9:45 All-clear-signal to the man jumping out of the window: He made it down safely: The men beneath him were firefighters with a 'Sprungtuch' a big piece of strong fabric, held above ground by 20 or more men. It was developed to allow people to escape a burning house and the go-to-procedure when they had no firetrucks with big ladders. You can recognise them by their helmets.
For every German over 40 years of age in east and west it's one of the moments, where you will never forget what you have done while it happened. I still feel touched when I think about it, like the guy in the clip. Many, many, many Germans still feel this way. Our family was split in half because of the wall. My mothers family as well as my fathers family. They both had cousins on both sides of the wall. My grandma fleed to the west, her brother stayed in the easy. Something like this was very common in Germany.
Not only that Berlin or Germany was split, complete Europe was split through the iron curtain. East germans were masters of improvement, the have to use what the found to work with. With a family on both sides, for us on the west side it was easier to visit the relatives in the east than otherwise.
Hi Uncle D, 🌴🌞 When I was younger, my parents had Hungarian friends, other Yugoslavs (under Tito's government), and even Romanians. I remember their adult conversation when they were invited to my home, theirs, or the restaurant. They explained to us the secret struggle, the constant surveillance of the KGB, and the fact that in their respective countries, we couldn't talk about politics with people, and even in the family, it was complicated. Because everyone suspected everyone and we didn't know who did what. I started my military service (in France, we were still an army of conscripts -> 12 months of compulsory service - and not a professional army -> volunteers - as is the case here now since 1996) in Germany in Landau in February 1988, this time when France was still present in West Germany within the framework of the security signed with the American, English allies and USSR, and therefore, a year before the fall of the Berlin Wall. I never would have imagined the wall's fall possible at that time and in such a short time. Because this wall didn't only block Berlin Est/West. It was the first wall by its geographic position which stop all the USSR countries to pass to west. It was extraordinary to see these thousands of people, these families finally hugging each other again. A very beautiful moment. Peace, folks.☮👈😎
I was 5 years old when the wall fell. I can still remember my parents sitting in the living room crying and watching it on TV. Of course, I hadn't understood that yet. We lived in the west and at 5 you don't understand that yet
Friends of us inherited a house (built in the late 1920s) that had a tub and washbasin off the kitchen, and a shared toilet on the halfway landing in the common hallway. This was WEST Germany. Private toilets inside the apartments weren't installed until the 1970s. My grandmother (a refugee/displaced person from Western Prussia (now Poland) came to West Germany in 1953 and moved into a newly-built apartment block on the other side of town. Coal-burning ovens in the living and bedroom, a kitchen sink and bathroom with only cold running water, consisting of a tub and toilet. There was a water tank next to the tub that had to be fired up -- literally! -- to get hot water. We washed in a bowl suspended in a wire rack across the tub, and when I wanted to wash my hair in the morning under the week, gran had to boil water in the kitchen, and I rinsed from jugs. Hot running water and a proper sink, along with central heating, got installed in 1972. That's also when we finally got a phone line. WW II had LONG shadows. (Just for the record, new housing from the early 1960s onward had hot and cold running water, even if you had to hang a separate hot-water boiler over the kitchen sink that held about a gallon of water, to heat for dishwashing.)
Hi D, thanks for this reaction. Friends of mine had lived in East Germany and I was allowed to read their Stasi Files, which were released after reunion. It turned out that a good friend of theirs was a Stasi spy (they had never found out before) and had told the Stasi every detail of their daily life he could get, because they had family in West Germany, dem Staatsfeind, the 'enemy of state'. And it was formulated in a very ugly disgusting language.
Marlboro, IKEA and other Western trade mark items were manufactured in the GDR, but the GDR people could not afford them. This added a lot to the frustration.
My wife's uncle was killed in Humboldthafen in 1961. He drowned because he was hit by the soldiers' bullets. He was the first victim of the Wall. Her father and mother were arrested by the Stasi in 1988. He was tortured, then deported to West Berlin and was ill until his death, but he turned the last border tower in Berlin into a museum for his brother.
I was 17 years old when the Monday Protests began. I remember my mother watching news on TV and she only said: "Now, there will be war again!" over and over again. But there was no war. When the wall was finally opened my parents didn't say anything. They couldn't because they were so relieved. We lived in West-Germany (the Ruhr area where most of the coal and iron was mined and smelted into weaponry) and my parents lived through WW2 as children. They both were deeply traumatized by the war as they were sperated as only 7 year old kids from their own parents and siblings for years and put into completly foreign families in Bavaria and Western Pommerania somewhere "more safe" and further away from the bombings. My parents were so scared when the protests for revolution began, they couldn't imagine it to be somehow peaceful without the soviet union and the army of the GDR to kill all the people and to ignite the cold war into a hot one.
My family was very concerned as well. They were afraid of how the Soviets would react. If I ever experienced a miracle in my life it was the peacefull fall of the Berlin wall.
Having lived all my life (from before the wall until now) in Berlin, i felt the same. it took me three days to believe that no russian tanks would follow the people ...
I was 18 in Leipzig at the Monday demos and on October 7th, 1989 in Berlin. And Berlin was worse back then because the VoPo's / People's Police officers humiliated us after Gorbachev's departure.
About the Stasi, I saw an excellent movie "Das leben der anderen" (The lives of others), which is a sort of psychological thriller, how a cold agent totally devoted to the system humanizes himself by spying on a couple of artists who are the complete opposite of him. Sorry it's a bit off topic but I wanted to recommend this movie (which won an Oscar) that I found magnificent.
Most people fled when the wall was not yet fortified like you saw in the other video! The wall was not built in a day. Later it became more and more difficult to find ways to escape. There were some real escape artists at work!
Our mothers always had a few spare bags with them in case there was a queue anywhere. If they didn't need the things they got for themselves they changed them for goods they really needed
my god D, thanks a lot for covering topics like that. I followed you after your first Rammstein reaction. And I lost focus a bit the last months - but you show a lot of respect to the history of my country right now, I really acknowledge that! Thank you Mister :)
@@HoldMySoda There is no realistic way to achive this nowadays. I can found a new party with no perspective to gain enough power to change anything, I can vote for the old parties that brouth us where we are now or I can vote for racists and nationalists who will make everything much worse. Oh and there is the pro russia dogmatic party of BSW from Sarah Wagenknecht, former member of the far left spectrum of the left party (communists plattform)
@@HoldMySoda The middle class is shrinking for political reasons. The government makes it very hard to start one and does not support you as much as big companies. The more money you make, the easier it gets to legally cheat with your taxes, so small companies have a harder time against big companies.
@@caligo7918 Same here in The United States, and most Western Countries these days. Our traitorous governments are more for illegals and big corporations than hard working taxpaying Citizens! Edit; almost forgot, Happy Halloween everyone 👻🎃!
The border wall was 870 miles long. 17 Million people were behind the wall and yes west berlin was surrounded by the wall. Most americans get confused by this, somehow.
Oh friend, I could cry. I was Sylvester (new years) in Berlin. And standing on the wall at Brandenburger Tor. I think, that was the moment of my life. Next morning, we were on the wall again and help the crying people, to get on the wall. Then we went to east-Berlin, because we had to spend our ddr-mark (money), we had to change the night before. But, you could not buy anything. We had a breakfast, and gave all our money to the waytress. And she was not amused. Because we were fucking West-Germans. OK, I could understand that. Well, only some note! 😊😊
Hi D. After watching this video, listen to the Rammstein song:" Stein um Stein"- stone by stone with subtitles again. Than you'll get an idea what it was like, if you didn't agree with the system.
