That's how the system worked. Little mistakes were noted. My father grew up in the GDR and always wanted to study Eletrical Engineering. To get the study place he had to serve for 3 years at the military. He refused and was not allowed to study it in the end.
@Buttrape Bill No. Young men with very good grades in school and the wish to study engineering (electrical, telecommunications, it...) or medicine (expensive study places) were often urged to serve for three years or longer in the best case in the military. The compulsary military service in the GDR included 18 months of serving. And my father was one of these young men. But he refused and studied mechanical engineering in Dresden. Another funny story: after the Grundstudium (like a bachelor/undergraduate studies, literally 'basic studies') he had to choose his specialization and one of his professors, who was "in the party", wanted him to study nuclear engineering because of the "thousands of opportunities in the nuclear segment of the Eastern bloc". This time he didn't refused and got a scholarship, but then tschernobyl happened and he switched to general mechanical engineering :D
@Anton Boludo Interesting. I am obviously german, but i didn't see the GDR with my own eyes, all of my perception of this time is based on stories my family telled me. Im originally from the Berlin region, but came back to my fathers student city. Greetings from Dresden :)
I've never understood if the student's card is marked for the comment about inhumane treatment or whether Wiesler identifies him as clearly being the brightest in the class (he's the only one who notices the 'suspect' is telling the same identical story and is also not afraid of challenging Wiesler), thus making him potentially the most useful to the Stasi, perhaps with a little mental conditioning before taking up service...
Imagine what it was like for people born in Eastern Germany during the 1920s. They had to live through the Weimar Republic, the Hitler Regime and then the Stalin Regime. By the time Germany was reunited, these people were already old and no doubt were extremely disoriented.
@@whotelakecity2001 I am Canadian. I was in West Berlin as a summer intern during the summer of 1984. I even pretended to be an East Berliner trying to flee to the West. The border guards actually came down from their tower to ask me what I was doing. I showed them my day pass and my Canadian passport. I played innocent. They just thought I was a Canadian Lumberjack, LMAO. My German father, who was a POW in WWII on the Eastern Front, correctly said "What were you doing? They could have shot you to death!". I took a calculated risk...
@@garyha2650 I believe RawhideProductions1 is simply refering to the objective "facts" presented by this movie. A knife is only an evil tool, if it is used for evil.
@@garyha2650 logic is not governed by ethics. There is no good or evil logic. It merely is. Could an person of an "evil" doctrine be logical? Absolutely. That is what OP was referring to. The Stasi man, who we associate with evil, is being as logical as one can be...which is subconciously viewed as even more evil
It’s scary that he put a mark on the students name that showed sympathy. East Germany was one of the most repressive places on earth. The Stazi had tens of thousands of informants even family members were forced to spy on loved ones.
Yeah, they tried to bring this shit back when the introduce Covid restrictions and requesting neighbour to rat on eachother if they saw more then 8 people gathering in a h family home. Sick who followed this protocol based on a man made flu for the sale of mass vaccines. Some many people easily blind and willing to be a Norderney stasi
As a former handler and processor of detainees, the idea that only guilty people make a fuss of being held is total bulls#!t. People will react in very different ways to stress, and even the technique of repeating the same question can make a person falsely incriminate themselves. Sleep deprivation has mixed results, but the person being questioned might also falsely incriminate themselves out of confusion or delirium. This scene is especially maddening because the methods used are ineffective at best.
To me, this scene isn't trying to make the point that such interrogation methods are effective; rather it's showing us Wiesler's character: a by-the-book, loyal, and ruthless Stasi operator. The rest of the story deals with his character arc. Indeed there are parts of the movie that implicitly criticize such "scientific" methods of interrogation.
you where never trained in torture so you have no idea what you are talking about. the Stasi was not a little local police station. it was an intelligence service and they usually got the information they wanted. it doesn't matter if someone is confused or is telling nonsense. information can be cross checked later.
@@swunt10 They weren't looking for the truth; they were looking for the name of the next guy to bring in to justify their budget. Forty-hour interrogation sessions did this.
