wohnzimmer bilder berlin

hi, i’m the political junkie. i need to admit something a little bit embarrassing. when i was a child, i had a major misconceptionabout the berlin wall. my teachers were great- it’s not their fault. but if you asked pre-teen me to draw you amap of the division of east and west germany after the 2nd world war, i would have givenyou something like this. there’s west germany on the left- east germany(or the gdr , if you prefer) on the right. and look- right there in the middle is berlin! i falsely assumed that berlin lay on the borderbetween the soviet controlled east and the

american/british/french administered west. so hey, you’re in east berlin. you want a taste of freedom. who cares about that wall going straight throughyour city, just go around! sure maybe go wide and avoid border crossings,but it’s worth the trip if your goal is life in the west. and just to be clear, that was totally wrong. that was no option- the real border was notso oblique like my imagination. if you were a better student than i was, orif you just google an old map of divided

germany right now, you’ll see this- thisis the accurate picture of east and west germany. you’ll notice berlin is way over here, deepin the soviet controlled area. west berlin was administered by the alliesafter the war, and was a part of west germany, but it was no port; it was an island. and the wall wasn’t simply a line dividingeast and west berlin, it was much more than that, and many more challenges awaited anyonetrying to emigrate out of soviet-controlled east to the west. but before we can talk in detail about thisdark journey, we need to recognize that the wall didn’t just appear after the secondworld war.

the boundary was planned and erected in secretby the east german government . east and west berlin were segregated fromeach other from one another in a matter of hours starting in 1961. that very morning, people waking up in eastberlin to go to their jobs in west berlin were unable to do so. how is such a thing even possible?! the wall in its final form was 155km, 100miles long. could anything as vast as the berlin wallbe completed so quickly and without anyone noticing until it was too late?

to understand, we need to go a little bitdeeper with this topic, and consider a major miscalculation by the american governmentin the waning days of the second world war. how long is it appropriate to clap for someone? 30 seconds? a minute? 10 minutes? what if the person you’re applauding isn’teven there? in 1938, a local communist party held a conferenceoutside moscow. now 1938 was the year the great stalinistpurges ended in the soviet union.

from 1937-38 alone, 1.5 million people werearrested with an average of 1,000 executions per day. this usually wasn’t done with evidence-it was a terror campaign, and no one was safe, not even those in the communist party, asdemonstrated by these two images, one showing stalin at the white sea canal with yezhov,his head of the secret police. but yezhov was purged and executed in 1938,leading to this creepy doctored photo in which yezhov no longer appears at stalin’s side. this was the atmosphere at the local partyconference. the soviet people being detained and executedconstantly.

so as you can read in the gulag archipelago,at this local party conference, a tribute was called- to comrade stalin and a standingovation broke out. “three minutes, four minutes, five minutes”. no one would stop. stormy applause. they all knew they were being observed bysecret police. they knew if they stopped applauding or evenslowed down, they were likely to be arrested- so they kept going. for over 11 minutes!

keep in mind, stalin isn’t even there. finally a local factory owner sat down andthe others in the room followed suit. as expected, the factory owner was arrestedthat night and given 10 years in the gulag. “don’t ever be the first to stop applauding”in soviet russia. this is the stalin we know- his own military,his own party, theoretically his allies-terrified, if not already dead. and this was the stalin with whom the britishand the americans allied to defeat nazi germany. it might have been a necessary evil, but itwas a tough sell to the public. for this reason, propaganda of the time emphasizedthat “uncle joe stalin” was a reliable,

steady leader. listen to president roosevelt in this shortclip talking about him. now, the footage is a bit grainy, but i thinkyou’ll see the contortions the american president was in to work with a mass murderer. “i may say that i got along fine with marshallstalin. he is a man who confines a tremendous, relentlessdetermination, with a stalwart good humor. i believe he is fully representative of theheart and soul of russia. i believe we are going to get along very wellwith him and the russian people.” another quick example if i may: the 1943 film,‘mission to moscow’, in which ambassador

joseph davies claims, “while i was in russiai came to have a high respect for the integrity and the honesty of the soviet leaders. i also came back with a firm conviction thatthese people were sincerely devoted to world peace.and that they and their leaders onlywanted to live in a decent world as good neighbors in a world at peace.” it gets a little worse. just look at how the film portrays the stalinistpurges as a battle against a german and japanese conspiracy. pretty eerie stuff.

