80 years. THAT is the real reason that East Germany is still shit.

The 2nd tracks were also partly existing in the pre-war era but later removed in the USA. Because, well, maintenance and property taxes. For example, the Florida East Coast railway installed double track in 1926, and removed it again in 1972. Luckily, new 2nd track is installed since 2017.

​@@marco23p wait, so USA has mostly single track railroads? I must understand wrong.

Except unlike in East Germany where the Soviets stole the second track, we did this to ourselves!

@@CyanideCarrot Curse Robert Moses 😤

I assume you’re being ironic, which country are you talking about? Is it the US?

crazy thing is the Soviets maintained that the wall was to protect East Germany from fascism, even calling it the "fascist protection wall". This all in spite of the fact they welcomed some people who tried to flee east because it was a PR win (although that was really rare like people fleeing from south to north Korea) yet they shot many people fleeing west. The official death count is around 140 +/- ~30

@@arthas640 Thanks for the info. I did not know that the GDR called it the anti-fascist wall. Actually I thought the death toll might have been higher, given that the Berliner Mauer was in place for 38 years. I did read that around 100,000 people tried to escape but only 5000 did.

​@Rasscasse the Wall was built in summer of 1961 with it collapsing in fall of 1989; 28 and change years

@@piercehawke8021 its weird because with its impact on history you'd think it was this age old thing that was broken down but no, 28.

Thank you for sharing that poignant experience from that era

E‎ ‎

I came directly to the comments after he said that to see if anyone caught it.

His alter ego is hunting Sam down as we speak.

HA! I thought the exact same thing! 🤣

Nor presumably Sykes or Picot.

Beautiful story

They should be scared after what they did to Europe

@@peterii3512 Civilians were barely involved, and plenty of them suffered under the Stasi. And the Gestapo before them. And the street fighting (and doubtless intimidation) of the black and brown shirts before that. The current establishment enjoys flagellating the German people for the actions of the Nazis. I'm not fond of the German nation spirit (the drive towards the absolute), but an individual German does NOT deserve reprimand for it.

@@leandersearle5094 barely involved? Where do you think those 13 million soldiers came from? Civilians actively supported the war effort by joining up, by paying taxes and by not opposing the nazis. If even 10% of the German population actively resisted (sabotaging rail lines, setting arson to weapons factories, basically insurgent activities) then Germany wouldn’t have even been able to invade Poland. Almost all German people were nazi supporters or sympathizers. Nazis didn’t just rise out of nowhere.

@@leandersearle5094 great youtube removed my comment for calling out ACTUAL nzis

good catch xD

Yeah I just saw that and paused at 16: 34 exactly. Lenin staring warmly into my soul. Nice insert, don't think it was a 1980s Lenin cosplayer haha.

Thats a video clip from Russia, not Germany.

Such a typical German response

I'm always most annoyed about the "z", as it's not even difficult to pronounce, the sound is just represented differently in German. It just shows that they didn't really put any effort into the pronunciation.

@@wolfangstrike2220 Correct and Precise?

I dont get why RU-vidrs dont ask their community for the right pronunciations. A simple "Hey guys, I'm doing a video on Germany. Could someone from Germany send me audio clips with the pronunciation of the following persons/places/things/whatever?" and I'm sure lots of your supporters would gladly help. I mean we are talking about a channel with almost 5 millions subscribers, butchering foreign words seems like a something so easily avoidable. But then again, at the football world cup, olympics etc the same happens. I guess nobody cares enough.

@@wernerlindorfer3693 A lot of words might have different pronunciations depending on regional dialects. That would also add another big step (getting and going through tons of submissions) to an already complicated video creation process.

That's a very Wessi sentiment. From the point of view of the East, it was less a (re)unification and more annexation. You see it to the very core of the political establishment, but also the dismantling of some very good DDR companies (Superfest, for example, was simply better). Also there are no Bananas in the DDR. Oranges should be Apfelsine, etc. Ostdeutsche aren't that xenophobic, they had large-ish migrant communities (Cubans and Vietnamese being notable). They just feel like they're being dictated against.

@@smalltime0 That's a very Ossi sentiment. The GDR government gave up and everyone was left with a mess that needed quick solutions. It's a shame things didn't go down more smoothly but it was not because of malicious intent.

​@@Schmogel92 It's more of the inherent inability of capitalism for the people's well-being. After all, the state media's biggest lie is hiding how bad the west actually is to live in.

@@smalltime0I’d be very interested to know how old you are.

