I visited Berlin in 1994 and our tour guide told us this joke - "many ex Stasi agents are now taxi drivers. This is good, because all you have to do is to tell them your name and they already know where you live"
The Stasi HQ in Berlin has become a museum and can be visited, it still looks as when they left it, back in 1990. You see some of the offices in this video.
@@valerija.legasov548 Yes do, but do think what this place meant and did not so long ago, when your country was under the same repressive rule...value what you have now, and the freedom that you have in the European Union, and ensure the Far Right and Far Left never succeed... as democracy and freedom can so easily be lost ... look at what is happening in Hungry and Poland right now.. their politics is a cancer and ultimately a tragedy as it can lead back like this existing again in the future.....
This is chilling. Not one word of remorse or regret from the ex-Stasi officers for the horrors they inflicted on people. News flash....when people are fleeing your country in droves, something's seriously wrong.
I visited the wall again in 2004 My buddy chatted to a guy in a VOPO captain's uniform, the guy was smiling and friendly showing his history album, He was concentrating on my buddy avoiding eye contact with me. , guess he was put off by the cynical sneer on my lip
As a college student, I crossed into East Berlin in August of 1971. It was mandatory to exchange 5 West German marks into East German currency. After spending the day in East Berlin ..visiting museums..seeing sites...I had dinner in a restaurant and when I crossed back into West Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie...I still had 2 East German marks left !
I had a similar experience in the late 1980’s when my friend and I crossed into East Berlin for a day visit. By then the mandatory exchange rate was 25 West German Marks for 25 East German Marks. We found it impossible to spend that much money in East Berlin even after the cost of lunch and snacks. Because you were not permitted to exchange the worthless DDR currency into a convertible currency or take DDR currency out of East Berlin, we just left the extra money as a tip at a cafe on the Unter den Linden before returning to West Berlin.
An old friend of ours was a Stasi border soldier when he was young. He told us when he saw someone attempting escape, he and some of his fellow soldiers would look the other way on purpose. The night when the wall came down, he burned his East German uniform and helped cut and clear barbed wire
This was the same with a fair few occupying Nazi soldiers in Eastern Europe, German and Italian. They would break into people's houses, shoot at the ceiling and pretend that they shot people, but would later secretly bring food. I got told this first hand...
Life in GDR was depicted pretty accurate, but there was one big mistake: a Stasi agent could never change sides. They were ingeniously controlling eachother as well to prevent this happening.
At his sentencing, Mielke started to cry. In pronouncing sentence, Judge Theodor Seidel, told Mielke that he "will go down in history as one of the most fearsome dictators and police ministers of the 20th century."
What I find fascinating is that this happened just a few years after WWII. All of the adults could remember the nazi era. And certainly everyone was told how bad that era was. But they couldn't comprehend that they were doing the same thing for a different master.
Oh, they knew. But the orders or "suggestions" from Moscow were clear. To this day, various customs and even language parts remain as traces of the Soviet influence in the entire bloc. It's difficult to imagine how deep the oppression ran at the height of USSR power.
You are history my friend and you have seen alot of it, share your knowledge and experiences with ur loved ones to show what happens when we don't learn from our mistakes.
Two weeks before the fall of the wall, big shot Kissinger was asked, "do you think the wall will fall in the next 10 to 20 years?" He answered with a grin, "No, that's not possible, ha ha ha." At the time, Kissinger was getting $60/hr for consultations - equivalent to about $400/hr nowadays. Macnamara, Westmorland, ....all those top officials were off base when it came to doing what was right. I resided in Thailand from 1998 to 2019, and one day, while I was working with lovely locals on a building, singing songs together, ....it struck me: 30 years earlier, my elder brothers and their buddies were shooting these same sorts of folks in jungles, a few hundred miles away. Insane. And right after we pulled out of VN, the Viet Cong drove into Cambodia in tanks to cut the balls off the Khmer Rouge who were killing their own people in droves. If humans are made "in God's image" ....then God is some f*cked up mother f*cker.
But the chaos that resulted from the "integration" of East German citizens into West German society has not abated and will not for generations to come. Some of my friends in West Germany referred to all of this as, "eine Katastrophe", a catastrophe.
maybe if the US and the UK allowed Germany to have neutral election like Stalin proposed along with removing all Allied Soldiers, the wall wouldn't have existed. BTW, what is democracy when it needs to be spread through terror, death squads, color revolutions, useful idiots and bombing campaigns
I'm a former Cold Warrior in the US, so believe me when I tell you that I never, ever thought I would go through the Brandenburg Gate. But I did in the mid 1990s and it was wonderful.
I wish I’d asked people like you more questions. I think we are definitely knee deep in a long view influence campaign right now. Please think about starting a channel - anonymously if need be - and recording whatever you’re allowed to record that wouldn’t violate national security. It’s pretty clear young people today don’t realise how their activism now ties into the subterfuge of the 20th century,
As a military brat who lived in West Germany, many of us took trips to the border of West Germany and East Germany. We saw the the walls, the machine gun towers, the areas where land mines were. The only thing that we could see from West Germany was how "black and white" it looked. There were colors, flowers and birds singing on the West German side, but dark, depressive sense you felt. We'd wonder how East German kids were being treated. Years later I returned, this time as a service member. I was there when the Berlin Wall opened and never closed again. There were so many people crying that you definitely felt it yourself, seeing so many families being reunited after years, decades of separation. Unfortunately the South Korean people will never see there kin on the North Korean side. One side has freedom whereas the other has been under 3 different Dictatorships of the same family. The only way for the Koreans to be reunited is for Communist China to end, just as the Soviet Union did to allow Germany to be reunited.
Actually Soviet Union was in severe economic crisis, and reforms were introduced by Gorbochev so called "perestroika" or "rebuilding", but Soviet Union collapsed 3 years after fall of Berlin Wall.
well ur hella right. who dafuck wanted soviets ? look every country now in Europe who was occupied by russians. grimy,dark, grey look on every one of those...
It must have Been a site my dad was also in the army in Germany but in the early 70s , so wall was still up. I think your hypothesis about Korea is theoretical , but I think it could dissolve in a similar fashion . Maybe not as happy and party like as Berlin (partly due to the actual geography and width of the DMZ itself) , but I bet North Korea will not be around in the next 50 years. Why? We live in the Information Age. Too much info is being disseminated into the country in creative ways… that is fascinating.
you scapegoat politicians really when the division was the result of a war.... when we both invaded Germany, we couldn't have just given it all to Russia we couldn't also have declared war on Russia over the other half of Germany so what did politicians get wrong exacly? how where we supposed to deal with Nazi Germany? you could i guess blame Adolf Hitler
The wall was one of the stupider things done at a time when many stupid things were done in the world. Khmer Rouge, Mao, Stalin, Nazi generals hiding in Argentina, McCarthyism, Bay of Pigs, on and on. Humans are a crafty species, ....but mentally, we're lower than wild dogs (and more prone to depression and cruelty).
@@guyfaux5010 Propaganda works. Everywhere. Russia. China. The USA. The U.K. Australia. Canada. Germany. Spain. and on and on and on. The vast majority of people in every country thinks their shit doesn't stink. And they're all wrong.
The best escape, I liked, were the 2 Czech guys in the 70s who used wooden chairs and climbed up the high tension power lines, hanging the chairs with rubber belts, and then pulled themselves across to Austria. Now that took balls !
There was an even better one a guy built an ultra light airplane flew into east Germany landed at a park or something picked up his brother and flew back to the west
My favorite is a person who drove under the barriers. He had a small convertible lowered And had the windscreen taken off then drove straight at the barrier and just ducked. He had his luggage and his mother in law in the trunk. The narrator even said: "the trunk was big enough for more than one old bag." 🤣🤣
Everybody is quite forgiving. Germans live in the present. That's why germany recovered very fast from so many political setbacks. Now it is one of the world's leading countries.
I visited East Germany and both east and west Berlin in December 1978 for a week when I was twenty years old American traveler. I walked through the checkpoint Charlies freely until the East German security border guard with a submachine gun at the gate asked me for my passport and questioned me for visiting East Berlin. I was nervous and discomforted while I traveled in East Berlin. I was heavily surveillance in East Germany and a few guards and police asked me for my passport and questioned me again. I visited a cigarette-smoking pub for a drink - the Pepsi, and almost all East German patrons in the bar quickly stared at me, but they quickly ignored me when two undercovered police came into the pub. Several of them drank vodka and beer, and smoked cigarettes, and quietly talked to each other. They avoided contacting me. I walked and explored the city of East Berlin in the greying sky and it looked depressing until the end of the day. I walked back to West Berlin via Checkpoint Charlie and I felt relieved and I said "freedom." West Berlin was the oasis of freedom and capitalism. I took a train to West Germany from West Berlin via East Germany. East German guard on the train checked my passport twice. Security dogs walked through beneath the train and the corridor of the train on the East Germany border before proceeded to West Germany. After arrival in West Germany, the West German border guard smiled at me after he checked through my passport and he spoke English "Welcome!" There was a huge contrast between depressed joyless dark East Germany and vividly joy brighten West Germany on Christmas week. I never forget this unique era of Stasi rule in East Germany.
@@cozy6308 Soviets liked Pepsi, but they love Vodka more than other beverages. Vodka was much cheaper than Pepsi and even the availability of Vodka was plentiful in Soviet markets. I remembered I was on the train on the way to West Berlin in East Germany. While the train stopped for a few minute break, I looked out through the train window and saw one drunken older-middle East German man carrying a bottle of Vodka on the train platform in the heavy industrial town in East Germany.