you’ll notice that stalin’s actor is theguy in the black. “and at the sensational purge trials, you’lllearn for the first time the whole shocking truth about the plot that set of the powderkeg of the world. so you were working out a deal? naturally. with representatives of germany? of germany. and japan.” we can now jump ahead to the end of worldwar 2, the western allies are invading nazi

germany from the west and the russians fromthe east. general eisenhower and president rooseveltmade a serious strategic mistake by not taking hitler’s capital: germania, berlin. americans entering berlin for the first timeafter the war were shocked by the suffering in the city. now the allies dropped 33,390 tons of bombson berlin themselves, but the former capital of the reich had been tortured by those whophysically toppled it with an army. here’s an apt image from alexandra richie’s‘faust’s metropolis’: “many of the 100,000 german civilians whohad died in the battle for berlin still lay

unburied;”by the way, this is months after the battle of berlin. “even the cool-headed general clay describedberlin as a ‘city of the dead.’” “in the weeks following the surrender, womenwho met one another on the street or in the food queue would begin a conversation with‘how many times?’ in reference to the number of times they had been raped by thesoviet occupiers since they last saw each other. this had been the center of the evil fascistregime, and yet, the people left mostly weren’t hardened nazis, 75% of them were women andchildren.

capturing berlin was an offer roosevelt madeto stalin personally at the yalta conference in 1945, as the 3 major allied powers discussedplans for dividing up a defeated germany. perhaps roosevelt had been absorbing too muchof the american propaganda about uncle joe. he wanted stalin to cooperate not only beforethe end of the war but presumably thereafter. to encourage this, he secretly offered stalinthe conquering of berlin. that was a huge mistake. stalin for his part, didn’t trust roosevelt. and so as western allied forces made a widesweep of west germany, stalin challenged his generals koniev and zhukov- race to the heartof the nazi regime.

by allowing the soviets to arrive first, theamericans sealed the fate of the city. “you are now entering the lair of the fascistbeast” read soviet soldiers as they poured over the german border- german wealth andwomen were their opportunity for revenge. the soviets that plundered their way throughberlin starting on april 16th, 1945 were seeking retribution for the nazi terror during hitler’sinvasion of the soviet union. german public opinion didn’t matter. stalin expected that the allies would abandonberlin, abandon germany and leave it in the soviet sphere of influence. germans would never have a democratic election.

this translated into the soviet way of administeringeast germany. if the people could see the tears and dramaon the day east and west berlin were physically divided, on the day when people in east berlinrealized their chances of escaping had passed, they might have left earlier. it was late summer 1945 by the time the otherallied forces made it into berlin- there was a 4-power split in the city. and even though there was never any real cooperationbetween the occupiers, even though the soviets forced the social democratic party to mergewith the communists for more political control, even though ordinary berliners were beingkidnapped by the vopos (people’s police)

and in some cases taken to soviet labor camps, even though for nearly a year the sovietstried to cut off allied access to west berlin resulting in the berlin airlift- berlin remainedthis anomaly; a place where you could go from soviet influence to american influence bysimply walking across the street, sticking your foot out the door or your head out ofthe window. and this arrangement, as fragile and tenseas it was, full of stand-offs and spying, east and west currency, juxtaposition of ideology,seemed to be sustainable- at least it seemed like it was going to stay that way for a while. waiting for nuclear war was the status quo.

you could argue that this little booklet hereset off the events that led to the berlin wall’s construction. on the same day the soviets lifted the blockadeof west berlin, west germany published this: the grundgesetz, the german basic law, unifyingthe american, british, and french administered areas of germany. now stalin’s reaction to this document wasto create the german democratic republic by october, with east berlin as its capital. the farce of cooperative allied administrationwas gone. this was significant for a number of reasons,not least of which because it defacto recognized

the division of germany, but for odd smallreasons like that west berliners didn’t have the right to vote with the rest of westgermany- ironically the constitution created inconsistency. with the founding of these two, countriesnow, east and west germany, things became even more militarized-especially the border. if you tried to travel from kassel to leipzig,you would encounter the 1,393km (866mile) inner-german border, with a restrictive zone,observation towers, and even mine fields preventing escape. so here’s the first answer to the questionposed by this video: even before the berlin

wall was constructed, the inner-german borderwas militarized over time to prevent emigration to the west. according to research by bernd eisenfeld androger engelmann, more than seven people a day were imprisoned for trying to escape theeast. even if you evaded the spying eyes of thestasi, chances of getting across the border were slim. but there was still one glaring opportunity:if you were unhappy with life in the east, you could still simply walk from east to westberlin. and despite crackdowns, there were still someprotests against the soviet backed government.