I would say it is totally different to deal with detainees, that were detained for crossing a border (I am assuming you are talking about those detainees) and how they act/react and the people who were interrogated by the communist secret service. ANy interrogation like the one in the movie could lead not only to your own arrest but also to a punishment of different degrees to your family and loved ones. That is why people who would be detained and interrogated would be more cautious and not combative or argumentative. They had no place to go to complain, they could not file some lawsuit or call cops. They were at mercy of the regime and its servants, who were often cruel, conniving, and lacked any sympathy. Some were right out enjoying, to inflict emotional and physical pain, and no one would stop them. You have no idea what it means to live like that.
Don't forget the historical setting either. It is from communist East-Germany, a ruthless oppressive dictatorship, where Stasi was meant to be feared first and foremost. It was never about actual results, and they gladly incriminated a hundred innicent to catch one who was actually guilty. After all, where would have those innocents gone to complain?
These methods of surveillance and interrogation are so dated. They're fascinating from a historical POV but quaint by our standards. Things are far more advanced today this is like comparing football players from 1960 to football players today.
Really? CIA blacksites regularly use sleep deprivation, waterboarding, beatings, rectal feedings, etc., to coerce confessions, and they insist that it's effective (if they admitted that they were ineffective, they would have to explain why they still do it). They may be utterly immoral and often ineffective, but today's intelligence agencies still use such methods.
Secret services are supposed to assist and not to destroy. Some were trained to assist and infact not all assisted. I was often complimented for helping.
@@KBenKL Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (abbr. "MfS", engl. "Ministry for State Security") or colloquially called "Stasi" (Staatssicherheit, engl. "State-Security"), was the domestic intelligence agency of the GDR, tasked with spying on its own population, finding and implicating dissidents, and breaking-up and demoralizing opposition to the regime (ger. "Zersetzung" engl. literally "decomposition" or more aptly "subversion"). All around textbook authoritarianism with heavy use of psychological destruction of free-thinking individuals
I think if you look up definition of socialism, this is not it. Just like definition of free market capitalist society does not include trilions of corporate welfare and bailouts but that still happens in real life.
Why? If it's the vile interrogation methods, do you realise even more vile methods were used, in countries championing capitalism. Evil is evil. Evil as are ideologies, is a human construct. A system or an ideology is comprised of people. People who are capable of evil..
@@Joggi98 Can anyone confirm if such techniques are contained in "Mein Kampf"? I'm not nazi, OR communist, I deplore them BOTH equally. I just find it unbearable that the elites have dragged the political spectrum so far left, that even the local chess club is a borderline proscribed extreme right wing organisation. They use the wholly justified fear of the extreme right to push the frightened masses towards the extreme left. The state control of civil liberties is already well under way.
@@salyluz6535 Correct. It costs time and effort to produce something. Al that time and effort in freeware and libre products comes from the hours people put into other (paid) jobs and tributes/donations from users.
Perfect interrogation. Not too abusive, so the interrogated person won't point to a random person just to stop it. No permanent damage done to him either. Beautiful.
Alex Amerling This film is about the Communist East German state. The kind that the Left in the United States would ultimately implement if given the opportunity.
![Diggy Graves - Red Vineyard [Official Lyric Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/8Ro085T0mnQ/mqdefault.jpg)
The way he marks the guy on his paper who said it was inhumane to keep them awake for forty hours is priceless
That's how the system worked. Little mistakes were noted. My father grew up in the GDR and always wanted to study Eletrical Engineering. To get the study place he had to serve for 3 years at the military. He refused and was not allowed to study it in the end.
@Buttrape Bill No. Young men with very good grades in school and the wish to study engineering (electrical, telecommunications, it...) or medicine (expensive study places) were often urged to serve for three years or longer in the best case in the military. The compulsary military service in the GDR included 18 months of serving. And my father was one of these young men. But he refused and studied mechanical engineering in Dresden. Another funny story: after the Grundstudium (like a bachelor/undergraduate studies, literally 'basic studies') he had to choose his specialization and one of his professors, who was "in the party", wanted him to study nuclear engineering because of the "thousands of opportunities in the nuclear segment of the Eastern bloc". This time he didn't refused and got a scholarship, but then tschernobyl happened and he switched to general mechanical engineering :D
@Anton Boludo Interesting. I am obviously german, but i didn't see the GDR with my own eyes, all of my perception of this time is based on stories my family telled me. Im originally from the Berlin region, but came back to my fathers student city. Greetings from Dresden :)
I've never understood if the student's card is marked for the comment about inhumane treatment or whether Wiesler identifies him as clearly being the brightest in the class (he's the only one who notices the 'suspect' is telling the same identical story and is also not afraid of challenging Wiesler), thus making him potentially the most useful to the Stasi, perhaps with a little mental conditioning before taking up service...