Some of my familes story: My grandma was a child when she had to flee with her family and leave their farm behind in some parts of Prussia. They were not allowed to leave earlier by the authorities so by the time they tried to get out and away from the approaching Soviet army they got behind the frontline. The father was killed and there where 4 daughters and a mother... The family somehow got split up in the years following the war. 2 of the sisters and the mother made it to west Germany, the others worked in east Germany. The wall divided the family. My grandma died a year before the wall came down. She never saw her 2 sisters again. One of the visited us once but as we had never met her before there never really was a real connection. The other sister in the east ended her own life although there are rumors that she did get in trouble with the Stasi so it might have been them. Maybe one day I will go and try to find out if there is any information in the old Stasi files. So despite the wall coming down for my family there was no happy ending.
Berlin as the capitol of the 3rd Reich was seperated into 4 zones, just like country as a whole. When West- and East-Germany developed, Berlin got a special status aside from both countries. in time East-Berlin was more and more pocketed by East-Germany. West-Berlin stayed seperated from West-Germany yet it had a law that every law and change of law in West-Germany got automatically copied into Berlin law, so to a wide extend it felt like a part of of the western country.
A lot of these depictions here are a serious simplification of the processes, heavily biased towards the East and leaving out important details. This is a moderately good video. And I say that as a pure West German, with no Eastern ties whatsoever. But I knew the old East well. And not just the GDR. I also knew the old CSSR. The Iron Curtain was a tough business. On the other hand, we once smuggled a cello out of the East. It wasn't easy to cross the border, but it was possible...
No one who didnt live in East Germany could imagine what East Germans went through I myself grew up in the 70s my father was a army intelligents officer stationed in Potsdam Teufelsberg /T.C.A. /Air Force My brother and I went to T.A.R. and Berlin American highschool....my mother is German and was a business woman who imported and exported fashion to and from the USA....we had East German relatives in the Spreewald south of Lübben... every spring my mother gathered clothing and can goods and specialty items which we brought in to the "ost zone" due to my fathers diplomat status sometimes right at "Checkpoint Charlie" loading bags and boxes in the US embassies parking lot right under the eyes of the Stasi and KGBs eyes....my mother and father were in More danger than anyone thought.... residing on the Kudamm my father had British soldiers stationed in front of our building......at the height of the cold war.....my mother kept her efforts up until military authorities stopped the flow of goods which were an exchange for intelligence for my father's efforts... people in the Spreewald were wearing jeans, drinking folders coffee and eating Hershey chocolate...... there was alot more going on I can just tell what I saw.,,.. after the wall fell my father officially received the secret files that were on my parents me and my older brother...... after the wall fell Berlin , Germany and Europe shifted to what it is today.....I and my brother moved on to..... service and work for the diplomatic security services.....I myself stepped into my father's footsteps.....my Father was a intelligence officer and Spy....who helped contribute to the Fall of the Wall and the end of the cold war era......my mother still resides we me and my older brother grew up in near the Kudamm area.... I my self now live on Rheinsberger Ecke wollniner Straße..... since 2000......I'm proud to have lived and grown up during this era and I would never trade it for anything......... Thanks for presenting this type history most people have no idea what type of freedom they have Considering our current world happening. Danke schön Jeder ist ein Berliner
there is a big difference as well in that Russia took all the wealth from all the 'occupied territories' such as east germany, poland, ukraine etc. and transferred all the wealth to Russia, against germans there was also probably a huge 'victimisation' factor where they probably thought it was some sort of deserved punishment for WW2
12:35 That is also wrong. From the end of the 70s onwards, the quality of many goods was better than in West Germany. They were so good that they were renamed in the West.
We still own a Privileg sewing machine (Privileg = Quelle - Brand for a lot of products from east Germany- Quelle was a west German mail order company ) - I once owned a Revue ML Camera (also from Quelle) the rebranded east German Practika MTL 5B.
There aren't really any good ones. And even if, I doubt he'd understand much. I once watched Sonnenallee with a Wessi and had to pause every five minutes to explain stuff. So he'd be pretty lost, no offence. I can recommend Als Wir Träumten though but that one is set in the 90s, so not sure if it'd count.
Despite everything, there were things in East Germany that were good. For example, childcare (in the East, women also had to work), school education and health care. No one had to worry about their job. There were no unemployed people. But I still don't want that time back.
Hallo und danke fürs dieses Video was ein bisschen für Aufklärung sorgt. Aber was die Geschichte der DDR und BRD angeht gibt es glaube ich viel bessere Videos worauf du reagieren kannst. „Volksaufstand 1957“ in der DDR sehr wichtig drüber zu informieren. Oder „Revolution 1989“ in der DDR. Der längste Zaun der DDR. Todesstreifen der DDR. Ich merke auch du bist ein Fan der deutschen „Kultur“ und das mag ich an dir. Mein Englisch ist leider nicht so gut darum schreibe ich auf deutsch. Liebe Grüße aus Deutschland (Magdeburg)🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻
16:20 Swabians have a solution for this: Kehrwoche. O.k, nowadays it is mostly for the stairway and the sidewalk before the house, but it is simply handled by hanging the sign "Kehrwoche" to your next neighbor's door as soon as your week of cleaning is over.😉 22:45 They should not have given an old conservative man from West Germany (his accent sounds southern German) the role of main speaker and instead have added some more critical voices, including economists. The reunification did not immediately led to rising standards of live. Because of the rushed merging of those two very different economies (also different in social and cultural aspects) unemployment peaked in the East and companies were closed which would have had a chance if they had a bit more time for adjustment. Companies from the West bought their eastern competitors, brain-drained and then closed them, or used the cheaper labor costs there for some years before shutting down. Speculators took over businesses in the East, cashed in subsidies and then let them go bust. Lame-duck politicians from the West got positions as general managers of East German companies or in the administration of the "new" eastern states. And so on. And this meant that it took at least two decades for most of the East to catch up with the living standards in the West - as well as billions of tax money. A bit more planning and thinking ahead would have helped here.
yes, a longer period of adjustments, maybe even having a free country for several years, possibly with their own constitution, and then merging two countries on equal level could have given better results ... BUT NO NO NO, there wouldn't have been almost anybody left in that country after they could travel and move freely, after state subsidised bad companies could not compete with western europe and they also lost their markets in eastern europe, and nobody wanted to wait for years. thus i think that there were only two bad alternatives: do it hasty within a year, or don't have to do it at all when the country is almost void of people.
@@Anson_AKB There was a precedence for reunification: The Saarland. The differences were smaller then, but notwithstanding they took some years for a slower process of successful unification. In the case of the GDR even only 2 to 3 years of actually controlled adaption could have been presumably enough for many of those companies which were in principle able to survive in a competition-driven economy, but instead it was all chaos - and the market leaders in the West didn't want any new competition anyway. The emigration to the West would have been smaller if more people would have been able to see a perspective. Most left only after unemployment rates skyrocketed - if that could have been avoided, far more villages in the East would still have younger people.
That can't be true. The East Germans complain all day long about how difficult their lives are now and that everything was better back then in the GDR. There must be something wrong with the story. There are so many channels reporting on the "good old GDR times". Don't believe me, type ""guten alten DDR-Zeiten" at google and read the comments. After that, they must have all lived much better than they do now.
who liked going to school while being a child ? who remembers fondly the good old times where he was young and went to school when he is an adult or old now ? i think that it's similar with those "good old DDR times" where everything was much simpler because many decisions were made by the state for the people, they had to improvise and stick together as a better community (when ignoring stasi spies), while nowadays many have to struggle with daily life and start remembering mostly the good aspects of "the good old times".
@@danielkaufmann15 the word "Wessi" is much older than the fall of the wall or unification. Since traveling to and from Berlin always took several hours, people couldn't just come for a few hours like is usual in any other town and village where people just drive half an hour or an hour to go to cinema, go shopping, etc, but they always came as tourists for at least a long weekend or a week and then (as usual in every touristy area worldwide) "flooded" some tourist destinations. And thus for decades we often spoke of some areas, restaurants, pubs, etc not being able to be enjoyed because of all those "Wessis".