I's horrifying what Soviet union had done, nearly 40 years of unending horrors in Germany. I've visited the Stasi prison in Berlin in December and went to see the underground tunnels. Our tour guide was a former Stasi prisoner. What amazed me was the advanced level of technology used in security and torment. If only that engineering acumen had been used for peaceful and constructive purposes.... So glad that the Wall had fallen and the reign of terror had ended.
People will never stop coming up with novel ways to scam or hurt others. It's incredible, really. Just a fraction of that brainpower toward positive pursuits would make the world a better place.
Sure and that is what Vladimir Vladimirovich wants to reestablish. Unfortunately the reign of terror is continuing, just ask the Ukrainians . BTW, Vlad was the KGB officer during that time and watched the Stasi be more thorough than the Russian KGB.
I've read the Stasi even had the unwashed underwear of suspected dissidents in their files - trained dogs would be used to find out who was distributing underground persistence literature and pamphlets. If you're going through someone's dirty laundry, digging around for briefs or panties, it has to occur to you that you're not in the right business.
The Germans are fantastic record keepers. Everything was documented about WW2 except that which the natsees are most remembered for. It's almost like it never happened. Makes you wonder...
Another winner DW, as simple as that....just love your documentaries, pure quality! Haven't had much chance to watch them all due to the work load, need to make time because they're absolutely worth it! Having loved history since my school days (I'm 52 now), I need to read more about the Berlin Wall, Operation Danube, East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956....have you made any videos on those events in history, if not....do you have any planned? Much respect to you all at DW, keep up the phenomenal work! 👍🏻👌🏻👏🏻
As an exchangee with ICJA I lived in West Berlin in 1983 with the family Bohley (Baerbel) who had been exiled out of the GDR years before. They still had a very large family left in the East which I was able to visit many time over Friedrichstrasse & Checkpoint Charlie. I got into lots of trouble trying to smuggle things to the East and was for awhile banned from entry. As a Young American this was like a living classroom at the heart of the Cold War and very educational. Great years there.
The commentator said it exactly - "Mielke's overriding priority was to keep himself and his party in power". Go it in one - tells you everything you need to know about ANY authoritarian regime on the world, communist or other.
@@emjay2045 a little confused I would say , just look at the raft of draconian rules the Democrats introduced to America, its looking more and more like East Germany each day
@@DWDocumentary , do you really believe in your own propaganda? You are ridiculous! You are modern followers of Gebels. I guess, Russians must liberate Germany again like in 1945.
@@DW94576 , firstly, GDR let its citizens leave its border always. Relatives from the GDR freely visited their relatives in West Germany and conversely. The government GDR did not create any obstacles. Secondly, all Western governments during past two years have established such restrictions and controls in the movement of their citizens not only outside their borders, but also within states, which were not even during the Cold War and spy mania.
I wonder if those ex-Stasi guys saw the irony in that they were able to speak freely and recount their nefarious deeds without fear of retribution, something they spent their careers denying their countrymen.
4:04 August 13, 1961, beginning of the Berlin Wall 6:21 attempts to West Berlin 8:20 border officer escaped to West Berlin 10:24 escape tunnels 13:04 57 people escaped to West Berlin 21:00 Stasi used passport checking to collect intel 23:44 smuggle people to West Berlin 30:26 diving equipment, gliding equipment, hot ballons 34:37 Michael Bittner
DW has been producing some great documentaries lately. The one on Afghanistan that was released a week ago is probably my favourite DW documentary now. Thanks and keep up the good work!
I'm really glad you see your mistake. It's really irritating when people blurt out names like that because they don't know how hardcore they really were. My father simply keeps walking like he never heard them. It's quite funny and embarrassing at the same time. I don't go to Walmart with him anymore, one of these days they'll call the police and I don't like dealing with cops.
Remember during end of the seventies I was in transfer a few times to Poland via the DDR and visa versa. Great docu with a lots of explainations, thank you DW !!! You are great !
So true. It could only be because they know that they’re safe from prosecution or any kind of justice for their victims, that they discuss their crimes with such impunity.
In 1985 as 22 years old man for the first time, I was allowed to travel from communist Poland and went to West Berlin, and have a look at East Berlin from one of those step towers and the feeling of joy and freedom is still in me today, and I don't think anybody can have this kind of filling unless coming from the oppressing country.
It confuses me how a government can't see anything wrong with the way they are doing things when they have to take such huge measures to keep tens of thousands of people from escaping its control and the people fleeing were even willing to die trying to do so.
Listen to all these elderly Stasi agents, effectively engaged in a form of psychopathy, never faced any justice whatsoever for what they did and so proud of getting benefit for themselves by being super loyal and destroying so many lives and so many families.
They r Germans. Their victims were germs. They can forgive or forget the past and live with each other , why can't u ? For real they recovered very fast from such drawbacks.
Thanks to the clever ones, that help to prevent the meaningless commercials from disturbing my peace time viewing! . . . Oh, & thanks to the makers of this doc. . . . . . & Thanks to the channel for sharing - Cheers !!
i was 5 years old, and watching east berlin building the wall. i still remember asking my dad questions, about why they were putting up wire and building the first parts of the wall, all while we were both watching on the evening news.
My Mother's family all stayed in the east after the war. Why? I don't know. I have friends that I met in E. Berlin in 1981 and had kept in touch with since then...Their homes were directly on the border of E. Germany and West Berlin. In the the early days / weeks the the wall there was only barbed wire = EASY to escape. I asked them why their parents didn't escape with them when they had the chance. Their answer: This is our country and every year things are getting better and we didn't believe the wall would be permanent. Big mistake!
Angela Merkel's father was a school teacher in Hamburg where she was born. Her father relocated the family to East Germany where she grew up. None of her family, including herself lifted a finger for freedom. An example of voluntary serfdom. Today's Germany is riddled with E. German sympathizers - reason why the reluctance to send tanks to Ukraine.
Thank you DW for this Excellent Documentary 👍.I always wanted to know more about Stasi and their tactics.I love these kind of Cold War documentaries.Keep uploading such interesting & informative documentaries.Love from PK💚.
My tante Regina was helped through the burgeoning wall in 1961 by my Uncle Joe who was a British soldier. Heard many stories about the post WW2 period and being separated from family and friends. So sad. Great video.
22:40 Oooh, look at that power play by Honecker during and after the handshake. Honecker clasped his hand, then jerked Mielke toward himself. Afterwards, he held his hand above him and then brought it down, clasping him by the shoulder and holding him throughout like a puppet master subtly manipulating the movements of a prop. Translation: "You are mine - I control you. I am above you, I am your superior. I own you." He wasn't subtle with that, so it makes me wonder what particular event or something that was said led him to feel the need to remind this man to whom he belonged.
Fantastic and benifits knowledge for those who want to know the history of Cold War . Between east & west , like an great adventured to the past . Thanks so much for whose was making this video topics and thanks to DW . From asia ! Beloved
COMMUNISM GREW OUT OF POVERTY IN THE FIRST PLACE...AFTER TWO WORLD WARS, EASTERN EUROPE WAS HANDED OVER BY THE WESTERN POWERS TO THE SOVIET UNION AS A BUFFER ZONE...READ HISTORY AMERICANS, BECAUSE PEOPLE LIKE TRUMP MAY BRING BACK COMMUNIST STYLE DICTATORSHIP...YOU ARE DREAMING OR STUPID IGNORANT IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND !!!!
@@andrasbodo oh? but Biden that's obviously a puppet isn't a form of communism/dictatorship? he can't even think for himself. who is truly our president? why do they need to hide behind him?
A pity you did not mention MARGOT Honecker and her role as the Purple Witch in all of that! She never faced justice, living peacefully in Chile, until her death in May 2016. What an awful woman!
All top officers in Stasi should have been put behind bars for 5 to 10 years. Saying "only following orders" is a flimsy excuse for ruining tens of thousands of lives.
8:38 This officer turned out to be a hero....the guy that opened the Berlin border....never to be closed again. What happened? At an early night international press briefing in East Berlin, a rather ill prepared high ranking member of the polit bureau made the statement that every GDR citizen was now allowed to visit and travel to the west. A switched on Italian journalist asked, when is this new rule taking effect? The now famous answer....sofort, unverzueglich! Meaning,... as of this moment, right now.... Wow, wow, wow, the West German media went into a frenzy.....biggest news in decades! Since every East Berliner could watch west German TV....a huge crowd appeared at the main boarder grossing, demanding to be let through to west Berlin. After the officer in charge, Harald Jaeger, could not obtain any orders as what to do, and the crowd became almost uncontrollable, he simply decided to open the gate!!!! And that was it.....the beginning of the end for not only the Berlin wall.....but a communist dictatorial regime and a country once called GDR. Not a single shot fired.....just a sloppy politician and a courageous boarder officer.....was all it took to gain freedom for some 22 million people!!! How good is that? Cheers from Berlin
A great book on the Stasi and their power over the average citizen was called Stasiland. Written by an Australian journalist who lived in what was East Berlin right after the wall came down. She interviewed a number of people who had stories. It was chilling. They literally had the power of life and death over you and people just disappeared never to be seen again. And try to see the movie the lives of others. It’s a German film and I think it accurately depicted life in east Germany. I think when the wall came down there was a shock among former East Germans when that headquarters was opened up to learn that their trusted friends and neighbors were paid informants. There was not anything funny about the Stasi. I think in the Soviet union about 1 in 2000 citizens was an informant. In East Germany, it was 1 in 60.