@@alunjones685 no, it is because he might be weak and thus a threat to the system
"The Lives of Others"....a great film!
This title had more than one meaning.
The ending was priceless.
Just for thinking that thought about our humanistic system is enough to put you in prison.- outstanding line of the movie, and true.
My God, Europe has really seen the extreme of both right and left...
Imagine what it was like for people born in Eastern Germany during the 1920s. They had to live through the Weimar Republic, the Hitler Regime and then the Stalin Regime. By the time Germany was reunited, these people were already old and no doubt were extremely disoriented.
@@antonboludo8886 Many still lived decent lives or so they believed.
You get the best of both worlds🎶
@@fdafsdfasgs I loved East Germany. The ambiance was surreal.Of course I was a foreigner and was not trapped there.
@@antonboludo8886 And it was still recognizably German.
How different Wiesler is by the end of the film...
Absolutely CHILLING.
“The Lives of Others” coming to a neighborhood near you!
I've lived in Das Leben der Anderen for over five years now.
The algorythm is watching ...
@@whotelakecity2001 I am Canadian. I was in West Berlin as a summer intern during the summer of 1984. I even pretended to be an East Berliner trying to flee to the West.
The border guards actually came down from their tower to ask me what I was doing. I showed them my day pass and my Canadian passport. I played innocent.
They just thought I was a Canadian Lumberjack, LMAO.
My German father, who was a POW in WWII on the Eastern Front, correctly said "What were you doing? They could have shot you to death!".
I took a calculated risk...
@@antonboludo8886 Did you give yourself the last name Boludo or that is your actual last name? lol
@@whotelakecity2001 Of course not. I have been to Argentina many times.
It is a term of endearment there, LMAO!
"Che , Boludo!" 🤣
Sound logic presented logically can be terrifying.
Evil calmly misrepresented as sound logic can be terrifying
@@garyha2650 I believe RawhideProductions1 is simply refering to the objective "facts" presented by this movie. A knife is only an evil tool, if it is used for evil.
@@garyha2650 logic is not governed by ethics. There is no good or evil logic. It merely is.
Could an person of an "evil" doctrine be logical? Absolutely. That is what OP was referring to.
The Stasi man, who we associate with evil, is being as logical as one can be...which is subconciously viewed as even more evil
@@AN-999 11 months later, I now see evil as the test team, it's job is to expose flaws, weaknesses to make us better
He shouldn’t have asked that. That little mark he made on his class map, likely spells trouble… :(
good observation
For future reference...
It’s scary that he put a mark on the students name that showed sympathy. East Germany was one of the most repressive places on earth. The Stazi had tens of thousands of informants even family members were forced to spy on loved ones.
Now the Stasi is ruling the bloody EU
@@fckeu88They are not
@@NoName-hg6cc Cia and Stasi.
@@fckeu88 Absolutely no
Yeah, they tried to bring this shit back when the introduce Covid restrictions and requesting neighbour to rat on eachother if they saw more then 8 people gathering in a h family home. Sick who followed this protocol based on a man made flu for the sale of mass vaccines. Some many people easily blind and willing to be a Norderney stasi
Rip Ulrich Mühe
As a former handler and processor of detainees, the idea that only guilty people make a fuss of being held is total bulls#!t. People will react in very different ways to stress, and even the technique of repeating the same question can make a person falsely incriminate themselves. Sleep deprivation has mixed results, but the person being questioned might also falsely incriminate themselves out of confusion or delirium. This scene is especially maddening because the methods used are ineffective at best.
To me, this scene isn't trying to make the point that such interrogation methods are effective; rather it's showing us Wiesler's character: a by-the-book, loyal, and ruthless Stasi operator. The rest of the story deals with his character arc.