@@Anson_AKB Like I said, it was your choice, not our choice. Our "Grundgesetz" let us no other choice, because this people who made the "Grundgesetz" had the dream of a reunificated Germany. They had no clue that's impossible. The time didn't brought the people together, but more splittet than ever before. By the way it was not lawfully. They changed the Grundgesetz to make this possible. In original the Fathers and Mothers of the Grundgesetz wrote : The State of Germany should be unified in the Borders of 1939. Didnt happen.
i was born 1985 in east germany i cant remember a lot but what i know is my grand grandma had a garden where she had potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, apples, plums etc. she was treading a lot of them ( not all) for other things like green beens or some fish and the rest she have maked some cakes or some marmalede out of it. we had family in the west part who have send us west parcels how they how called them with fruits and vegs from the west or treets from time. not all was bad at this time but they only have tryed to life on.
The US doesn't compare to what east germany was. You maybe feel like you're not allowed to speek freely but you don't get imprisoned and you can talk bad about your politicians as much as you like. You only get problems with your fellow people when you talk too much BS and are asocial - that's normal everywhere.
I am very very surprised and quite shocked that this supposedly german guy talks about the Nazi regime as a "socialist" one! Yes they used this name, but they were totally far right (closer to what Trump is in the US today), not at all on the left side of the political spectrum.... And socialism is by definition democratic, far left is called communism. These are two VERY different concepts.
its not really true, american troops meet russians at the river "Elbe" Thüringia for example was under american protection, they changed all this for an small part of the capital of Germany , a part of the cold war after all this
Our middleclass is very thin nowadys. Its like you said mostly only rich and poor people. The problem lies in the reunification itself because the rich west pumped a shitload of money to the east in order to bring their desolate states on our level. short term policies were gouvernment money for several social programs like healthcare. On the long run all german taxpayers have to pay the "solidarity surcharge" which was invented in 1991 for all purposes but since 1995 it became exclusive for the reunification costs(5.5% on income) and is active to this day. It is no secret that the cost of the reunification ruined the ability for modernizations and investment in our structures and education which we still feel today. Because of that i dont think that Southcorea will ever reunite with Northcorea.
I don't share your opinion. But what is "middle class" for you? I think 2500€ net income is middle class, and the most people in the 30ties having this income or more. Not trainees or beginner of course.
@@danielkaufmann15 Yeah middleclass starts at 2500€ net income up to 3700€. I am single with 2700€ net income and have a good life but actually im still at the lower end of middle class. I see many friends and colleagues who earn the same in their job despite a good education or trade but as married men with children. They are definetly not middle class and this is the reality for most parts of the working class in our country right now. And since income for the same job is also based on your state middleclass can be different from place to place. I was a SPD voter like all in family but that ended with Schröder about 20 years ago. Now i would just be pleased that the AfD doesnt come to power.
@@garvielloken4114 everybody is somedays always on the lower end. And even when you earn one million € per year, you can be the last, because others earn 5, 10 or 15 millions.
afaik, that special tax was not 5% of the income, but of the income tax, thus not raising taxes from eg 30% to 30+5=35%, but by 5% OF 30% to 31.5% which would be important for eg those who earned so little that it results in a raise from eg 10 to 10.5 and not 15
@@Anson_AKB i knew someone would start to correct me 🙄 5.5% is what i found as a rough number without writing a novel about it. but please feel free to do.
German here, I remember a dark saying we have. "At least we elected our dictator ... (A. H.)". Most countries with dictatorship don't have this option in the first place 😅
Ähm... Of course not! In free elections, the Nazis did not even win 38% of the votes. And in the last free election, in November 1932, they had already lost more than 4% of these votes. Hitler was appointed Chancellor by Reich President Hindenburg. The aged Field Marshal Hindenburg was certainly not a republican. He would certainly have preferred to take orders from his Kaiser. But he was, despite everything, someone who stuck to the letter of the constitution and who detested Hitler personally ("This Bohemian private", as he disparagingly called Hitler). But through clever intrigues and influence, so much pressure was put on the 85-year-old that he made Hitler Chancellor. In other words... The Germans did NOT elect their dictator themselves. And the 42 attempts to kill Hitler certainly testify to the fervent veneration of the Germans for their "Führer"...
But you forget that the majority of Germans did not vote for the NSDAP in the 1930s. It was only a good third, but that was enough to seize power and for the "Enabling Act". Today's voters should therefore think carefully about who they want to vote for. 🤔
Sorry, I was out after you complained that the film is one sided. What do you think was the reason why almost no one relocated from the west to east? The GDR had a shity System that finally failed for good.
@@WatchingTheWorldWithD Sorry, I made a stupid mistake. I wanted to react on a comment not on your video in general. Someone wrote in the comments that the film is one sided. No complaints about the film and your reaction. 👍
After watching these Berlin Wall videos, you should have a 2nd Look at the Scorpions - Wind of change Song. It’s thy symbol song when the wall was „falling „
Trabant - to be fair, it must be said that the car was superior to the western ones. The car was so ingeniously designed that hardly any technical changes were necessary in 34 years. For Western models, at least a facelift is necessary after 4 years at the latest. When it came to spare parts, you didn't have to specify the year of manufacture, model, version and equipment, as was the case in the West. The parts fit almost every car, of every year and most of the parts were so simple that you could make them yourself with a lathe and a vice. The high resale value of far, far more than 100% of the new value is still unbeatable today.
@@PropperNaughtyGeezer To be fair too, we had a car with the same advantages, the VW Käfer (Beetle). And even this car was superior compared to Trabant or Wartburg.
cause people to wait for 10-20 years to get a car at all (some babies got as present for their birth a certificate to be on a waiting list and become a car owner when they were allowed to get the driving license 18 years later), and they will gladly take any car they can get earlier, even if it stinks. I don't think that it had anthing to do with quality, but maybe with maintenance and how easy or difficult it would be to get replacement parts. btw: we had a cousin who had a rope dangling from the dashboard for half a yeae. it was a temporary fix for a broken lever as the gas pedal ...
Jeez🙄. I can say what I will say, I can buy what I will buy. I can criticize the government. If Germany would be like the former GDR your comment would be blocked and people would stand in front of your door.
The only difference is that now we are allowed to be mindless consumers. But if you watch that video that seems to be all that matters to be considered a free society, right? Consumerism. The whole video only focuses on that instead of the actually bad parts of the DDR. Denunciation, state oppression, brainwashing, censorship, no freedom of movement. But nah all of that is not important at all. What is really important is to be able to eat bananas and buy vacuum cleaners...
What a useless video you chose to watch. They did not explain anything about the actual tragedy of the division of Germany when it happened. "We only got to eat bananas once a year and vacuum cleaners, televisions, etc. were really expensive." Yeah, this is the really important stuff, right? So important that that's the first thing we have to mention and then focus almost exclusively on that over and over again. Whatever man. xD
@@PalimPalim-y7l can you do me a favor? Create your own country again, leave the federal Republic of Germany with all federal states of the former GDR. I can't digest this whining anymore.
@@danielkaufmann15 What do you mean? I hate the DDR and everything it stood for. But not being able to eat bananas is not the reason for that. For you maybe it is because you never lived in a dictatorship. Consumer through and through, I guess. That is all that matters, right? lol
@@danielkaufmann15 The tragedy of families/communities being torn apart. The tragedy of an all powerful state opressing and unaliving its subjects. Denunciation, brainwashing etc. Way too little focus on that in this video, imo. Instead they focus on bananas, vacuum cleaners and cars. C´mon.
@@danielkaufmann15 The tragedy of families/communities being torn apart. The tragedy of an all powerful state opressing its subjects. Sure, living standards are a factor but not what made the DDR a terrible state to live in and they spend way too much time to only focus on that, imo.