For all their supposed hatred for the Nazis, the Stasi sure took a lot from the Nazi playbook. Those agents likely would have been very comfortable in the Gustavo. Granted, the Stasi's evils don't even approach what the the Nazis did, but their tactics seem quite similar, like in formats, and disregard for human life for just a couple.
They are human.. these behaviors are a part of human nature. Denying that by simply labeling them as "politicians" does not change facts. It only lets people naively believe they are different. Above human nature.
@@ohgosh5892 nationalism + authoritarianism = fascism. If anything, leftist democrats today are the authoritarians. Which party is pushing for greater and greater control of society, so that things they deem correct become mandated? That’s authoritarianism.
Fine educational documentary film. Frightening and horrific. The 60th Anniversary of the creation this disaster is in only two days. I hope many will celebrate to its final destruction and fall. Thank you DW.
I heard that Stasi waited for people to go to work and then enter their home's and place bag of coffee (for example) on their table...they played serious mind games!
It's true. The scenes of the empty offices in this documentary are in the former Stasi HQ, now the Stasi Museum, and they have quite a few examples of their covert spying in one of the rooms. The bastards hid devices in damn near everything. One family found a listening device in the top of an interior door when redecorating something like 12 years after the wall fell.
I am an American scientist who in January 1980 moved to (then West) Germany for 2 years. One of my adventures while there was to drive from the city of Essen (West Germany) to Berlin, which meant I had to drive through East Germany. To make that drive, one made sure one's vehicle was in PERFECT operating condition and full of gas because, if you exited the highway, you would likely not be heard of again. Upon reaching West Berlin, I decided to visit East Berlin. To do that, one used the West Berlin subway to a certain point and, while still underground, walked over to the East Berlin subway, showed your papers to the VERY anti-social guard, and boarded an East German subway car that was VERY old (1950s?). Upon reaching the "allowed" station in East Berlin, I disembarked and walked up the stairs. I sat at an outdoor cafe on Unter den Linden and ordered a Coca Cola, which turned out to be some sort of totally fake "soft drink". After a while, I decided to take another risk and walk around some neighborhood streets (where visitors were NOT supposed to stray), and was shocked to see all the WW II damage on the outside of buildings that had never been repaired. It was an unforgettable day for me.
@@jyotifraser7439 My father was a true "edge dweller" and I most definitely inherited that risk-taker gene, as expressed in my racing cars, parachuting, etc. The predominant feelings for me during that escapade were calm excitement and hypervigilance.
peoples give up the information willingly so that they can have social interaction with their long lost relatives and friend, they are free to leave, that what the freedom mean, learn the different, dont let socialis utopia BS dumb you down..
If you have seen the movie "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold" (with Richard Burton), you've seen the most accurate representation of what it was like in the East (Soviet) Zone of Berlin in the early '60s. The prevailing climate was one of fear; people were afraid of being seen talking to a Westerner or even of looking directly at them. East Berliners would look at our reflection in the glass shop windows along the street instead of looking directly at us (US soldiers). Some would even engage in a quick conversation if they were unobserved. Even as late as 1962-1963 there were work parties of young girls clearing up the rubble left from WW II behind the facade of Karl Marx Allee (previously Stalin Allee) where their propaganda films were made. The stories you've heard about life behind the Berlin Wall are true. Thank God it is gone now. These STASI officers should have been tried and sent to prison.
Regarding the cleaning up of the rubble - my father went to East Germany mid 1960s and he said looking around in some areas it felt as though the war had just happened a little while ago.
@@DWDocumentary Comparing the Stasi with Google woud make an interesting video. Oh and one on converting the Berlin Wall into a low cost Anti-Immigrant Barriade, might be a big hit. (humor)
For anybody interested in this subject I'd highly recommend watching the German film 'The Lives of Others'. Not sure how to spell it in German, sorry! But it's a fascinating look into the Stasi and life in East Germany at that time. The actor who plays the main character/ Stasi agent (Ulrich Mühe RIP) was under state surveillance himself from the Stasi in real life so I imagine it must have hit really close to home. It's genuinely a phenomenal movie. I can't speak German so I had to watch it subtitled but I still found it powerful. I honestly don't even know how I ended up watching it because it wasn't marketed in my country at all. I think it won/was nominated for the best Foreign picture at the Oscars and I'm fascinated by that period of time in history so I gave it a watch randomly not expecting much. I was absolutely blown away by how good that film is.
A teacher showed us that movie in high school, I love German productions! They always leave you thinking about what you saw for days after watching it, I love them!
I'd also recommend "Deutschland 83" TV series, it is about East German spy sent into West Germany during "Able Archer" exercise which back then was thought to be NATO preparation of nuclear attack on Warsaw Pact countries. What fascinating thing is.. imagining that so many East German spies infiltrate West Germany positions including university professor, culture ambassador, and even Bundeswehr officer!
Just astonishing that nobody in power ever thought to themselves that maybe they were the problem !! If you have to keep your population imprisoned to stop them fleeing, you’re doing something very wrong
In 1995 I took a train from Frankfurt to Berlin. I was sitting next to an elderly and very humorous German man. When we crossed over to what had been East Germany informed me that we had done so. He did not have to tell me as the contrast between what had been West Germany and East Germany was very apparent. All of a sudden the towns looked dumpy and colorless. The farms looked grim.What a sad thing to have foisted Russian stupidity on people. Now the Mongols are at the gates of the West again trying to trample under Ukraine and sap its resources for the needs of the East. Russia never has recovered from WW2.
I took that train trip in 1984. It was something else. But don’t blame the Russians. They suffered too and the Germans were all too happy to lord it over each other one more time. Now it’s the unelected EU turning everything into NWO WEF BS clones. Ukraine is a dumpster fire that can be laid at the feet of Victoria Newland and the Obamabidens. No thanks…
More like they never recovered from ww1 when the fall of the zcar happend and they then had democracy for a few months could stop fighting Germany so the communist took over
I was stationed in West Berlin in the early 80s. From what I could tell, there was Soviet Communism but the East Germans still had that old Nazi flare to their form of Communism. Their uniforms, banners, marching style, & security was like the Nazis had just flipped their symbols is all. Then again, Communism & Nazism are both forms of Fascism. It was also hypocritical that the Berlin Wall was was called "anti-fascist" to keep the West out of their sector but it was really meant to enslave their own people. Being assigned to Berlin during that time period was like living in some spy novel full of danger & intrigue that you just did not want to stop reading. Many of us who were stationed there back then have very fond memories of that assignment. None of us ever hated the people themselves, just the political system that they had to live under.
It's amazing that your comment is the only one I've found so far that mentions the official name of this wall. Leftists today claim to be "anti-fascists" and speak in a similar way to the Socialist Unity Party. Instead of claiming to care about the working class though, it's more often "marginalized" or "oppressed" groups. This is no coincidence, as I've read some of today's leftists and examined their citations, and they take their ideas from the Frankfurt School, Lenin, Gramsci, and other Marxist writers. My school district paid a consultant about 1/4 million dollars and she cites Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) in her book for ideas on how to make children revolutionaries -- I mean "activist allies" If today's leftists get total control of government, they will do "anti-facism" just like the Socialist Unity Party did -- chekists and all.
Sadly, the lessons from this era seem to be lost at an ever increasing rate. To the point that the West is moving towards this oppression instead of away from it.
Hahaha you're funny. It's clearly getting worse every day and you type smth like that...Anyway, keep praying...since doing useless things is high on your list.
While watching this documentary, I also enjoy reading the comment section which provides supplementary info of the situation 😊 I’m glad to be able to virtual meet the people who have first hand experience of east Germany 🤝
There is no longer a wall that separates US & Mexico. But there is a tall chain link fence. Between Mexico & Guatemala. There’s a reason for border fences.
West German elites did want him to reveal their secrets so he was allowed to live out his remaining years at home as sign of "compassion". Just like allowing the Hoenickers to "retire" in Chile due to Erick`s ill health. These people really never have to pay a price.
@@gertexan Still doesn't make it right. But then, there's God, so I guess I'll take His Judgement over anything else for that matter. Thing is, I would never wish anyone in Hell.
8:39 Captions cut out suspiciously, omitting the line "We saw them as traitors, who were betraying our country." This casts what the guy says afterwards in a different light, absent that line. For shame.
Two days ago my aunt told me a story how she visited east Berlin and after they crossed to west side she felt that even the trees were greener on the west side of the wall. She told me that east was a depressing experience for her .
It is staggering to me that former Stasi personnel are not rotting in prison for life for their actions. They are sitting in their comfortable homes talking about the horrible crimes and abuses they committed under a lawless and despotic regime. I know Germany wanted a minimum stress reunification but a quick trial and execution after the wall fell would have been true justice.
I'm sure the newly-unified German govt was anxious to let bygones be bygones, and let these old Stasi chekists live out their days without punishment. They had more important tasks to deal with, like reunifying a country. I'll bet the govt even made good on these guys' Stasi DDR pensions.