And that ^ is why East and West still don't mesh. Both had quality standards of living in their own ways, but both wanted their way of life to be *the* way of life. It's culture clash, and it's completely unnecessary. Not everything needs to be intertwined. It's a silly human instinct that causes conflict over and over again. Interior vs. exterior US. Israel vs. Palestine. Race issues. It's okay to be distinct and separate. We don't all have to be the same or live the same way. Freedom is having choice, not assimilation.

This was true but with LED lamps arriving on the scene the division becomes less and less visible over time.

@@gustavobscura5846 The actual sockets are different, so they realistically only get switched over during major works.

​@@smalltime0they usually replace the whole lamp head when switching to LED, so the sockets don't matter

Visible on the ground too, like East Berlin has more trams, commie blocks and the streets are a lot wider than West Berlin

The Western press doesn't mention that "peace wall in NI". much taller, longer and longer lasting. Amazing that.

that building has a cool story btw, it was built in the 70s by a Japanese architecture firm for the East Germans and was supposed to be the East German World Trade Center. It housed several embassies at the time.

Cool, visited Berlin very recently from Sweden, and wow, such a beautiful yet quirky city, and when watching the video it was nice to recognize places and learn even more about them, like the fact we lived next to U2 line at nolendorfpalatz and took several trips to Alexander platz without knowing all the history that lies in between Must be even more amazing to see as a local (or you might know most of this already)

True in many cities worldwide, especially those with something to offer. The house next door used to be subdivided into 4 smaller apartments (perfect for this area; college near-by; banking/government district). An investor bought it and reverted it back to a large house on ground floor and the 2 smaller apartments on the roof became one - where he stays when here. I like the guy, he's super nice, but the fact remains that 4 apartments are now 1 Airbnb with a second apartment used part-time.

Read David Harvey: „Rebel Cities“ on that ;))

Wow, that's actually disgusting.

@@jasonhaven7170 Because its not true

Wo hast du den Unsinn her?

@@linkergenosse363 The burning of refugee centres? Did you forget?

Bringing in the Vietnamese was one of the most capitalistic things the GDR has done. They were brought in on a commercial basis on western airliners paid with hard currency. They produced consumer goods in east Germany factories, to pay back the loans that West Germany had extended to East Germany. Seeing that raising work hours already lead to in riots in 1953 - the East Geman leadership opted to import East Asians instead.

And why not, he talked about us, after all. Just don't come up with conspiracy theories, I've seen enough of them.

Shoutout to Günter Schabowski for flubbing it

Is this a joke? Or a conspiracy theory?

@@kingace6186 OP is referring to a famous quote from the public speaker of the GDR while giving a press conference

@@kingace6186 its a cultural tradition and a nod to history. Weil das halt nun mal so ist

What aspects of the east were worthy enough to be absorbed into the west?

Sorry, but the fact, that the GDR ediucation system was skandinavian like is just a myth. The ediucationssystem was very idiological and far from liberal.

This is frequent for overseas territories in western countries, notably France. In the French West Indies, workers from the mainland receive a "far away bonus" (But the main difference is that the cost of living is actually higher, not lower so it makes sense). Not the locals. Another big difference is that although west and east Germany are quite similar in terms of climate and geography, the Caribbean are a tropical paradise. One would think that's bonus enough

that fact about the education system is so interesting. i think a lot about how we emphasize so much about "learning from the past" that we have a habit of doing the opposite. i was also thinking about how i always personally remembered Germany as a comparatively socialized state considering what we have in the US, and how i look to them to see what modern socialism could look like. knowing this came from a state that previously declared "socialism never again," it's... interesting. i never considered that Germany could be borrowing ideas from the GDR and not admitting it. i sort of assumed they were modern inventions.