Well ... as usual this is a very one sided depiction of things. Most of what they say is correct, but some major elements are just left out. Others are extremely exaggerated. So let me maybe put some things into context. First off all, after ww2 east and west Germany had VERY different starting conditions. The west massively benefited from the Marshall Plan under which the US spent millions of dollars to war torn countries in western europe to rebuild. At the same time denazification effort was very short and not very thorough. Many people who had worked with and for the Nazis stayed in positions of power and were trusted to put their expertise into rebuilding the country. Since the cold war began to take shape pretty much the minute ww2 was over, the US invested heavily in this new front line. Most importantly west Germany still had access to the steel and coal industry of the Ruhr area. Also Ludwig Erhard didn't really decide to simply create an economy just like in the US, he more or less invented a social market economy that combines a free market with a social welfare state. Pretty much what we still have today. Now let's have a look at the east. The Soviet Union suffered tremendously during ww2. Much of the country was devasteted as the German Wehrmacht used scorched earth tactics on their retreat. When they occupied east Germany, the Soviets had very little interest in rebuilding it since unlike the US they had a lot of rebuilding to do at home. So what little of machinery, factories and industrial goods of pretty much any kind had survived the war had to be handed over to them. To this day there are railway lines in east Germany where you can clearly see that it was once built for two tracks, yet today only one remains. Miles and miles of railway track were ripped out and shipped east. Then denazification was taken several steps further. Everyone who had contributed to the war effort or Nazi rule in any way was seen as guilty and at the very least expropriated. The job of somehow managing the effort to rebuild was not handed to those who might have done it best but had been in bed with the Nazi party before but to loyal communists, often people who had fled to the Soviets when the Nazis took over and thus hadn't been to Germany for over a decade. And to make it all worse the only industrial region that might have come close to the west's Ruhr area, Schlesien, now belonged to Poland. East Germany was left with zero heavy industry and almost no natural ressources of any kind. So you see, to claim that they both had to start from scratch and the different end results were only the product of them having different economic and political systems is just wrong. And yet by the 70s and 80s east Germany had one of the highest standards of living in the eastern block. Of course it didn't take long for all these factors (the rigid eastern system being one of many) to materialize in very different living conditions. And people knew that because in the first years exchange with west Berlin was frequent. For example my grandfather liked to tell the story of how at some point in the 50s they were going on holiday from their home in the south of east Germany to the baltic sea. Along the way the train stopped in west Berlin as the border was still open. Apparently some guy entered the train, trying to persuade people to get off the train and stay in the west, promising them a great job, wealth and god knows what. At some point my grandfather - at least so the story goes - had enough and ... well ... made the guy leave. Don't know how much of it is actually true but even if it's completely made up - you wouldn't make this up if you felt imprisoned. Still, many people either fell for guys like that one or really felt they'd rather want to live in the west. And this brain drain the video mentioned soon became a huge problem. Most of the people who left were young and well educated. Now, I recently started a new job where the first year will be completely filled with training (it's a special programm for lateral entrants). This is free for me, I even get paid to do it. But I had to sign that after this year I'll have to stay in the company for at least three more years, otherwise I'll have to reimburse them for the cost of the training programm. Sounds reasonable, right? East Germany basically did the same, just on a much larger scale. You can't have people you trained run off and put the education you gave them to good use for someone else, right? Of course that doesn't make building the wall right and of course the neccessity to have one in the first place shows very clearly, which system was the more successfull one at the time. Still it can be helpfull to see that issue from the other side's perspective. Okay, I had to laugh a little when they were making it sound like people in the east couldn't afford fridges or vacuum cleaners. Yeah ... no. No idea where they got that from. They may have been more expensive than in the west but since housing and more basic items were very cheap in the east, people usually had some extra money to afford it. And once you had one, you didn't need a new one for a decade or more. Not like today where everything breaks as soon as the warranty expires. Also the Trabant has achieved absolute cult status today. The few that are still around are valued collector's items, lovingly maintained by their owners. I'm always happy when I see one. Yeah, the lignite coal was indeed a huge problem, no way to sugercoat it. Like I said the east had almost no natural ressources, lignite coal being pretty much the only exception. So it had to be used extensively, there was simply no ther choice. Of course a lot could have been done with filters and other efforts to make it cleaner, but the environment protection movement of the late 60s and 70s didn't happen in the east, at least not in a away that could have changed things. The result were entire landscapes that looked like the surface of the moon, villages abandoned and torn down, farm land lost. But from the beginning there was also a plan of what to do after the mine was depleted in a certain area. There were a lot of these open mines around my home town, most are now closed and renatured with lakes and forests. And that process started in the 80s. Okay that's the first time I ever heard of a supposed lack of clean drinking water. Not really sure what to make of it. Nobody in my family or social circle ever brought something like that up. Then again it may have been different in different regions. Sure you can buy a car and drive it home this afternoon. If you can afford it. That's the part slogans like that one always conveniently leave out. So, how many west Germans let's say in the 80s could actually go to a car dealer, buy a new car on the spot and drive it home? The affording it part was usually not the problem in the east. People usually had the money but stuff wasn't always available. That's why this western propaganda (sorry, I really can't call it anything else) that told them that everything is always available was so successfull with people in the east. From their perspective money wasn't the issue, supply was. The west promised unlimited supply and preferred to not talk about the being able to actually afford it part. And no matter if you want to call that a lie the west likes to tell or a misunderstanding on the east germans' side, this is also the core issue why people in the east soon were so massively disappointed after reunification. Cause the west didn't keep that promise of unlimited supply. "And once companies were no longer owned by the state, but by private entrepreneurs, standards of living began to rise." Holy sh*t, is this guy for real!? East german state companies were mostly not taken over by private entrepreneurs, they were largly shut down! Reunification brought an almost complete deindustrialization and mass unemployment to east Germany. Congrats, you're free to travel the world now! How you gonna pay for it without a job? Now that's not my problem! See ya! If you wanna talk about this at anyone's dinner table, please, let it be my dinner table. Maybe then you'll know about both sides of the story...
It’s true - Gorbatschow didn’t tear down the wall - but he also was not sending the tanks - he let it going on.
Love from Austria 🇦🇹
The one guy you looked away did make it because the people standing down there where firefighters using a jumpsheet to fetch him up.
9:45 All-clear-signal to the man jumping out of the window: He made it down safely: The men beneath him were firefighters with a 'Sprungtuch' a big piece of strong fabric, held above ground by 20 or more men. It was developed to allow people to escape a burning house and the go-to-procedure when they had no firetrucks with big ladders.
You can recognise them by their helmets.
For every German over 40 years of age in east and west it's one of the moments, where you will never forget what you have done while it happened. I still feel touched when I think about it, like the guy in the clip. Many, many, many Germans still feel this way.
Our family was split in half because of the wall. My mothers family as well as my fathers family. They both had cousins on both sides of the wall. My grandma fleed to the west, her brother stayed in the easy. Something like this was very common in Germany.
@@danielkaufmann15 I have not used uncle
@@Sascha-qs2eo I beg your pardon, I meant another comment but answered you. I'll delete my mistake.
Not only that Berlin or Germany was split, complete Europe was split through the iron curtain. East germans were masters of improvement, the have to use what the found to work with. With a family on both sides, for us on the west side it was easier to visit the relatives in the east than otherwise.
Sanitärkeramik. Welch schönes Wort. Das nehme ich in meinen aktiven Wortschatz auf.
Hi Uncle D, 🌴🌞
When I was younger, my parents had Hungarian friends, other Yugoslavs (under Tito's government), and even Romanians.
I remember their adult conversation when they were invited to my home, theirs, or the restaurant.
They explained to us the secret struggle, the constant surveillance of the KGB, and the fact that in their respective countries, we couldn't talk about politics with people, and even in the family, it was complicated.
Because everyone suspected everyone and we didn't know who did what.