Fairly certain that hardcore communists then, thought of DDR as a haven in a sea of surrounding hostile territory, while we in the west thought of DDR as an eyesore and remnants of WWII… as much in life, it’s a matter of perspective
social media companies collect huge amounts of data that is processed by AI to target ads at you. No human reviews your data or cares. The STASI would bug houses and record every conversation. If they wanted you to be a good citizen then would listen to your conversations for leverage. Like for some Gay men, they would have good looking men have a relationship with them, they would threaten to expose them for being gay if they did not play ball with the government and be a gratefully little worker bee. It's not really comparable. The lives of others is a good moive
Very nicely done, DW! The Stasi and the Berlin Wall is quite interesting niche in the history of the Cold War as well as the post-WW2 Germany. The most interesting thing that came into my mind is the increasing dependency on Stasi by the SED. From the SED's point of view, making the Stasi more powerful made sense--i.e., Stasi was the only bureaucracy fit to be tasked with establishing both internal security and tight grip over DDR's borders with BRD. However, this arrangement eventually led to the SED, hence the DDR, to become ill-equipped to face newer geopolitical challenges, such as the Helsinki Accord; the domination of the Western global finance; the rise of Gorbachev' etc. With the benefit of the hindsight, the SED-Stasi led DDR could stay viable only as long as the Cold War lasted. Or, ideally, a Cold War with indefinite duration would have been the ideal geopolitical benchmark for a country like the DDR.
It was a different world ppl became… “soft” that was considered harsh. I believe those who commit appalling atrocities to the detriment of those who are innocent or undeserving. should be subject to what I call “Trial of Own Indifference” and sentenced to “prolonged physical reeducation” which I consider torture over a period of time resulting in death. the length of which determined by the brutality and severity of the crime (Typical Murder)
In 1979 I served in a special unit. We were part of a group that celebrated the 4th of July in Potsdam along with British, French and Russian liaison. We drove there in a US Army bus. When we passed Stasi they would glare at us. We passed some Soviet kasernes and these young conscripts waved and cheered. A Soviet officer was fascinated with my wife, a professional actress. I spent most of the time translating.
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
I visited Berlin in 1994 and our tour guide told us this joke - "many ex Stasi agents are now taxi drivers. This is good, because all you have to do is to tell them your name and they already know where you live"
Hahahaha
Mega joke 😂
Hahahaa great one!
Ouch , that is a joke in bad taste
GOLD 🤣🤣
The Stasi HQ in Berlin has become a museum and can be visited, it still looks as when they left it, back in 1990. You see some of the offices in this video.
Yeah, its a great museum
Been to the museum years ago.
Very impressive
I went there in 2006... but I had a hard time finding it, as everyone who lived near it, did not want to point it out ...
Hope, I will visit Berlin and this museum. Greetings from Prague, stay healthy and be safe! 😊😷
@@valerija.legasov548 Yes do, but do think what this place meant and did not so long ago, when your country was under the same repressive rule...value what you have now, and the freedom that you have in the European Union, and ensure the Far Right and Far Left never succeed... as democracy and freedom can so easily be lost ... look at what is happening in Hungry and Poland right now.. their politics is a cancer and ultimately a tragedy as it can lead back like this existing again in the future.....
This is chilling. Not one word of remorse or regret from the ex-Stasi officers for the horrors they inflicted on people. News flash....when people are fleeing your country in droves, something's seriously wrong.
That’s usually the case with people in power or were once in power.
Communists, Marxists and leftists never admit their wrongdoing.
RT crowd will have you believe it's the reverse
RT crowd will have you believe it's the reverse
I visited the wall again in 2004 My buddy chatted to a guy in a VOPO captain's uniform, the guy was smiling and friendly showing his history album, He was concentrating on my buddy avoiding eye contact with me. , guess he was put off by the cynical sneer on my lip
As a college student, I crossed into East Berlin in August of 1971. It was mandatory to exchange 5 West German marks into East German currency. After spending the day in East Berlin ..visiting museums..seeing sites...I had dinner in a restaurant and when I crossed back into West Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie...I still had 2 East German marks left !
Did they let you keep the 2M? I'm told everyone was forced to 'deposit' any Marks they have left against a future visit?
I had a similar experience in the late 1980’s when my friend and I crossed into East Berlin for a day visit. By then the mandatory exchange rate was 25 West German Marks for 25 East German Marks. We found it impossible to spend that much money in East Berlin even after the cost of lunch and snacks. Because you were not permitted to exchange the worthless DDR currency into a convertible currency or take DDR currency out of East Berlin, we just left the extra money as a tip at a cafe on the Unter den Linden before returning to West Berlin.
What was the rate of exchange 100:1?
@@jasonwiley798 I’m reliably informed that the enforced exchange was 1:1, but Ostmarks could be found easy enough on the black market for 1:10…
Wow, I thought I was reading the experience of my visit in 1984! Exactly the same!
An old friend of ours was a Stasi border soldier when he was young. He told us when he saw someone attempting escape, he and some of his fellow soldiers would look the other way on purpose. The night when the wall came down, he burned his East German uniform and helped cut and clear barbed wire
This was the same with a fair few occupying Nazi soldiers in Eastern Europe, German and Italian. They would break into people's houses, shoot at the ceiling and pretend that they shot people, but would later secretly bring food. I got told this first hand...
Yeah, sure most of them would say that wouldn't they
@@iwillnoteatzebugs your grandad is a liar
@@iwillnoteatzebugs are you trying to sound funny? You lack attention? Cuz that was lame af dude.
@@iwillnoteatzebugs do they taste the same as communist dogs? Asking for a friend.
'The Lives of Others' is a great depiction of life in East Germany and how the Stasi went about their business.
Absolutely brilliant movie
I like the joke about Erich Honnacker and the sun.
That movie nailed these pricks.
I saw that movie about ten years ago for some reason, or one similar, with people being wistfully nostalgic for the DDR. Yeah, whatever.
Life in GDR was depicted pretty accurate, but there was one big mistake: a Stasi agent could never change sides. They were ingeniously controlling eachother as well to prevent this happening.
The Stasi's behavior provides a solid example of what happens when you proceed logically and rationally from an insane premise
To ensure freedom... strict surveilance of the populace is always a necessity.
@@johnbowman1076 To ensure privacy, toilet cameras are always a necessity
To ensure peace, mutually assured destruction is necessary
Brilliantly put-what you said is going into my favourite quotes book that I have. ❤
Are you attempting to market someone/some group with that material?
I visited Berlin with my parents, in the 1960s. The Berlin Wall, which we only saw from the west side, was terrifying.
Erich Mielke was one sick individual.
For those poor people it was a case of "Meet the new Boss, same as the old Boss".
Today this still goes on in NORTH KOREA and in the RUSSIAN FEDERATION.
What was so terrifying about it??? You were on the west side of it.
At his sentencing, Mielke started to cry. In pronouncing sentence, Judge Theodor Seidel, told Mielke that he "will go down in history as one of the most fearsome dictators and police ministers of the 20th century."
May he rot in hell
But this video said the proceedings were abandoned
What I find fascinating is that this happened just a few years after WWII. All of the adults could remember the nazi era. And certainly everyone was told how bad that era was. But they couldn't comprehend that they were doing the same thing for a different master.
Oh, they knew. But the orders or "suggestions" from Moscow were clear. To this day, various customs and even language parts remain as traces of the Soviet influence in the entire bloc. It's difficult to imagine how deep the oppression ran at the height of USSR power.
same with anyone who supports blm, lgbtq, Ukraine today..
A lot of people back then believed the Germans deserved that fate in East Germany.
No!--The Berlin Wall went up in 1961, sixteen years after the end of WWII in Europe.
Precisely
I,m 75 years old, I still remember this like it were yesterday,Vopos shooting escaping teenage kids!
I never expected to see it's demise!!
That's truly great
You are history my friend and you have seen alot of it, share your knowledge and experiences with ur loved ones to show what happens when we don't learn from our mistakes.
Likewise. (I'm 70.)
Two weeks before the fall of the wall, big shot Kissinger was asked, "do you think the wall will fall in the next 10 to 20 years?" He answered with a grin, "No, that's not possible, ha ha ha." At the time, Kissinger was getting $60/hr for consultations - equivalent to about $400/hr nowadays. Macnamara, Westmorland, ....all those top officials were off base when it came to doing what was right. I resided in Thailand from 1998 to 2019, and one day, while I was working with lovely locals on a building, singing songs together, ....it struck me: 30 years earlier, my elder brothers and their buddies were shooting these same sorts of folks in jungles, a few hundred miles away. Insane. And right after we pulled out of VN, the Viet Cong drove into Cambodia in tanks to cut the balls off the Khmer Rouge who were killing their own people in droves. If humans are made "in God's image" ....then God is some f*cked up mother f*cker.
But the chaos that resulted from the "integration" of East German citizens into West German society has not abated and will not for generations to come. Some of my friends in West Germany referred to all of this as, "eine Katastrophe", a catastrophe.
If you need to build a wall to keep your citizens from fleeing, then maybe you need to rethink your form of government.
some people just aren't grateful for what they are given.
maybe if the US and the UK allowed Germany to have neutral election like Stalin proposed along with removing all Allied Soldiers, the wall wouldn't have existed.
BTW, what is democracy when it needs to be spread through terror, death squads, color revolutions, useful idiots and bombing campaigns
@@growingmelancholy8374 another classic comment from one of the gifted who can say so much with such elegant words . thanks
@@flatoutt1 Thank you my love. I am glad you appreciate trolling. With all my love, your mother.