@@Pietro-Smusi 1. Kindergarten system, in fact the West does try to emulate it now... badly. Not having enough spots all the time in the West while it's easy to find one for your kid in the East. 2. Higher education (high school equivalence at least), it's more selective with students being less about watering down standards just to let as many kids as possible finish, higher focus on vocational training for those that won't finish High School. 3. How to integrate women into the workforce, especially after just having children (West still sports higher rate of women ending up unemployed or in the "part time trap" after having kids in the West) 4. (Surprisingly) more Democracy at the working place. While the centrally planned committees by the government erased any advantage because it resulted in an overall lack of resources this may have had, in the GDR the employees could hold a vote and veto their boss' decisions. Without it East Germany would probably have ended up even poorer since it was a counterweight to incompetent superiors Things that quickly come to mind. And that's besides what's often seems like intentional sabotage by the West due to rampant corruption in the early post unity years (using shitty cables for telephone network as a result of corruption which results in the East being far behind in broadband internet because the cables are incompatible with current standards) On top of that: there was a case where an East German wanted to get hired for a job but was not taken SPECIFICALLY for being East German. They sued for discrimination. They lost. Because being from the East is (somehow) not covered by the law. This means not hiring someone for being Black is illegal as it's discrimination. While not hiring someone simply for being Eastern is PERFECTLY legal. That lawsuit is also a big fertile soil for xenophobic sentiment because for this specific case, foreigners (or at least "non ethnic German citizens" do indeed have more rights than "native" German citizens.

the easts living standards have risen way faster than the wests, the reconstruction efforts were a full success

@@cooltwittertag Calling them a "full success" is just quite simply not true. Of course the living standards in the east have risen way faster than in the west, coming from a much lower baseline. The fact is that the living standards between east and west are still very different, and that has naturally lead to resentments, something that we see right now in the massively higher voting numbers for the AfD in the East. I'm not arguing that there haven't been successes in the economic integration as well, what I'm arguing is that an opportunity was wasted here to do it much better.

"The East had a fantastic semiconductor industry", yeah... Maybe by eastern block standards it did. But by western standards ot was a dismal failure.

@@ΣτελιοςΠεππας Not had. Has. The semiconductor industry around Dresden (and with Intels new factory soon also around Magdeburg) is still one of the stronger semiconductor areas in Europe. It's not tsmc obviously, but then again, nothing else is as well.

Yeah, I remember a documentary, how they cheated the east german companies by assigning a huge debt on them by default, either because the Treuhand managers never understood socialist bookkeeping or because they never wanted to do correct bookkeeping. That way, healthy companies with huge assets would be bankrupt overnight and not even really sold, but just given away to west German companies, boosting the west German industry for a short time, but stealing money from the unified state and actually harming the German economy in long term. The winners of the early 1990s became the troublemakers of the 2000s.

I mean you don't have to if it. Pretty clear just looking at the electoral map from 2020 and polling today.

The US is more so divided by race.

Some of the borders reflect the compromises made in the antebellum period. The economic differences have gotten much smaller but only in the most recent decades. The poorest states are still former members of the confederacy.

Funny you mentioned that, the Reconstruction era of the US after the Civil War was one of the models on how to do the German reunification

​@@stephenandersen4625 : There's poorest states because are kept strangled in struggle by the riches states.

The "egolomanic warhungry Russian leader" maybe - the wise, based and power full Russian leader Putin was stationed in Dresden in reality.

Funny enough Putin not even a spy he just a glorified pencil pusher bureaucrats for the KGB, and most of his job were trying to convinced small technology companies in West Germany to spy for them and the only moment that he got to action were stopping an angry German crowds during the fall of Berlin Wall with a pistol and claimed he work for the KGB (not sure how the moment went) stalling the angry mobs long enough for Putin colleagues burning all their documents.

Dresden, not Berlin!

18:00 homo-genius instead of homogenous

Especially with what is currently happening I feel like our "remembrance culture" is more a thing to hide behind than something we actually have.

Intentional write-off is common of today -- private equities would buy businesses from the owners that want to cash out. Many of those businesses are still profitable. They would sell the good part for a profit, and run the bad part into the ground while collecting huge fees before bankruptcy.

not just monetary gain, many companies that could have competed with western companies had the rug pulled under them with the currency suddenly becoming twice as expensive from one day to the other, and east germans simply being in a craze buying anything thats not from the east, no matter how bad or expensive. And the treuhandanstalt, a thing that was created to manage the transition from communism to capitalism basically sold what could have been competition to western companies for pennies on the dollar, since people from the east had no expirience how to value what they had correctly. same goes for housing btw, sooo many people sold their houses for nothing and were getting screwed by west germans. Dont get me wrong, i'm still very happy about reunification, BUT the west fucked the east immensly in the process.

@@armatus I think similar things happened to all of eastern Europe, powerhouses before ww2, no more than husks today doing barely better than in the USSR, weirdly enough the current political football is one of those countries with such a fate

@@mitchellcouchman1444 It was the same for most of the eastern countries. In germany we just got the special situation now, that the victims (and their kids) and the winners (and their kids) sit in the same country. And jeah, the winners were the capitalists, which creates a lot of political tension and weird perspectives on each other, considering that a lot of them actually tried to not be capitalists.. :D

many didnt believe the border would be open for long. for them it was a once in a lifetime chance to escape to the west, wasting time was risking to be too late

They still do. Along with certifications of authenticity.