I started my military service (in France, we were still an army of conscripts -> 12 months of compulsory service - and not a professional army -> volunteers - as is the case here now since 1996) in Germany in Landau in February 1988, this time when France was still present in West Germany within the framework of the security signed with the American, English allies and USSR, and therefore, a year before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
I never would have imagined the wall's fall possible at that time and in such a short time.
Because this wall didn't only block Berlin Est/West. It was the first wall by its geographic position which stop all the USSR countries to pass to west.
It was extraordinary to see these thousands of people, these families finally hugging each other again.
A very beautiful moment.
Peace, folks.☮👈😎
I was 5 years old when the wall fell. I can still remember my parents sitting in the living room crying and watching it on TV. Of course, I hadn't understood that yet. We lived in the west and at 5 you don't understand that yet
I was 21, it was a great time.
Friends of us inherited a house (built in the late 1920s) that had a tub and washbasin off the kitchen, and a shared toilet on the halfway landing in the common hallway. This was WEST Germany. Private toilets inside the apartments weren't installed until the 1970s.
My grandmother (a refugee/displaced person from Western Prussia (now Poland) came to West Germany in 1953 and moved into a newly-built apartment block on the other side of town. Coal-burning ovens in the living and bedroom, a kitchen sink and bathroom with only cold running water, consisting of a tub and toilet. There was a water tank next to the tub that had to be fired up -- literally! -- to get hot water. We washed in a bowl suspended in a wire rack across the tub, and when I wanted to wash my hair in the morning under the week, gran had to boil water in the kitchen, and I rinsed from jugs. Hot running water and a proper sink, along with central heating, got installed in 1972. That's also when we finally got a phone line.
WW II had LONG shadows. (Just for the record, new housing from the early 1960s onward had hot and cold running water, even if you had to hang a separate hot-water boiler over the kitchen sink that held about a gallon of water, to heat for dishwashing.)
Hi D, thanks for this reaction. Friends of mine had lived in East Germany and I was allowed to read their Stasi Files, which were released after reunion. It turned out that a good friend of theirs was a Stasi spy (they had never found out before) and had told the Stasi every detail of their daily life he could get, because they had family in West Germany, dem Staatsfeind, the 'enemy of state'. And it was formulated in a very ugly disgusting language.
Marlboro, IKEA and other Western trade mark items were manufactured in the GDR, but the GDR people could not afford them. This added a lot to the frustration.
Yes, half of what was in the mailorder catalogues from Quelle, Neckermann or Otto were made in east Germany.
My wife's uncle was killed in Humboldthafen in 1961. He drowned because he was hit by the soldiers' bullets. He was the first victim of the Wall. Her father and mother were arrested by the Stasi in 1988. He was tortured, then deported to West Berlin and was ill until his death, but he turned the last border tower in Berlin into a museum for his brother.
I was 17 years old when the Monday Protests began. I remember my mother watching news on TV and she only said: "Now, there will be war again!" over and over again. But there was no war. When the wall was finally opened my parents didn't say anything. They couldn't because they were so relieved.
We lived in West-Germany (the Ruhr area where most of the coal and iron was mined and smelted into weaponry) and my parents lived through WW2 as children. They both were deeply traumatized by the war as they were sperated as only 7 year old kids from their own parents and siblings for years and put into completly foreign families in Bavaria and Western Pommerania somewhere "more safe" and further away from the bombings.
My parents were so scared when the protests for revolution began, they couldn't imagine it to be somehow peaceful without the soviet union and the army of the GDR to kill all the people and to ignite the cold war into a hot one.
My family was very concerned as well. They were afraid of how the Soviets would react. If I ever experienced a miracle in my life it was the peacefull fall of the Berlin wall.
Having lived all my life (from before the wall until now) in Berlin, i felt the same. it took me three days to believe that no russian tanks would follow the people ...
I was 18 in Leipzig at the Monday demos and on October 7th, 1989 in Berlin. And Berlin was worse back then because the VoPo's / People's Police officers humiliated us after Gorbachev's departure.
Warum schreibt ihr nicht auf Deutsch? Ihr seid doch alle Deutsche. Warum unterhaltet ihr euch dann nicht auf Deutsch?
@MemeStream86932 It's not a German channel! You know?
About the Stasi, I saw an excellent movie "Das leben der anderen" (The lives of others), which is a sort of psychological thriller, how a cold agent totally devoted to the system humanizes himself by spying on a couple of artists who are the complete opposite of him.
Sorry it's a bit off topic but I wanted to recommend this movie (which won an Oscar) that I found magnificent.
Most people fled when the wall was not yet fortified like you saw in the other video! The wall was not built in a day. Later it became more and more difficult to find ways to escape. There were some real escape artists at work!
And can you imagine that many people love communism and so the DDR (eastern Germany) and they also glorify the Stasi…. Just unbelievable.
In the 80s we got 1kg of bananas and 1kg of oranges. You often had to wait in line.
Our mothers always had a few spare bags with them in case there was a queue anywhere. If they didn't need the things they got for themselves they changed them for goods they really needed
my god D, thanks a lot for covering topics like that. I followed you after your first Rammstein reaction. And I lost focus a bit the last months - but you show a lot of respect to the history of my country right now, I really acknowledge that! Thank you Mister :)
The German middle class was once one of the biggest and strongest in the world, but it's drastically shrinking these days.
Don’t cry. If you want something work for it. Germany provides great chances. Free universities and great job opportunities. But you gotta go for it.
@@HoldMySoda There is no realistic way to achive this nowadays. I can found a new party with no perspective to gain enough power to change anything, I can vote for the old parties that brouth us where we are now or I can vote for racists and nationalists who will make everything much worse. Oh and there is the pro russia dogmatic party of BSW from Sarah Wagenknecht, former member of the far left spectrum of the left party (communists plattform)
Dem stimme ich zu. Die Mittelschicht wird ausgeblutet. Die herrschende Klasse holt sich zurück, was sie glaubt, ihnen zu gehören.
@@HoldMySoda The middle class is shrinking for political reasons. The government makes it very hard to start one and does not support you as much as big companies. The more money you make, the easier it gets to legally cheat with your taxes, so small companies have a harder time against big companies.
@@caligo7918
Same here in The United States, and most Western Countries these days.
Our traitorous governments are more for illegals and big corporations than hard working taxpaying Citizens!
Edit; almost forgot,
Happy Halloween everyone 👻🎃!
Thanks....(:
The border wall was 870 miles long. 17 Million people were behind the wall and yes west berlin was surrounded by the wall. Most americans get confused by this, somehow.
From my perspective, there were 60ish million people behind the wall... 🤷♂
@@michaausleipzigDie Zone gibts nicht mehr. Get over it.
Oh friend, I could cry. I was Sylvester (new years) in Berlin. And standing on the wall at Brandenburger Tor.
I think, that was the moment of my life.
Next morning, we were on the wall again and help the crying people, to get on the wall.
Then we went to east-Berlin, because we had to spend our ddr-mark (money), we had to change the night before. But, you could not buy anything.
We had a breakfast, and gave all our money to the waytress. And she was not amused. Because we were fucking West-Germans.
OK, I could understand that.
Well, only some note! 😊😊
We had a telephone. Just get out of the house, then go around the corner and there were the phone boxes.
i know all this very well, was born in 1966 behind the iron curtain
The tears in the man's eyes were heartbreaking 😢😢.
He was fore sure from east Berlin.
13:40 In many third countries, including large parts of Russia and China.
Now the same with North and South Korea!
Hi D.