@@morzik12345 🔦extremely intelligent individual😎
I'm a former Cold Warrior in the US, so believe me when I tell you that I never, ever thought I would go through the Brandenburg Gate. But I did in the mid 1990s and it was wonderful.
I wish I’d asked people like you more questions. I think we are definitely knee deep in a long view influence campaign right now. Please think about starting a channel - anonymously if need be - and recording whatever you’re allowed to record that wouldn’t violate national security. It’s pretty clear young people today don’t realise how their activism now ties into the subterfuge of the 20th century,
I was an MP at the wall 1975. Lots of memories including watching an escape.
As a military brat who lived in West Germany, many of us took trips to the border of West Germany and East Germany. We saw the the walls, the machine gun towers, the areas where land mines were. The only thing that we could see from West Germany was how "black and white" it looked. There were colors, flowers and birds singing on the West German side, but dark, depressive sense you felt. We'd wonder how East German kids were being treated. Years later I returned, this time as a service member. I was there when the Berlin Wall opened and never closed again. There were so many people crying that you definitely felt it yourself, seeing so many families being reunited after years, decades of separation. Unfortunately the South Korean people will never see there kin on the North Korean side. One side has freedom whereas the other has been under 3 different Dictatorships of the same family. The only way for the Koreans to be reunited is for Communist China to end, just as the Soviet Union did to allow Germany to be reunited.
Actually Soviet Union was in severe economic crisis, and reforms were introduced by Gorbochev so called "perestroika" or "rebuilding", but Soviet Union collapsed 3 years after fall of Berlin Wall.
Mainland China took much lesson from the soviet case, including the east germany problem and its dissolution. Soo, nope.
well ur hella right. who dafuck wanted soviets ? look every country now in Europe who was occupied by russians. grimy,dark, grey look on every one of those...
It must have Been a site my dad was also in the army in Germany but in the early 70s , so wall was still up. I think your hypothesis about Korea is theoretical , but I think it could dissolve in a similar fashion . Maybe not as happy and party like as Berlin (partly due to the actual geography and width of the DMZ itself) , but I bet North Korea will not be around in the next 50 years. Why? We live in the Information Age. Too much info is being disseminated into the country in creative ways… that is fascinating.
They treeated like deserved.
My friend's uncle died at the wall trying to escape. What was it all for. A few politicians' egos and self-importance.
Hello Jane how are you doing hope you’re doing okay ✅
you scapegoat politicians really when the division was the result of a war.... when we both invaded Germany, we couldn't have just given it all to Russia
we couldn't also have declared war on Russia over the other half of Germany
so what did politicians get wrong exacly? how where we supposed to deal with Nazi Germany? you could i guess blame Adolf Hitler
Unbekant.
The wall was one of the stupider things done at a time when many stupid things were done in the world. Khmer Rouge, Mao, Stalin, Nazi generals hiding in Argentina, McCarthyism, Bay of Pigs, on and on. Humans are a crafty species, ....but mentally, we're lower than wild dogs (and more prone to depression and cruelty).
@@brahmburgers ur a fool
Those old Stasi dudes really drank the koolaid. Years later - they still view their perverse mission in a positive manner.
indeed. just like the dudes in the 30s.
@@guyfaux5010 Ho ironic. In the quest to destroy authoritarianism, they created their own authoritarians
@@guyfaux5010 What garbage!
@@normamimosa5991 can you elaborate, genuinely curious madamé.
@@guyfaux5010 Propaganda works. Everywhere. Russia. China. The USA. The U.K. Australia. Canada. Germany. Spain. and on and on and on. The vast majority of people in every country thinks their shit doesn't stink. And they're all wrong.
This period in Germany's history is really interesting & DW Documentaries are 1st class
Australia seems to be doing a fairly accurate re-enactment at the moment
@Celtic Snow Australia has been ruled by conservatives since 2013 🙄
NO - they are not. DW is an arm of the Amerikaner occupation of the Fatherland, and is doing nothing but trying to propogate anti-German sentiment.
@@awakeandwatching953 You mean the QR code?
Not just interesting but terrifying too in that one fascism was replaced by another.
The best escape, I liked, were the 2 Czech guys in the 70s who used wooden chairs and climbed up the high tension power lines, hanging the chairs with rubber belts, and then pulled themselves across to Austria. Now that took balls !
There was an even better one a guy built an ultra light airplane flew into east Germany landed at a park or something picked up his brother and flew back to the west
How abt the east Germans that flew over the wall in a hot air balloon!! 🎈
My favorite is a person who drove under the barriers.
He had a small convertible lowered And had the windscreen taken off then drove straight at the barrier and just ducked.
He had his luggage and his mother in law in the trunk. The narrator even said: "the trunk was big enough for more than one old bag." 🤣🤣
lol@@TylerTheObserver
It's wild that all these ex-Stasi officers are basically like "Yeah we committed human rights violations and now are like 'whatever' about it."
Everybody is quite forgiving. Germans live in the present. That's why germany recovered very fast from so many political setbacks. Now it is one of the world's leading countries.
The Germans are some of the most abused people on the planet in the last 100 years.
@@kapawtaw Haha, worlds leading countries, huh?
I love these documentaries!
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I love DW documentaries too!! It's always so informative.
DW produces top level educational videos!
@@DWDocumentary ❤️ from Kenya, more please.
Don't love, question it!
Another great and classic documentary from what's fast becoming my favourite channel! Insightful, informative and educational.
Thanks for watching and for the positive feedback! We're glad you like our content. :-)
DW documentaries are absolutely top quality, extremely professional and always worth watching. RS. Canada
I visited East Germany and both east and west Berlin in December 1978 for a week when I was twenty years old American traveler. I walked through the checkpoint Charlies freely until the East German security border guard with a submachine gun at the gate asked me for my passport and questioned me for visiting East Berlin. I was nervous and discomforted while I traveled in East Berlin. I was heavily surveillance in East Germany and a few guards and police asked me for my passport and questioned me again. I visited a cigarette-smoking pub for a drink - the Pepsi, and almost all East German patrons in the bar quickly stared at me, but they quickly ignored me when two undercovered police came into the pub. Several of them drank vodka and beer, and smoked cigarettes, and quietly talked to each other. They avoided contacting me. I walked and explored the city of East Berlin in the greying sky and it looked depressing until the end of the day. I walked back to West Berlin via Checkpoint Charlie and I felt relieved and I said "freedom." West Berlin was the oasis of freedom and capitalism. I took a train to West Germany from West Berlin via East Germany. East German guard on the train checked my passport twice. Security dogs walked through beneath the train and the corridor of the train on the East Germany border before proceeded to West Germany. After arrival in West Germany, the West German border guard smiled at me after he checked through my passport and he spoke English "Welcome!" There was a huge contrast between depressed joyless dark East Germany and vividly joy brighten West Germany on Christmas week. I never forget this unique era of Stasi rule in East Germany.
are you still 20 years old. you call your self time traveler.
@@MrHowzaa no, today in the year 2021, I am over 60s. I never lie and even I abhor lies.
You mean you enjoy the Amerikaner occupation?
Didn't the soviets like Pepsi?
They even traded navy vessels for pepsi
@@cozy6308 Soviets liked Pepsi, but they love Vodka more than other beverages. Vodka was much cheaper than Pepsi and even the availability of Vodka was plentiful in Soviet markets. I remembered I was on the train on the way to West Berlin in East Germany. While the train stopped for a few minute break, I looked out through the train window and saw one drunken older-middle East German man carrying a bottle of Vodka on the train platform in the heavy industrial town in East Germany.
I's horrifying what Soviet union had done, nearly 40 years of unending horrors in Germany. I've visited the Stasi prison in Berlin in December and went to see the underground tunnels. Our tour guide was a former Stasi prisoner. What amazed me was the advanced level of technology used in security and torment. If only that engineering acumen had been used for peaceful and constructive purposes.... So glad that the Wall had fallen and the reign of terror had ended.
Guess you missed history class before east Germany was created.
You know when it was just Germany and not part of the Soviet Union.
People will never stop coming up with novel ways to scam or hurt others. It's incredible, really. Just a fraction of that brainpower toward positive pursuits would make the world a better place.
Sure and that is what Vladimir Vladimirovich wants to reestablish. Unfortunately the reign of terror is continuing, just ask the Ukrainians . BTW, Vlad was the KGB officer during that time and watched the Stasi be more thorough than the Russian KGB.
The record-keeping activity of the German governments never ceases to amaze, whether for good or evil purposes.
And still there are plenty of people who doubt or deny most or any of it ever happened.
I've read the Stasi even had the unwashed underwear of suspected dissidents in their files - trained dogs would be used to find out who was distributing underground persistence literature and pamphlets. If you're going through someone's dirty laundry, digging around for briefs or panties, it has to occur to you that you're not in the right business.
Well put. Thank you.
The Germans are fantastic record keepers. Everything was documented about WW2 except that which the natsees are most remembered for. It's almost like it never happened. Makes you wonder...
Germans are insane, obsessive record keepers, even if those records incriminate them for crimes against humanity.
YES! Been waiting for something about the Stasi
DDR citizen: Dude, I think the Stasi is listening to us
A voice from the attic: No we aren't >:(
sounds like Mutti
👍👍👍😁😁😅✌️♥️
Exact same situation here
now its Alexa
It was a cat......meow......now go back to sleep gentle comrade....I mean citizen!!😬
Another winner DW, as simple as that....just love your documentaries, pure quality! Haven't had much chance to watch them all due to the work load, need to make time because they're absolutely worth it!