The west was a lot denser, reducing the advantage of trams compared to busses. In the east there are several lines on wide roads with a dedicated lane, which allows them to travel quicker than the average traffic and to prefer them at traffic lights. In the west they were essentially less flexible busses which got caught in the increasing traffic, while space got more and more valuable. And the tram lines were not positioned as a strategical net, but just how every little town later absorbed by Berlin thought it would make sense... There came the subway boom, which offered a significant improvement over trams in speed and volume and because of the preferred placement under wide streets, often doubled former tram tracks anyway. So it isn't really just the idea that cars or individual traffic as such were the future. Especially not in the 60s were cars were still a luxury.

Marshall plan is not the relevant since it was way before reunification, but "Treuhand" should have been mentioned.

@@TylerDurden-pk5km I should have made this clearer in my comment, but the Marshall Plan gave West Germany a significant head start on economic rebuilding as opposed to East Germany

@@DumbyDooDoo Hi, that is true - but personally I think it is not of primary relevance for reunification (but if of course explains the differences).

East Germany wasn't "sponsored" by the Soviets, thats the difference. It was gutted in a colonial fashion

@@cooltwittertag The "gutted" part is only true for the direct post war years (and the western powers did the same thing after WWI). Then were was a time of "sponsorship" (as a showcase that was closest to the west) and then, with the mounting failure of the socialist system within the soviet union - disinterest. The economic failure of the GDR was not because of "colonial gutting" - but because of the failure of socialism as an economic system - within the GDR itself and the socialist partner countries. And without the soviet union - West Germany would have been gutted too - that was the initial plan of the US (Morgenthau Plan) all along. Only systemic competition with the soviet union made that an imprudent plan.

Probably correct but only because all the old industries in the East will have shut down by then and vast areas depopulated. So the only way is up from there.

Yeah free market sounds nice but its just private exploitation rather than government exploitation in the end. They just call you a customer instead of a citizen.

The odd thing is some eastern bloc nations are actually improving rapidly. Poland and Estonia are two that stand out, in the near future Poland may be wealthier than former east Germany (though not Germany as a whole, that's a much bigger hill to climb!)

Where has after the second world war there was a Marshall plan and plenty of funds for a welfare state-with the alternative of socialism just across the border, the US and west were under pressure to deliver

But now a lot of international companies hesitate to open business branches in the middle of a a Nazi infested hive

Stagnation was already in East Europe. Ussr collapsing and adopting capitalism led to huge depression

Funnily enough, I first came across U2 during their „Achtung Baby“ album, when I was 11 year old. And since the band were staying in Berlin to record their album, I assumed their band name was taken from the U2 underground line 😅

Complex and expensive. Imagine North and South Korea. Western Germany was significantly bigger than East, and people in the East were at least not starving. Korea.... oh boy.

I believe it's already the second time in recent months that Sam used us as the less favorable example :D

The funny part, is that 75% is not that bad in terms of differences. In Italy, the richest provinces (South Tyrol, Lombardy, Trentino, Aosta Valley etc.) have a GDP per capita over DOUBLE that of the poorest regions (Campania, Sicily, Calabria, Apulia). Regards from Poland

As a german, even one born in 2001, all i can say is: you have no idea

​@@chheinrich8486Is it true it was more of the FDR annexing the GDR ? Instead of "reunification" ?

@@GWT1m0 It is called the FRG, and has been since 1949. Actually, the east virtually ran into the FRG, and the west was somewhat annoyed that they could not wait, and that they were so much after getting our Deutsche Mark. Well, the eastern version had no validity outside the Warshaw Pact, so imports would have to be paid in foreign currencies nevertheless. Did you know that the currency trade was two eastern Marks for one western Deutsche Mark, when the monetary reform started?

@@gabbyn978 Only two eastern Marks for one whole western Mark feels like a subsidisation from the west.

@@GWT1m0 Officially and legally the GDR joined the FRG and accepted all laws, regulations, institutions, the money, stamps etc. Modern day Germany is a direct continuation of the FRG and the GDR ceased to exist, of course a few aspects of the GDR made it into modern Germany and time was given to align the two states, but it was not a new state formed of two parts.