After watching this video, listen to the Rammstein song:" Stein um Stein"- stone by stone with subtitles again. Than you'll get an idea what it was like, if you didn't agree with the system.
and by listening to RADIO again
Some of my familes story: My grandma was a child when she had to flee with her family and leave their farm behind in some parts of Prussia. They were not allowed to leave earlier by the authorities so by the time they tried to get out and away from the approaching Soviet army they got behind the frontline. The father was killed and there where 4 daughters and a mother... The family somehow got split up in the years following the war. 2 of the sisters and the mother made it to west Germany, the others worked in east Germany. The wall divided the family. My grandma died a year before the wall came down. She never saw her 2 sisters again. One of the visited us once but as we had never met her before there never really was a real connection. The other sister in the east ended her own life although there are rumors that she did get in trouble with the Stasi so it might have been them. Maybe one day I will go and try to find out if there is any information in the old Stasi files. So despite the wall coming down for my family there was no happy ending.
Berlin as the capitol of the 3rd Reich was seperated into 4 zones, just like country as a whole. When West- and East-Germany developed, Berlin got a special status aside from both countries. in time East-Berlin was more and more pocketed by East-Germany.
West-Berlin stayed seperated from West-Germany yet it had a law that every law and change of law in West-Germany got automatically copied into Berlin law, so to a wide extend it felt like a part of of the western country.
A lot of these depictions here are a serious simplification of the processes, heavily biased towards the East and leaving out important details. This is a moderately good video. And I say that as a pure West German, with no Eastern ties whatsoever. But I knew the old East well. And not just the GDR. I also knew the old CSSR. The Iron Curtain was a tough business. On the other hand, we once smuggled a cello out of the East. It wasn't easy to cross the border, but it was possible...
No one who didnt live in East Germany could imagine what East Germans went through I myself grew up in the 70s my father was a army intelligents officer stationed in Potsdam Teufelsberg /T.C.A. /Air Force
My brother and I went to T.A.R. and Berlin American highschool....my mother is German and was a business woman who imported and exported fashion to and from the USA....we had East German relatives in the Spreewald south of Lübben... every spring my mother gathered clothing and can goods and specialty items which we brought in to the "ost zone" due to my fathers diplomat status sometimes right at "Checkpoint Charlie" loading bags and boxes in the US embassies parking lot right under the eyes of the Stasi and KGBs eyes....my mother and father were in More danger than anyone thought.... residing on the Kudamm my father had British soldiers stationed in front of our building......at the height of the cold war.....my mother kept her efforts up until military authorities stopped the flow of goods which were an exchange for intelligence for my father's efforts... people in the Spreewald were wearing jeans, drinking folders coffee and eating Hershey chocolate...... there was alot more going on I can just tell what I saw.,,.. after the wall fell my father officially received the secret files that were on my parents me and my older brother...... after the wall fell Berlin , Germany and Europe shifted to what it is today.....I and my brother moved on to..... service and work for the diplomatic security services.....I myself stepped into my father's footsteps.....my Father was a intelligence officer and Spy....who helped contribute to the Fall of the Wall and the end of the cold war era......my mother still resides we me and my older brother grew up in near the Kudamm area.... I my self now live on Rheinsberger Ecke wollniner Straße..... since 2000......I'm proud to have lived and grown up during this era and I would never trade it for anything.........
Thanks for presenting this type history most people have no idea what type of freedom they have
Considering our current world happening.
Danke schön
Jeder ist ein Berliner
there is a big difference as well in that Russia took all the wealth from all the 'occupied territories' such as east germany, poland, ukraine etc. and transferred all the wealth to Russia, against germans there was also probably a huge 'victimisation' factor where they probably thought it was some sort of deserved punishment for WW2
12:35 That is also wrong. From the end of the 70s onwards, the quality of many goods was better than in West Germany. They were so good that they were renamed in the West.
We still own a Privileg sewing machine (Privileg = Quelle - Brand for a lot of products from east Germany- Quelle was a west German mail order company ) - I once owned a Revue ML Camera (also from Quelle) the rebranded east German Practika MTL 5B.
@dirkspatz3692 yep, Grundig, Plauener Spitze, In Germany it was called ADO with the gold edge, Shoes etc.
Think about what we all suffers the last 120 yrs because of politics
Seriously, you have to watch some of the German movies about East Germany.
There aren't really any good ones. And even if, I doubt he'd understand much. I once watched Sonnenallee with a Wessi and had to pause every five minutes to explain stuff. So he'd be pretty lost, no offence.
I can recommend Als Wir Träumten though but that one is set in the 90s, so not sure if it'd count.
Reinhardt Mey was Born and living in Berlin. He makes a song. 'Mein Berlin' ...
Despite everything, there were things in East Germany that were good. For example, childcare (in the East, women also had to work), school education and health care. No one had to worry about their job. There were no unemployed people. But I still don't want that time back.
Hallo und danke fürs dieses Video was ein bisschen für Aufklärung sorgt.
Aber was die Geschichte der DDR und BRD angeht gibt es glaube ich viel bessere Videos worauf du reagieren kannst.
„Volksaufstand 1957“ in der DDR sehr wichtig drüber zu informieren.
Oder
„Revolution 1989“ in der DDR.
Der längste Zaun der DDR.
Todesstreifen der DDR.
Ich merke auch du bist ein Fan der deutschen „Kultur“ und das mag ich an dir.
Mein Englisch ist leider nicht so gut darum schreibe ich auf deutsch.
Liebe Grüße aus Deutschland (Magdeburg)🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻
16:20 Swabians have a solution for this: Kehrwoche. O.k, nowadays it is mostly for the stairway and the sidewalk before the house, but it is simply handled by hanging the sign "Kehrwoche" to your next neighbor's door as soon as your week of cleaning is over.😉
22:45 They should not have given an old conservative man from West Germany (his accent sounds southern German) the role of main speaker and instead have added some more critical voices, including economists. The reunification did not immediately led to rising standards of live. Because of the rushed merging of those two very different economies (also different in social and cultural aspects) unemployment peaked in the East and companies were closed which would have had a chance if they had a bit more time for adjustment. Companies from the West bought their eastern competitors, brain-drained and then closed them, or used the cheaper labor costs there for some years before shutting down. Speculators took over businesses in the East, cashed in subsidies and then let them go bust. Lame-duck politicians from the West got positions as general managers of East German companies or in the administration of the "new" eastern states. And so on. And this meant that it took at least two decades for most of the East to catch up with the living standards in the West - as well as billions of tax money. A bit more planning and thinking ahead would have helped here.
Really?
In this case I believe the swabians are the only one with no bathroom in their apartment 🤔
yes, a longer period of adjustments, maybe even having a free country for several years, possibly with their own constitution, and then merging two countries on equal level could have given better results ...
BUT NO NO NO, there wouldn't have been almost anybody left in that country after they could travel and move freely, after state subsidised bad companies could not compete with western europe and they also lost their markets in eastern europe, and nobody wanted to wait for years.
thus i think that there were only two bad alternatives:
do it hasty within a year, or don't have to do it at all when the country is almost void of people.
@@Anson_AKB There was a precedence for reunification: The Saarland. The differences were smaller then, but notwithstanding they took some years for a slower process of successful unification.
In the case of the GDR even only 2 to 3 years of actually controlled adaption could have been presumably enough for many of those companies which were in principle able to survive in a competition-driven economy, but instead it was all chaos - and the market leaders in the West didn't want any new competition anyway.
The emigration to the West would have been smaller if more people would have been able to see a perspective. Most left only after unemployment rates skyrocketed - if that could have been avoided, far more villages in the East would still have younger people.
8:45 This is wrong. This is a RFT Colormat. Then why is the picture black and white?
That can't be true. The East Germans complain all day long about how difficult their lives are now and that everything was better back then in the GDR. There must be something wrong with the story. There are so many channels reporting on the "good old GDR times". Don't believe me, type ""guten alten DDR-Zeiten" at google and read the comments. After that, they must have all lived much better than they do now.