on the 17th june 1953, demonstrators torethe soviet flag down from the brandenburg gate in a show against east berlin labor norms. the east berlin volkspolizei responded withforce. the mass uprising across east germany ledto 267 deaths and 200 executions thereafter. events like these prompted mass exodus tothe west. 1949 four years after the war- 52,245 hadalready left the east 1953- 331,390 leave after the violence onjune 17th. by 1958, 100 people per day were emigratingfor the wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) of west germany.

this might be the part of the story you recognize.themass exodus to the west caused the east german authority to build the berlin wall and stopthe leak. but it’s so much more interesting than justthat. remember, the plan was kept secret- executedon august 13th, 1961. again from faust’s metropolis, “hundredsof troops, armored personnel carrier, equipment, and workers had been brought intoberlin over the course of the week but nobody had been told the true reason for their presence. at midnight commanders throughout east berlinwere told to wake up their troops and to open top-secret envelopes which they had been issued.

even senior personnel were shocked by whatthey read. within two hours over 40,000 startled soldiersand policemen had been moved up to the sector boundary to form a line with their backs tothe east. by now, workmen had begun to begun to ripup asphalt and cobblestones, unloading piles of fencing and bales of barbed wire...withinhours, all of west berlin had been encircled and sealed off….a few hours later the thousandswho had planned to flee to west berlin that day began to turn up at the friedrichstrassestation with their little bags and packages. they too were told that they could no longertravel. people begged police to be allowed to crossbut were turned away, many broke down in tears

when they realized that their chance of freedomhad slipped away.” what made this whole situation so much worsewas that west berlin basically went unsupported by west german or american officials. west german chancellor adenauer hated berlinon a personal level. and president kennedy wasn’t even told aboutthe barrier’s construction until the next day, and upon hearing it, he didn’t perceiveit as a threat. now we can talk about the second reason berlinersdidn’t just go around the berlin wall, and that is because after the soviets replacedthe makeshift barriers, the completed wall encircled all of west berlin.

between easterners and the other side laya 275 m minefield, a 500 meter wide so called death strip- west berlin was basically a 100,000square kilometer prison. the composer gyorg ligeti called it, ‘asurrealist cage, a bizarre prison in which those who were locked up were free’ i mentioned before: how long do we applaud?-and we found out the answer when someone’s fearing for their lives. so let’s explore this idea one more time. after the wall’s construction, presidentkennedy wasn’t keen on visiting berlin. he had changed his mind on the seriousnessof the situation after berlin mayor willy

brandt sent him a letter begging him to upholdamerica’s image in berlin as the arbiter of peace and freedom. but after sending vice president johnson in1961, kennedy thought his work was finished. he was skeptical of the negative rhetoricabout berlin morale coming from the west german chancellor. and to be frank: the wall represented a bitof stability for the us. for nearly 20 years the us and the sovietshad nearly started world war 3 on multiple occasions over this little island of westernlife- and the wall served not only as a physical barrier, but a diplomatic one as it gave kennedyand soviet first secretary khrushchev some

operating space along the iron curtain. but finally, convinced by some of his innercircle, and perhaps for fear of looking like a capitulating neville chamberlain, jfk landedin berlin on june 15, 1963. and the president saw something that movedhim. it wasn’t the overwhelmingwelcome he received in west berlin- but rather what he saw as he climbed a wooden platformand took a look over the boundaries of east and west-a small group of east berliners whohad also come to to the wall. together, and presumably in full view of thestasi, they saluted the young president. after seeing this, legend has it that he scribbleddown what are the most iconic words in the

berlin-us shared history. “all free men, wherever they may live, arecitizens of berlin. and therefore, as a free man, i take pridein the words: ‘ich bin ein berliner’” the height of america’s image in berlin. and the applause went on for over 20 minutes.

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