It was the Soviets that took infrastructure as reparations. Can you city me any instances where the French did?

@@erik_griswoldall occupying nations already agreed in Yalta to finance reparations by dismantling industrial equipment in their occupations zones. Britain mainly dismantled industrial equipment in the North while France dismantled mainly railways in today‘s states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. In my reparations figure it is not included that large parts of Germany were annexed and ownership of assets abroad was seized. And this is of course understandable after WWII. I am just making this point that it was not financial support or the Marshall plan that helped Germany after WWII because it was a tiny amount that came years late - it was the integration into western markets, the still existing industrially trained population, the demand for civilian and investment goods and the monetary reforms that made the German economic miracle happen. That’s mainly the lesson to take away for future tasks. That’s also why reunification in Germany was slow and painful, although it might have been the only political option.

@@erik_griswold In the first two or three years, the French occupation was much more heavy-handed than the British or American ones. Apart from the "Iron Curtain" separating the Western zones from the Soviet one, there was the "Silken Curtain" keeping the French zone apart. That was obviously in no way comparable to the East-West split, and faded rather soon as the post-War order emerged.

@danielhalachev4714 VW wasn’t “taken over” by the British. It was restored by them to provide jobs and income for the local population who were right up against the Soviet Sector. It remained a German company.

It's like crossing over from Ontario into Quebec.

My mother went on a school trip there once. Same story. Many old people made this experience

@@MeetAnEcoregioncanadian version of Israel Palestina lol

@mateuszsmagacz8332 nope. Fck Russia

@mateuszsmagacz8332 you gotta learn what the words you use mean before becoming an internet troll

It’s a cool concept but simply too expensive compared to normal high speed trains.

@@fixminer9797 that's only partly true. The expensive part is the rail network needed. Which surprisingly was in the German approach back then partly in the ticket prices while ICE rail networks get subsidized 100%. So ofc it's too pricey. Then you need to value in that the first train is more costly than mass production, and so on. Normal trains had just have tenths of years more time to be more cost-efficient. The big problem back then was more that DB didn't want any competition. Something what is more energy efficient often turns out to be more long term more cost-efficient, short term unfortunately this is not the case.

There is a current system from Max Bögl with a similar idea: regional/local public transport with robust maglev technology. Cheaper to build than a subway but faster and more capacity than trams.

This, my first thought was what does funny moustache man have to do with delayed train services from Berlin to Hamburg?

@@wangsengsin2527 That clip made at least a bit of sense, as Sam was talking about how much faster the train connection between Berlin and Hamburg was during the 1930s. So during the time of the mustache-wearing dictator. But a lot of other clips didn't make any sense whatsoever. E.g. most of the clips of random demonstrations. Especially the clip of some far-right-demo while he was talking about the government provinces at 10:00. Or another far-right demonstration while talking about everyday life, at 16:30

The problem was less, that it were only "3 brands" ... but that they were 10-20 years behind western standards. Nobody would have complained if there would have been only one TV brand - if it would have been at Sonys standard (and as available). 😀

How different are the languages between East and West German? I'm not a Korean, but from what I learned about Korea's divisions, a topic I'm very interested in is that languages are also a big barrier. The biggest problem that North Koreans seeking refuge in the South often faced was the language. At this point, North Korea and South Korea are essentially two different languages. One South Korean scholar said that if the two Korean nations decide to reunify, the first step should be the integration of the two Korean languages. I heard North Korean refugees in South Korea had to learn South Korean languages, and there's a North-to-South translation app to help them in South Korea.

Apparently, North Korea in South Korea often faced discrimination because of what South Korea perceived as a strange version of the Korea languages they used while not being able to understand each other despite technically using the same language.

​@@piereandreturner2818 Not very different, there are differences in dialect within the German regions, but the Eastern ones have no bigger differences that the ones within West Germany. Maybe with the exception of the Saxons, whose dialect is regarded as funny by all other Germans (East and West)... but that is also true for the Bavarians. Once Korea reunifies, I am sure that Kim Jong Un will make sure, that all South Koreans will get help to be educated in the language of the dear leader, to become productive members of the DPRK. 😀😀

@@piereandreturner2818 All German dialects are pretty close to "high" German as it is written, so there are no real communication barriers. This would be different for Switzerland for example, there the spoken language has diverged from High German and can be hard to understand for someone from Germany (but still possible).

But not smoothly or fairly. There is still "ostfrust" east frustration as fabrics and living space were all brought by west germans and to this day are you paid worst in the east. A little divide in east and west still exist and can't really be changed.