Yes.. I have the same impression. Meanwhile many "wessi" regret the unification.
who liked going to school while being a child ?
who remembers fondly the good old times where he was young and went to school when he is an adult or old now ?
i think that it's similar with those "good old DDR times" where everything was much simpler because many decisions were made by the state for the people, they had to improvise and stick together as a better community (when ignoring stasi spies), while nowadays many have to struggle with daily life and start remembering mostly the good aspects of "the good old times".
@@danielkaufmann15 the word "Wessi" is much older than the fall of the wall or unification. Since traveling to and from Berlin always took several hours, people couldn't just come for a few hours like is usual in any other town and village where people just drive half an hour or an hour to go to cinema, go shopping, etc, but they always came as tourists for at least a long weekend or a week and then (as usual in every touristy area worldwide) "flooded" some tourist destinations. And thus for decades we often spoke of some areas, restaurants, pubs, etc not being able to be enjoyed because of all those "Wessis".
@@Anson_AKB Like I said, it was your choice, not our choice. Our "Grundgesetz" let us no other choice, because this people who made the "Grundgesetz" had the dream of a reunificated Germany. They had no clue that's impossible. The time didn't brought the people together, but more splittet than ever before. By the way it was not lawfully. They changed the Grundgesetz to make this possible.
In original the Fathers and Mothers of the Grundgesetz wrote :
The State of Germany should be unified in the Borders of 1939.
Didnt happen.
i was born 1985 in east germany i cant remember a lot but what i know is my grand grandma had a garden where she had potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, apples, plums etc. she was treading a lot of them ( not all) for other things like green beens or some fish and the rest she have maked some cakes or some marmalede out of it. we had family in the west part who have send us west parcels how they how called them with fruits and vegs from the west or treets from time. not all was bad at this time but they only have tryed to life on.
The US doesn't compare to what east germany was. You maybe feel like you're not allowed to speek freely but you don't get imprisoned and you can talk bad about your politicians as much as you like. You only get problems with your fellow people when you talk too much BS and are asocial - that's normal everywhere.
I don't like our government too, but to compare them to the dictatorship in east Germany is insane.
I am very very surprised and quite shocked that this supposedly german guy talks about the Nazi regime as a "socialist" one! Yes they used this name, but they were totally far right (closer to what Trump is in the US today), not at all on the left side of the political spectrum.... And socialism is by definition democratic, far left is called communism. These are two VERY different concepts.
Die roten halt. Ich muss immer wenn ich Antifa höre an den "Antifaschistischen Schutzwall" denken.
its not really true, american troops meet russians at the river "Elbe" Thüringia for example was under american protection, they changed all this for an small part of the capital of Germany , a part of the cold war after all this
Our middleclass is very thin nowadys. Its like you said mostly only rich and poor people. The problem lies in the reunification itself because the rich west pumped a shitload of money to the east in order to bring their desolate states on our level. short term policies were gouvernment money for several social programs like healthcare. On the long run all german taxpayers have to pay the "solidarity surcharge" which was invented in 1991 for all purposes but since 1995 it became exclusive for the reunification costs(5.5% on income) and is active to this day. It is no secret that the cost of the reunification ruined the ability for modernizations and investment in our structures and education which we still feel today. Because of that i dont think that Southcorea will ever reunite with Northcorea.
I don't share your opinion. But what is "middle class" for you? I think 2500€ net income is middle class, and the most people in the 30ties having this income or more. Not trainees or beginner of course.
@@danielkaufmann15 Yeah middleclass starts at 2500€ net income up to 3700€. I am single with 2700€ net income and have a good life but actually im still at the lower end of middle class. I see many friends and colleagues who earn the same in their job despite a good education or trade but as married men with children. They are definetly not middle class and this is the reality for most parts of the working class in our country right now. And since income for the same job is also based on your state middleclass can be different from place to place. I was a SPD voter like all in family but that ended with Schröder about 20 years ago. Now i would just be pleased that the AfD doesnt come to power.
@@garvielloken4114 everybody is somedays always on the lower end. And even when you earn one million € per year, you can be the last, because others earn 5, 10 or 15 millions.
afaik, that special tax was not 5% of the income, but of the income tax,
thus not raising taxes from eg 30% to 30+5=35%, but by 5% OF 30% to 31.5%
which would be important for eg those who earned so little that it results in a raise from eg 10 to 10.5 and not 15
@@Anson_AKB i knew someone would start to correct me 🙄 5.5% is what i found as a rough number without writing a novel about it. but please feel free to do.
German here, I remember a dark saying we have. "At least we elected our dictator ... (A. H.)". Most countries with dictatorship don't have this option in the first place 😅
Ähm... Of course not! In free elections, the Nazis did not even win 38% of the votes. And in the last free election, in November 1932, they had already lost more than 4% of these votes. Hitler was appointed Chancellor by Reich President Hindenburg. The aged Field Marshal Hindenburg was certainly not a republican. He would certainly have preferred to take orders from his Kaiser. But he was, despite everything, someone who stuck to the letter of the constitution and who detested Hitler personally ("This Bohemian private", as he disparagingly called Hitler). But through clever intrigues and influence, so much pressure was put on the 85-year-old that he made Hitler Chancellor. In other words... The Germans did NOT elect their dictator themselves. And the 42 attempts to kill Hitler certainly testify to the fervent veneration of the Germans for their "Führer"...
But you forget that the majority of Germans did not vote for the NSDAP in the 1930s. It was only a good third, but that was enough to seize power and for the "Enabling Act". Today's voters should therefore think carefully about who they want to vote for. 🤔
Sorry, I was out after you complained that the film is one sided. What do you think was the reason why almost no one relocated from the west to east?
The GDR had a shity System that finally failed for good.
I complained that the film was one sided? whut????
@@WatchingTheWorldWithD Sorry, I made a stupid mistake. I wanted to react on a comment not on your video in general. Someone wrote in the comments that the film is one sided.
No complaints about the film and your reaction. 👍
MY FIRST FOOTBALL MATCH IN INDONESIA | (DREAM ACHIEVED)
waseem way RUclips chanell
try to react to this mister
After watching these Berlin Wall videos, you should have a 2nd Look at the Scorpions - Wind of change Song. It’s thy symbol song when the wall was „falling „
And then we haven't even talked about North Korea...another tragic country
In communism, no one envied anyone anything.
Sie haben recht deshalb gab es ja die Stasi .😂😂😂
And now you have to listen to "Radio" by Rammstein again and you will understand a little more what they are singing about.
yes exactly!
Trabant - to be fair, it must be said that the car was superior to the western ones. The car was so ingeniously designed that hardly any technical changes were necessary in 34 years. For Western models, at least a facelift is necessary after 4 years at the latest.
When it came to spare parts, you didn't have to specify the year of manufacture, model, version and equipment, as was the case in the West. The parts fit almost every car, of every year and most of the parts were so simple that you could make them yourself with a lathe and a vice.
The high resale value of far, far more than 100% of the new value is still unbeatable today.
@@PropperNaughtyGeezer To be fair too, we had a car with the same advantages, the VW Käfer (Beetle). And even this car was superior compared to Trabant or Wartburg.
cause people to wait for 10-20 years to get a car at all (some babies got as present for their birth a certificate to be on a waiting list and become a car owner when they were allowed to get the driving license 18 years later), and they will gladly take any car they can get earlier, even if it stinks. I don't think that it had anthing to do with quality, but maybe with maintenance and how easy or difficult it would be to get replacement parts.
btw: we had a cousin who had a rope dangling from the dashboard for half a yeae. it was a temporary fix for a broken lever as the gas pedal ...
Trabant wasn’t a car. It was a walking aid.
How sterotype. Most fits but a lot is simply crap.
Good video. However, the narrator's accent makes me cringe...
the situaiton in germany today is the same as in the german democratic republic. namend ddr 2.0
Jeez🙄. I can say what I will say, I can buy what I will buy. I can criticize the government. If Germany would be like the former GDR your comment would be blocked and people would stand in front of your door.