Having loved history since my school days (I'm 52 now), I need to read more about the Berlin Wall, Operation Danube, East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956....have you made any videos on those events in history, if not....do you have any planned?
Much respect to you all at DW, keep up the phenomenal work! 👍🏻👌🏻👏🏻
As an exchangee with ICJA I lived in West Berlin in 1983 with the family Bohley (Baerbel) who had been exiled out of the GDR years before. They still had a very large family left in the East which I was able to visit many time over Friedrichstrasse & Checkpoint Charlie. I got into lots of trouble trying to smuggle things to the East and was for awhile banned from entry. As a Young American this was like a living classroom at the heart of the Cold War and very educational. Great years there.
The commentator said it exactly -
"Mielke's overriding priority was to keep himself and his party in power".
Go it in one - tells you everything you need to know about ANY authoritarian regime on the world, communist or other.
the RepubliCON party
@@emjay2045 a little confused I would say , just look at the raft of draconian rules the Democrats introduced to America, its looking more and more like East Germany each day
Like the dems and installed biden
Today in South Africa
@@emjay2045 They're not currently in power? At least, not at the time of you writing your ignorant comment.
Thank you. Informative. Amazing that this IMPORTANT part of history occurred in my lifetime.
Thank you for watching and taking the time to comment!
We are blessed with DW thank you for making awesome documentaries. We salute your hard work and compassion for us
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@@DWDocumentary , do you really believe in your own propaganda? You are ridiculous! You are modern followers of Gebels. I guess, Russians must liberate Germany again like in 1945.
@@АндрейФилатов-ц8ъ please justify to me a government that will not let its citizens leave its borders? In what world does that seem okay to you?
@@DW94576 , firstly, GDR let its citizens leave its border always. Relatives from the GDR freely visited their relatives in West Germany and conversely. The government GDR did not create any obstacles.
Secondly, all Western governments during past two years have established such restrictions and controls in the movement of their citizens not only outside their borders, but also within states, which were not even during the Cold War and spy mania.
Great documentary. I love the ones on modern history and politics.
I wonder if those ex-Stasi guys saw the irony in that they were able to speak freely and recount their nefarious deeds without fear of retribution, something they spent their careers denying their countrymen.
Just like the so called 'anti-fascist' ideals of today. I see now that it's just an authoritarian buzzword for anti-liberty and anti human rights.
4:04 August 13, 1961, beginning of the Berlin Wall
6:21 attempts to West Berlin
8:20 border officer escaped to West Berlin
10:24 escape tunnels
13:04 57 people escaped to West Berlin
21:00 Stasi used passport checking to collect intel
23:44 smuggle people to West Berlin
30:26 diving equipment, gliding equipment, hot ballons
34:37 Michael Bittner
Username checks out. Thanks!
Thx!
BTW that sounds a lot like current day’s China.
In the name of anti-pandemic measures.
@@davidel9466 I thought it sounded like Google
34:37 German James May
DW has been producing some great documentaries lately. The one on Afghanistan that was released a week ago is probably my favourite DW documentary now. Thanks and keep up the good work!
DW will keep you on the liberal plantation... please stay at home.
@@BlackRain_ Bestie I ain’t no liberal
@@DeVolksrepubliek I get it. You're an armchair commie!
You should get out more - and get yourself a boyfriend or something.
They definitely make some good docs. Balanced and informative.
I always call the people checking my receipt at Costco the Stazi. After watching this documentary, I can confirm that I am an idiot.
True! Lol
Yikes, hopefully didn't say that to anyone with German relatives.
You agree to it at membership businesses. Its others like Walmart where its bullshit
Nah, we have the FBI, DHS and NSA; those could be called Stasi easily.
I'm really glad you see your mistake. It's really irritating when people blurt out names like that because they don't know how hardcore they really were. My father simply keeps walking like he never heard them. It's quite funny and embarrassing at the same time. I don't go to Walmart with him anymore, one of these days they'll call the police and I don't like dealing with cops.
Remember during end of the seventies I was in transfer a few times to Poland via the DDR and visa versa.
Great docu with a lots of explainations, thank you DW !!! You are great !
The stasi’s being interviewed seem so proud of what they have done. They should have been punished for all the deaths they caused. Shame on them
this is communists
So true. It could only be because they know that they’re safe from prosecution or any kind of justice for their victims, that they discuss their crimes with such impunity.
In 1985 as 22 years old man for the first time, I was allowed to travel from communist Poland and went to West Berlin, and have a look at East Berlin from one of those step towers and the feeling of joy and freedom is still in me today, and I don't think anybody can have this kind of filling unless coming from the oppressing country.
I was stationed in West Germany 83-85 Front line combat troops.
All people are not free unless they truly forgive and work on themselves
It confuses me how a government can't see anything wrong with the way they are doing things when they have to take such huge measures to keep tens of thousands of people from escaping its control and the people fleeing were even willing to die trying to do so.
Because marxists and leftists think they are God. Thats why.
Oh the government in charge know what they're doing -- they orchestrated it after all. They only care abt their own agenda, not the people. 😔
I love all the history about the berlin wall, very interesting, especially the trains with the ghost stations etc
Listen to all these elderly Stasi agents, effectively engaged in a form of psychopathy, never faced any justice whatsoever for what they did and so proud of getting benefit for themselves by being super loyal and destroying so many lives and so many families.
They r Germans. Their victims were germs. They can forgive or forget the past and live with each other , why can't u ? For real they recovered very fast from such drawbacks.
Thanks to the clever ones, that help to prevent the meaningless commercials from disturbing my peace time viewing!
. . . Oh, & thanks to the makers of this doc. . .
. . . & Thanks to the channel for sharing - Cheers !!
i was 5 years old, and watching east berlin building the wall. i still remember asking my dad questions, about why they were putting up wire and building the first parts of the wall, all while we were both watching on the evening news.
My Mother's family all stayed in the east after the war. Why? I don't know. I have friends that I met in E. Berlin in 1981 and had kept in touch with since then...Their homes were directly on the border of E. Germany and West Berlin. In the the early days / weeks the the wall there was only barbed wire = EASY to escape. I asked them why their parents didn't escape with them when they had the chance. Their answer: This is our country and every year things are getting better and we didn't believe the wall would be permanent. Big mistake!
Do you believe them? What you think?
Well, ultimately they were correct. It is a shame that they had to spend 28 years behind it before they were vindicated…
Angela Merkel's father was a school teacher in Hamburg where she was born. Her father relocated the family to East Germany where she grew up. None of her family, including herself lifted a finger for freedom. An example of voluntary serfdom. Today's Germany is riddled with E. German sympathizers - reason why the reluctance to send tanks to Ukraine.
The furniture of East Germany and government buildings decoration of 1960 deservers a separate video telling its story.
Thank you DW for this Excellent Documentary 👍.I always wanted to know more about Stasi and their tactics.I love these kind of Cold War documentaries.Keep uploading such interesting & informative documentaries.Love from PK💚.
Thanks a lot for watching and for your positive feedback. We appreciate you taking the time to comment and are glad you like our content! :-)
My tante Regina was helped through the burgeoning wall in 1961 by my Uncle Joe who was a British soldier. Heard many stories about the post WW2 period and being separated from family and friends. So sad. Great video.
22:40 Oooh, look at that power play by Honecker during and after the handshake. Honecker clasped his hand, then jerked Mielke toward himself. Afterwards, he held his hand above him and then brought it down, clasping him by the shoulder and holding him throughout like a puppet master subtly manipulating the movements of a prop. Translation: "You are mine - I control you. I am above you, I am your superior. I own you."
He wasn't subtle with that, so it makes me wonder what particular event or something that was said led him to feel the need to remind this man to whom he belonged.
I much appreciate your observations and interpretation - hey, body lingo speaks so loud!
Fantastic and benifits knowledge for those who want to know the history of Cold War . Between east & west , like an great adventured to the past . Thanks so much for whose was making this video topics and thanks to DW . From asia ! Beloved
When Communism was so wonderful, you needed razor wire, concrete walls, and machine guns to keep the citizens/victims in.
Any extremism is dangerous. Look at the dangers of the nationalism of the Stasi people in this film.
@@albertmccready478 Nationalism is a choice
@@albertmccready478 communism is trash even in nom extreme forms.
COMMUNISM GREW OUT OF POVERTY IN THE FIRST PLACE...AFTER TWO WORLD WARS, EASTERN EUROPE WAS HANDED OVER BY THE WESTERN POWERS TO THE SOVIET UNION AS A BUFFER ZONE...READ HISTORY AMERICANS, BECAUSE PEOPLE LIKE TRUMP MAY BRING BACK COMMUNIST STYLE DICTATORSHIP...YOU ARE DREAMING OR STUPID IGNORANT IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND !!!!
@@andrasbodo oh? but Biden that's obviously a puppet isn't a form of communism/dictatorship? he can't even think for himself. who is truly our president? why do they need to hide behind him?
A pity you did not mention MARGOT Honecker and her role as the Purple Witch in all of that! She never faced justice, living peacefully in Chile, until her death in May 2016. What an awful woman!
And then she went to Hell where she belongs
yes, your right. But there's another awful woman in Chile that never been to court to face Human Rights crimes. LUCIA HIRIART de PINOCHET.