That’s fair. I’m seeing it from an outsider perspective, so I definitely missed a lot of the nuance, and of course, it’s definitely not perfect and will still take more time, but the process of economic and more importantly cultural reconnection is pretty impressive when looking at it from an American standpoint, as it is seems similar to the efforts taken to reunify the Southern and Northern US states during our reconstruction. Even today America has a sort of cultural scar from that process that’s still struggling to heal, and that creates a polarized political division that still lasts today. Im just really impressed by the shared German identity that persisted even after decades of occupation, and how (even if not perfectly) they were able to take back a place on the world stage so quickly

It was a blank slate for nearly 15 years wasn’t it?

@@av_oid Something like that I mean it was a blank slate for the entire time the wall stood and then for a further 5-10 years. The thing is that is also that he makes it sound that its a residential area but its exclusively for Business (including shopping and cinema) I mean zou even see the sony center on the screen (its the tent like building). Generally he often makes avoidable mistakes I have to say.

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Germany is comparatively small tho (Brazil is almost 25 times larger) and there is also a money-transfer scheme between states. So well-off states transfer money to poorer states to balance out economic disparities.

@@azaph_yt One of the problem with the Federal Monetary Balancing Fund (I think that's the translation) is that there are only four states paying into it and twelve receivers and we're not talking about a lot of money. At least in the scale of Germany as a nation

Germany can be comparatively small, but still is a big country and have a huge population. See my European Union example.

@@gohanssj48 Hey! Settle down... you guys always get carried away when you start talking like that

@@azaph_yt Poland is even smaller - and we still have deep differences remaining from the pre-1918 era, even after we've been through WW2 and communism together.

Some of them, yes. On the other hand, Saxony, parts of Thuringia, and Berlin were major industrial centres before the war while Bavaria, much of Lower Saxony, or Schleswig-Holstein were not. That explanation is too simple and misleading.

Germany certainly isn't committed to "freedom" or liberalisms - since it's constitution does not guarantee free speech and you can and will be locked up for a long time, if you say the wrong things in public. The list what is forbidden is ever expanding.

Ongoing

Certainly an interesting topic though it might be difficult to compare because the causes and length of division were quite different. Also a very different time period. But culturally (especially in respect to extremism) this might work.

is "right wing" just a euphemism for people who disagree with importing only males of fighting age from african countries?

@@swell07_ *african and middle-eastern, otherwise correct

The people aren't imported by the state. They come on their own, because they had seen german TV shows and believed this is paradise, and some are actually fleeing from a war. Traffickers exploit their beliefs, and demand a fortune for opening the path into this 'paradise', and when their 'customers' can not bring up the money, they get literally enslaved. Also, these travelers aren't all adult men, there are women and children, too, which fell for the same scams.

@@gabbyn978 Most of them are actually adult men. The women and children often come afterwards under a program called ''family reunification''. Many of them are actually not fleeing from war or anything. Most ''refugees'' to Germany actually come from Turkey - a country where Germans fly in the millions every year to make vacation... And yes, the German government is actively motivating these people to come to Germany - against the wishes of the own population - they are incentevising and in some cases actively flying people in and when they are here, even if they have no legitimate claim for asylum the government is refusing to send them back to their homecountries.

i went last week its literally my favourite city ive ever been to

How did you guys like it and why. What was good and bad? Always interested in hearing about my hometown :p

@@sleepy_chronotype There are two cities in Germany that don't feel like any other German city: Berlin and Hamburg. I am from Bavaria and when I was in Berlin it felt really different from any place I've been to before. Munich, Nuremberg are boring but Berlin is just awesome, same with Hamburg.

Berlin can be provincial and international at the same time. You can make a world travel by just taking a U-Bahn from say, Alexanderplatz to Wittenau. There are dozens of cinemas of all sizes, with all kinds of programs, several theatres, a lot of flea markets, city houses that are a hundred years old along with postmodern ones (I think the later ones are even more ugly), several boulevards, night clubs, a nightlife that never ends, street performing artists, several shopping streets, a ton of museums of all kinds, some grouped on a specific island within the river Spree, libraries, three universities (Humboldt, Free and Technical University plus the Academy of the Beaux Arts), and - well a very active LGBT+ community.

@@sleepy_chronotypeI don’t like Berlin, it’s too grey with too many concrete Soviet-era blocks.

Great job on this comment!

Not old, just East German 😅

Would be a nice Video as well