The only difference is that now we are allowed to be mindless consumers. But if you watch that video that seems to be all that matters to be considered a free society, right? Consumerism. The whole video only focuses on that instead of the actually bad parts of the DDR. Denunciation, state oppression, brainwashing, censorship, no freedom of movement. But nah all of that is not important at all. What is really important is to be able to eat bananas and buy vacuum cleaners...
It isn't and you know it!
You dumb traitor...
Red' halt nicht so'n Schmarrn.
What a useless video you chose to watch. They did not explain anything about the actual tragedy of the division of Germany when it happened. "We only got to eat bananas once a year and vacuum cleaners, televisions, etc. were really expensive." Yeah, this is the really important stuff, right? So important that that's the first thing we have to mention and then focus almost exclusively on that over and over again. Whatever man. xD
@@PalimPalim-y7l can you do me a favor? Create your own country again, leave the federal Republic of Germany with all federal states of the former GDR. I can't digest this whining anymore.
@@danielkaufmann15 What do you mean? I hate the DDR and everything it stood for. But not being able to eat bananas is not the reason for that. For you maybe it is because you never lived in a dictatorship. Consumer through and through, I guess. That is all that matters, right? lol
@@PalimPalim-y7l
OK Sir, may be I got you wrong, in this case I will apologize. But you wrote about the "actual tragedy".
Explain me more please.
@@danielkaufmann15 The tragedy of families/communities being torn apart. The tragedy of an all powerful state opressing and unaliving its subjects. Denunciation, brainwashing etc. Way too little focus on that in this video, imo. Instead they focus on bananas, vacuum cleaners and cars. C´mon.
@@danielkaufmann15 The tragedy of families/communities being torn apart. The tragedy of an all powerful state opressing its subjects. Sure, living standards are a factor but not what made the DDR a terrible state to live in and they spend way too much time to only focus on that, imo.
Well ... as usual this is a very one sided depiction of things. Most of what they say is correct, but some major elements are just left out. Others are extremely exaggerated. So let me maybe put some things into context.
First off all, after ww2 east and west Germany had VERY different starting conditions. The west massively benefited from the Marshall Plan under which the US spent millions of dollars to war torn countries in western europe to rebuild. At the same time denazification effort was very short and not very thorough. Many people who had worked with and for the Nazis stayed in positions of power and were trusted to put their expertise into rebuilding the country. Since the cold war began to take shape pretty much the minute ww2 was over, the US invested heavily in this new front line. Most importantly west Germany still had access to the steel and coal industry of the Ruhr area. Also Ludwig Erhard didn't really decide to simply create an economy just like in the US, he more or less invented a social market economy that combines a free market with a social welfare state. Pretty much what we still have today.
Now let's have a look at the east. The Soviet Union suffered tremendously during ww2. Much of the country was devasteted as the German Wehrmacht used scorched earth tactics on their retreat. When they occupied east Germany, the Soviets had very little interest in rebuilding it since unlike the US they had a lot of rebuilding to do at home. So what little of machinery, factories and industrial goods of pretty much any kind had survived the war had to be handed over to them. To this day there are railway lines in east Germany where you can clearly see that it was once built for two tracks, yet today only one remains. Miles and miles of railway track were ripped out and shipped east. Then denazification was taken several steps further. Everyone who had contributed to the war effort or Nazi rule in any way was seen as guilty and at the very least expropriated. The job of somehow managing the effort to rebuild was not handed to those who might have done it best but had been in bed with the Nazi party before but to loyal communists, often people who had fled to the Soviets when the Nazis took over and thus hadn't been to Germany for over a decade. And to make it all worse the only industrial region that might have come close to the west's Ruhr area, Schlesien, now belonged to Poland. East Germany was left with zero heavy industry and almost no natural ressources of any kind.
So you see, to claim that they both had to start from scratch and the different end results were only the product of them having different economic and political systems is just wrong. And yet by the 70s and 80s east Germany had one of the highest standards of living in the eastern block.
Of course it didn't take long for all these factors (the rigid eastern system being one of many) to materialize in very different living conditions. And people knew that because in the first years exchange with west Berlin was frequent. For example my grandfather liked to tell the story of how at some point in the 50s they were going on holiday from their home in the south of east Germany to the baltic sea. Along the way the train stopped in west Berlin as the border was still open. Apparently some guy entered the train, trying to persuade people to get off the train and stay in the west, promising them a great job, wealth and god knows what. At some point my grandfather - at least so the story goes - had enough and ... well ... made the guy leave. Don't know how much of it is actually true but even if it's completely made up - you wouldn't make this up if you felt imprisoned. Still, many people either fell for guys like that one or really felt they'd rather want to live in the west. And this brain drain the video mentioned soon became a huge problem. Most of the people who left were young and well educated. Now, I recently started a new job where the first year will be completely filled with training (it's a special programm for lateral entrants). This is free for me, I even get paid to do it. But I had to sign that after this year I'll have to stay in the company for at least three more years, otherwise I'll have to reimburse them for the cost of the training programm. Sounds reasonable, right? East Germany basically did the same, just on a much larger scale. You can't have people you trained run off and put the education you gave them to good use for someone else, right?
Of course that doesn't make building the wall right and of course the neccessity to have one in the first place shows very clearly, which system was the more successfull one at the time. Still it can be helpfull to see that issue from the other side's perspective.
Okay, I had to laugh a little when they were making it sound like people in the east couldn't afford fridges or vacuum cleaners. Yeah ... no. No idea where they got that from. They may have been more expensive than in the west but since housing and more basic items were very cheap in the east, people usually had some extra money to afford it. And once you had one, you didn't need a new one for a decade or more. Not like today where everything breaks as soon as the warranty expires. Also the Trabant has achieved absolute cult status today. The few that are still around are valued collector's items, lovingly maintained by their owners. I'm always happy when I see one.
Yeah, the lignite coal was indeed a huge problem, no way to sugercoat it. Like I said the east had almost no natural ressources, lignite coal being pretty much the only exception. So it had to be used extensively, there was simply no ther choice. Of course a lot could have been done with filters and other efforts to make it cleaner, but the environment protection movement of the late 60s and 70s didn't happen in the east, at least not in a away that could have changed things. The result were entire landscapes that looked like the surface of the moon, villages abandoned and torn down, farm land lost. But from the beginning there was also a plan of what to do after the mine was depleted in a certain area. There were a lot of these open mines around my home town, most are now closed and renatured with lakes and forests. And that process started in the 80s.
Okay that's the first time I ever heard of a supposed lack of clean drinking water. Not really sure what to make of it. Nobody in my family or social circle ever brought something like that up. Then again it may have been different in different regions.
Sure you can buy a car and drive it home this afternoon. If you can afford it. That's the part slogans like that one always conveniently leave out. So, how many west Germans let's say in the 80s could actually go to a car dealer, buy a new car on the spot and drive it home? The affording it part was usually not the problem in the east. People usually had the money but stuff wasn't always available. That's why this western propaganda (sorry, I really can't call it anything else) that told them that everything is always available was so successfull with people in the east. From their perspective money wasn't the issue, supply was. The west promised unlimited supply and preferred to not talk about the being able to actually afford it part. And no matter if you want to call that a lie the west likes to tell or a misunderstanding on the east germans' side, this is also the core issue why people in the east soon were so massively disappointed after reunification. Cause the west didn't keep that promise of unlimited supply.
"And once companies were no longer owned by the state, but by private entrepreneurs, standards of living began to rise."
Holy sh*t, is this guy for real!? East german state companies were mostly not taken over by private entrepreneurs, they were largly shut down! Reunification brought an almost complete deindustrialization and mass unemployment to east Germany. Congrats, you're free to travel the world now! How you gonna pay for it without a job? Now that's not my problem! See ya!
If you wanna talk about this at anyone's dinner table, please, let it be my dinner table. Maybe then you'll know about both sides of the story...