@@margritpiepes8242 Sadly there is no hell or heaven and she just died. The end.
@@growingmelancholy8374 there is hell on earth tho...Madagascar prison 😳
All top officers in Stasi should have been put behind bars for 5 to 10 years. Saying "only following orders" is a flimsy excuse for ruining tens of thousands of lives.
8:38
This officer turned out to be a hero....the guy that opened the Berlin border....never to be closed again.
What happened?
At an early night international press briefing in East Berlin, a rather ill prepared high ranking member of the polit bureau made the statement that every GDR citizen was now allowed to visit and travel to the west.
A switched on Italian journalist asked, when is this new rule taking effect?
The now famous answer....sofort, unverzueglich!
Meaning,... as of this moment, right now....
Wow, wow, wow,
the West German media went into a frenzy.....biggest news in decades!
Since every East Berliner could watch west German TV....a huge crowd appeared at the main boarder grossing, demanding to be let through to west Berlin.
After the officer in charge, Harald Jaeger, could not obtain any orders as what to do, and the crowd became almost uncontrollable, he simply decided to open the gate!!!!
And that was it.....the beginning of the end for not only the Berlin wall.....but a communist dictatorial regime and a country once called GDR.
Not a single shot fired.....just a sloppy politician and a courageous boarder officer.....was all it took to gain freedom for some 22 million people!!!
How good is that?
Cheers
from Berlin
A great book on the Stasi and their power over the average citizen was called Stasiland. Written by an Australian journalist who lived in what was East Berlin right after the wall came down. She interviewed a number of people who had stories.
It was chilling.
They literally had the power of life and death over you and people just disappeared never to be seen again.
And try to see the movie the lives of others.
It’s a German film and I think it accurately depicted life in east Germany.
I think when the wall came down there was a shock among former East Germans when that headquarters was opened up to learn that their trusted friends and neighbors were paid informants.
There was not anything funny about the Stasi.
I think in the Soviet union about 1 in 2000 citizens was an informant.
In East Germany, it was 1 in 60.
The movie The Lives of Others was chilling. The Stasi was monitoring every one.
I've seen The Lives of Others. Excellent and absorbing film.
The sort of things a weak person is capable of when given an "elevated" position is astounding.
For all their supposed hatred for the Nazis, the Stasi sure took a lot from the Nazi playbook. Those agents likely would have been very comfortable in the Gustavo. Granted, the Stasi's evils don't even approach what the the Nazis did, but their tactics seem quite similar, like in formats, and disregard for human life for just a couple.
@Sheriff Duane Dwayne Not on the Berlin Wall but you will find this one fascinating
Thank you DW.
It's disgusting the way politicians have manipulated us.
AND STILL ARE
They are human.. these behaviors are a part of human nature. Denying that by simply labeling them as "politicians" does not change facts. It only lets people naively believe they are different. Above human nature.
And still do, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Bolsonaro, Erdogan, Putin... fascists do not change their spots.
People want power and authority so badly they'll anything to get or keep it. Imagine if they acted for the good of the people
@@ohgosh5892 nationalism + authoritarianism = fascism. If anything, leftist democrats today are the authoritarians. Which party is pushing for greater and greater control of society, so that things they deem correct become mandated? That’s authoritarianism.
Fine educational documentary film. Frightening and horrific. The 60th Anniversary of the creation this disaster is in only two days. I hope many will celebrate to its final destruction and fall. Thank you DW.
It was nice seeing it fall
Hello Stephi hello how are you doing hope you’re doing okay ✅
I heard that Stasi waited for people to go to work and then enter their home's and place bag of coffee (for example) on their table...they played serious mind games!
They moved stuff around to make you think you go crazy. They also installed listening devices and heard everything you said in your own home.
It's true. The scenes of the empty offices in this documentary are in the former Stasi HQ, now the Stasi Museum, and they have quite a few examples of their covert spying in one of the rooms. The bastards hid devices in damn near everything. One family found a listening device in the top of an interior door when redecorating something like 12 years after the wall fell.
Yes or say open your mail while you were out. Brazen shit to let you know you were being watched.
@@Gartenpalme1 imagine what they could do today if they were still around.
Read once Stadia would leave used condoms under the beds of marriage couples.
Love this documentary, so much work behind it and great footages to. Loved the interviews too with stasi agent.
I liked the documentary too dear leader
I am an American scientist who in January 1980 moved to (then West) Germany for 2 years. One of my adventures while there was to drive from the city of Essen (West Germany) to Berlin, which meant I had to drive through East Germany. To make that drive, one made sure one's vehicle was in PERFECT operating condition and full of gas because, if you exited the highway, you would likely not be heard of again. Upon reaching West Berlin, I decided to visit East Berlin. To do that, one used the West Berlin subway to a certain point and, while still underground, walked over to the East Berlin subway, showed your papers to the VERY anti-social guard, and boarded an East German subway car that was VERY old (1950s?). Upon reaching the "allowed" station in East Berlin, I disembarked and walked up the stairs. I sat at an outdoor cafe on Unter den Linden and ordered a Coca Cola, which turned out to be some sort of totally fake "soft drink". After a while, I decided to take another risk and walk around some neighborhood streets (where visitors were NOT supposed to stray), and was shocked to see all the WW II damage on the outside of buildings that had never been repaired. It was an unforgettable day for me.
Thanks for your vivid and riveting account of that day. Filmic, in my imagination. Were any feelings present, or predominant during your escapade??
@@jyotifraser7439 My father was a true "edge dweller" and I most definitely inherited that risk-taker gene, as expressed in my racing cars, parachuting, etc. The predominant feelings for me during that escapade were calm excitement and hypervigilance.
fake soda? lol wonder if it was spiked with microscopic spy cameras or tracking chips🤔😉
@@selenem3384 LOL, but even so, the answer would be no since this was 1981.
Imagine what East Germany could have accomplished if they had put their talent and energy into something good?
They achieved the most out of all communist state, but yeah, had they put things in better way...
@@Gareth1892000 The most is correct but most was still third world conditions!
@@reneweisz9157 2nd world. Alabama is 3rd world
@@Gareth1892000 no they didn’t
Not much. Authoritarianism always ends up at the same place. Sadly Canada is heading towards a similar place as the old East Germany
The Stasi had files on 30% of the population. Google and Facebook have files on 100% of the population. And much much more detailed files.
I can't sleep at night thinking about it.
peoples give up the information willingly so that they can have social interaction with their long lost relatives and friend, they are free to leave, that what the freedom mean, learn the different, dont let socialis utopia BS dumb you down..
If you have seen the movie "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold" (with Richard Burton), you've seen the most accurate representation of what it was like in the East (Soviet) Zone of Berlin in the early '60s. The prevailing climate was one of fear; people were afraid of being seen talking to a Westerner or even of looking directly at them. East Berliners would look at our reflection in the glass shop windows along the street instead of looking directly at us (US soldiers). Some would even engage in a quick conversation if they were unobserved. Even as late as 1962-1963 there were work parties of young girls clearing up the rubble left from WW II behind the facade of Karl Marx Allee (previously Stalin Allee) where their propaganda films were made. The stories you've heard about life behind the Berlin Wall are true. Thank God it is gone now. These STASI officers should have been tried and sent to prison.
All gone? Looks like it's re-emerging in the US based on how some GOP ruled states appears to be governing as of lately.
@@gottagowork Ah...the "Useful Idiots" heard from.
Regarding the cleaning up of the rubble - my father went to East Germany mid 1960s and he said looking around in some areas it felt as though the war had just happened a little while ago.
@@JB-pd3ir Yes, that was certainly true in East Germany and particularly East Berlin. The contrast between East & West Germany was like night and day.
I guess this guy fled the scene!
I cannot imagine waking up to discover you are blocked from leaving your city. How evil. What was the idea of that?
As an American, who, during the Fall of the Wall, had tears in his eyes, I must say how grateful I am for this documentary.
Thanks for watching and sharing your thoughts!
@@DWDocumentary Comparing the Stasi with Google woud make an interesting video. Oh and one on converting the Berlin Wall into a low cost Anti-Immigrant Barriade, might be a big hit. (humor)
For anybody interested in this subject I'd highly recommend watching the German film 'The Lives of Others'. Not sure how to spell it in German, sorry! But it's a fascinating look into the Stasi and life in East Germany at that time. The actor who plays the main character/ Stasi agent (Ulrich Mühe RIP) was under state surveillance himself from the Stasi in real life so I imagine it must have hit really close to home. It's genuinely a phenomenal movie. I can't speak German so I had to watch it subtitled but I still found it powerful. I honestly don't even know how I ended up watching it because it wasn't marketed in my country at all. I think it won/was nominated for the best Foreign picture at the Oscars and I'm fascinated by that period of time in history so I gave it a watch randomly not expecting much. I was absolutely blown away by how good that film is.
it won the Oscar! Superb movie....
A teacher showed us that movie in high school, I love German productions! They always leave you thinking about what you saw for days after watching it, I love them!
I'd also recommend "Deutschland 83" TV series, it is about East German spy sent into West Germany during "Able Archer" exercise which back then was thought to be NATO preparation of nuclear attack on Warsaw Pact countries. What fascinating thing is.. imagining that so many East German spies infiltrate West Germany positions including university professor, culture ambassador, and even Bundeswehr officer!
@@fabiandimaspratamathesecond Or Gunther Guillaume who was Chancellor Willi Brandt's secretary
@@tszirmay Indeed! Shocking
Another great DW documentary. THANKS .
If not for the Berlin wall in 1961, East Berlin would have been a ghost town by 1965. It is a shame that never happened.
Just astonishing that nobody in power ever thought to themselves that maybe they were the problem !! If you have to keep your population imprisoned to stop them fleeing, you’re doing something very wrong
Brilliant job with this. Fascinating, informative!
DW never fails to educate viewers so we don't repeat these unbelievably scenes of separation
Idk man have you seen some of these Liberal Socialist Democrats today! Very creepy! People like AOC and Bernie Sanders have the same mindset.
Excellent Documentary into this Historical period.
Glad you liked the documentary. We upload documentaries regularly so don’t forget to subscribe. 🙂
In 1995 I took a train from Frankfurt to Berlin. I was sitting next to an elderly and very humorous German man. When we crossed over to what had been East Germany informed me that we had done so. He did not have to tell me as the contrast between what had been West Germany and East Germany was very apparent. All of a sudden the towns looked dumpy and colorless. The farms looked grim.What a sad thing to have foisted Russian stupidity on people. Now the Mongols are at the gates of the West again trying to trample under Ukraine and sap its resources for the needs of the East. Russia never has recovered from WW2.
The e Germans would paint their buildings only on the side that faced the road for appearance only as very few places were ever renovated. Very weird.
I took that train trip in 1984. It was something else. But don’t blame the Russians. They suffered too and the Germans were all too happy to lord it over each other one more time. Now it’s the unelected EU turning everything into NWO WEF BS clones. Ukraine is a dumpster fire that can be laid at the feet of Victoria Newland and the Obamabidens. No thanks…
More like they never recovered from ww1 when the fall of the zcar happend and they then had democracy for a few months could stop fighting Germany so the communist took over
This video should cause people to open their eyes as to what is happening in the world today.
I was stationed in West Berlin in the early 80s. From what I could tell, there was Soviet Communism but the East Germans still had that old Nazi flare to their form of Communism. Their uniforms, banners, marching style, & security was like the Nazis had just flipped their symbols is all. Then again, Communism & Nazism are both forms of Fascism. It was also hypocritical that the Berlin Wall was was called "anti-fascist" to keep the West out of their sector but it was really meant to enslave their own people. Being assigned to Berlin during that time period was like living in some spy novel full of danger & intrigue that you just did not want to stop reading. Many of us who were stationed there back then have very fond memories of that assignment. None of us ever hated the people themselves, just the political system that they had to live under.
It's amazing that your comment is the only one I've found so far that mentions the official name of this wall. Leftists today claim to be "anti-fascists" and speak in a similar way to the Socialist Unity Party. Instead of claiming to care about the working class though, it's more often "marginalized" or "oppressed" groups. This is no coincidence, as I've read some of today's leftists and examined their citations, and they take their ideas from the Frankfurt School, Lenin, Gramsci, and other Marxist writers. My school district paid a consultant about 1/4 million dollars and she cites Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) in her book for ideas on how to make children revolutionaries -- I mean "activist allies" If today's leftists get total control of government, they will do "anti-facism" just like the Socialist Unity Party did -- chekists and all.
Sadly, the lessons from this era seem to be lost at an ever increasing rate. To the point that the West is moving towards this oppression instead of away from it.
Brilliant documentary. One of the best i've seen on the Stasi and DDR.
Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment. We’re glad you liked the film. We upload documentaries regularly so don’t forget to subscribe.
This is the best DDR documentary I've seen.
Papers, Please: "Nimm meine Bier, bitte!"
The world is such a depressing place .. I pray and hope we can make the future less scary than the past .
Thank you DW for your great content .
Hahaha you're funny. It's clearly getting worse every day and you type smth like that...Anyway, keep praying...since doing useless things is high on your list.
Your prayers do nothing, blame Germany for there own mistakes....
While watching this documentary, I also enjoy reading the comment section which provides supplementary info of the situation 😊 I’m glad to be able to virtual meet the people who have first hand experience of east Germany 🤝
Fascinating and infuriating at the same time.
Exceptional documentary and puzzling how anyone could draw comparisons between the Berlin Wall and US/Mexico border.
Indeed. Or even Brexit: more people than ever before are trying to flee France now to get to Britain. France is in the european union.
There is no longer a wall that separates US & Mexico. But there is a tall chain link fence. Between Mexico & Guatemala. There’s a reason for border fences.
No. The US/Mexico border is meant to keep out illegal crossers as any nation with a border should. It was not created to keep Americans in.
Ridiculous that the Stasi leader, Erich Mielke, never died in prison!
West German elites did want him to reveal their secrets so he was allowed to live out his remaining years at home as sign of "compassion". Just like allowing the Hoenickers to "retire" in Chile due to Erick`s ill health. These people really never have to pay a price.
@@gertexan Still doesn't make it right. But then, there's God, so I guess I'll take His Judgement over anything else for that matter.
Thing is, I would never wish anyone in Hell.
To them, a free Germany was punishment enough.
8:39 Captions cut out suspiciously, omitting the line "We saw them as traitors, who were betraying our country." This casts what the guy says afterwards in a different light, absent that line. For shame.
@A Fels what does that even mean?
Wonderful documentary of the life in the former East Germany.
Two days ago my aunt told me a story how she visited east Berlin and after they crossed to west side she felt that even the trees were greener on the west side of the wall. She told me that east was a depressing experience for her .
Ditto.
Pretty much like this:
Citizen A spies on Citizen B
Citizen B spies on Citizen A
Citizen C spies on both A and B
And they are all spying on citizen C
After WWI and WWII...It always feels like Germany was like "We need to suffer more please!"
Their arrogance of racial superiority.
Its sad that stuff like this is no longer on TV
It is staggering to me that former Stasi personnel are not rotting in prison for life for their actions. They are sitting in their comfortable homes talking about the horrible crimes and abuses they committed under a lawless and despotic regime. I know Germany wanted a minimum stress reunification but a quick trial and execution after the wall fell would have been true justice.
Well seems fact that thousands war crime nazis after wwII ended in their houses all over the western world does not surprise you.
Should’ve had another Nuremberg trial
I'm sure the newly-unified German govt was anxious to let bygones be bygones, and let these old Stasi chekists live out their days without punishment. They had more important tasks to deal with, like reunifying a country. I'll bet the govt even made good on these guys' Stasi DDR pensions.
I find it a little eerie that the uniforms are so similar to the ones worn by the Werhmacht for about 20 years after the war ended.
Fairly certain that hardcore communists then, thought of DDR as a haven in a sea of surrounding hostile territory, while we in the west thought of DDR as an eyesore and remnants of WWII… as much in life, it’s a matter of perspective
Fascinating documentary! Thank you!
I want to see comparative methods and types of data collected by the STASI in comparison to the social media companies.
I bet you it would be absurdly similar.
@@JundunYashua you have a choice not to have a social media account
social media companies collect huge amounts of data that is processed by AI to target ads at you. No human reviews your data or cares.
The STASI would bug houses and record every conversation. If they wanted you to be a good citizen then would listen to your conversations for leverage. Like for some Gay men, they would have good looking men have a relationship with them, they would threaten to expose them for being gay if they did not play ball with the government and be a gratefully little worker bee. It's not really comparable.
The lives of others is a good moive
The Stasi would be green with envy.
great documentary thank you !!!
Thanks for watching and for the feedback!
Very nicely done, DW! The Stasi and the Berlin Wall is quite interesting niche in the history of the Cold War as well as the post-WW2 Germany. The most interesting thing that came into my mind is the increasing dependency on Stasi by the SED. From the SED's point of view, making the Stasi more powerful made sense--i.e., Stasi was the only bureaucracy fit to be tasked with establishing both internal security and tight grip over DDR's borders with BRD. However, this arrangement eventually led to the SED, hence the DDR, to become ill-equipped to face newer geopolitical challenges, such as the Helsinki Accord; the domination of the Western global finance; the rise of Gorbachev' etc. With the benefit of the hindsight, the SED-Stasi led DDR could stay viable only as long as the Cold War lasted. Or, ideally, a Cold War with indefinite duration would have been the ideal geopolitical benchmark for a country like the DDR.
How these men didn't face the noose like the Nuremberg folks did is beyond me.
It was a different world ppl became… “soft” that was considered harsh. I believe those who commit appalling atrocities to the detriment of those who are innocent or undeserving. should be subject to what I call “Trial of Own Indifference” and sentenced to “prolonged physical reeducation” which I consider torture over a period of time resulting in death. the length of which determined by the brutality and severity of the crime (Typical Murder)
@@iknow4913Agree!!
It`s amazing to see these people glee at keeping people IN the country , doesn`t tell you much does it
Crazy to think how recent this was... and unthinkable that it would happen in a place like germany when you look at it now
In 1979 I served in a special unit. We were part of a group that celebrated the 4th of July in Potsdam along with British, French and Russian liaison. We drove there in a US Army bus. When we passed Stasi they would glare at us. We passed some Soviet kasernes and these young conscripts waved and cheered. A Soviet officer was fascinated with my wife, a professional actress. I spent most of the time translating.
Word has it that Texas legislators and judges are studying the Stasi methods.
Stop eating lead paint chips.
Could it be the 3 letter agencies like we have today: FBI CIA ABC CBS.....??