Indeed there are parts of the movie that implicitly criticize such "scientific" methods of interrogation.
you where never trained in torture so you have no idea what you are talking about. the Stasi was not a little local police station. it was an intelligence service and they usually got the information they wanted. it doesn't matter if someone is confused or is telling nonsense. information can be cross checked later.
@@swunt10 They weren't looking for the truth; they were looking for the name of the next guy to bring in to justify their budget. Forty-hour interrogation sessions did this.
I would say it is totally different to deal with detainees, that were detained for crossing a border (I am assuming you are talking about those detainees) and how they act/react and the people who were interrogated by the communist secret service. ANy interrogation like the one in the movie could lead not only to your own arrest but also to a punishment of different degrees to your family and loved ones. That is why people who would be detained and interrogated would be more cautious and not combative or argumentative. They had no place to go to complain, they could not file some lawsuit or call cops. They were at mercy of the regime and its servants, who were often cruel, conniving, and lacked any sympathy. Some were right out enjoying, to inflict emotional and physical pain, and no one would stop them. You have no idea what it means to live like that.
Don't forget the historical setting either. It is from communist East-Germany, a ruthless oppressive dictatorship, where Stasi was meant to be feared first and foremost. It was never about actual results, and they gladly incriminated a hundred innicent to catch one who was actually guilty. After all, where would have those innocents gone to complain?
Brilliant movie!
Arschloch.. Das ist Qual, aber diese Szene is so ein Meisterwerk.
*Folter
@@Apxllxn: Danke.
What a good movie!
These methods of surveillance and interrogation are so dated. They're fascinating from a historical POV but quaint by our standards. Things are far more advanced today this is like comparing football players from 1960 to football players today.
Quiant or not, insights provided through such historical analysis is always incredibly useful.
Really? CIA blacksites regularly use sleep deprivation, waterboarding, beatings, rectal feedings, etc., to coerce confessions, and they insist that it's effective (if they admitted that they were ineffective, they would have to explain why they still do it). They may be utterly immoral and often ineffective, but today's intelligence agencies still use such methods.
Booing at the Stasi would get one in trouble
It shared some similarities with the Reid technique.
Secret services are supposed to assist and not to destroy. Some were trained to assist and infact not all assisted. I was often complimented for helping.
Look up the article on Zersetzung on the English Wikipedia
They all assist the current government
The StaSi would have solved the "mystery" of 9/11 in a fortnight...
...and provided a dozen of highly probable narratives for every occasion.
@@KBenKL Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (abbr. "MfS", engl. "Ministry for State Security") or colloquially called "Stasi" (Staatssicherheit, engl. "State-Security"), was the domestic intelligence agency of the GDR, tasked with spying on its own population, finding and implicating dissidents, and breaking-up and demoralizing opposition to the regime (ger. "Zersetzung" engl. literally "decomposition" or more aptly "subversion"). All around textbook authoritarianism with heavy use of psychological destruction of free-thinking individuals
They would have solved the murder of Olof Palme as well.
Man, do I like how effective this is!
These socilaists of east germany hated fascism so much that they became exactly like fascists.
Grubitz was worse than Wiesler.
Qu'est-ce qui se trame ?
I wish i could graduate from that kind of school.
one x for you!
Name? Dienstgrad? Abteilung?
The advertising on this forum has reached absurd levels.
And now they wonder why there is no food to eat? These people could have found healthy work growing fruit.
Socialism is just like national-socialism
I think if you look up definition of socialism, this is not it. Just like definition of free market capitalist society does not include trilions of corporate welfare and bailouts but that still happens in real life.
A misconception accepted and repeated by right-wingers.
Absolutely zero in common, besides a name in the title.
@@whotelakecity2001 it is capitalism all right, but it's certainly not free market. these two aren't the same concept.
That's why I don't like communism!
Why?
If it's the vile interrogation methods, do you realise even more vile methods were used, in countries championing capitalism.
Evil is evil. Evil as are ideologies, is a human construct. A system or an ideology is comprised of people. People who are capable of evil..
@@AN-999 This
I think you will find no chapter on enhanced interrogation tactics in Das Kapital
@@Joggi98 Can anyone confirm if such techniques are contained in "Mein Kampf"?
I'm not nazi, OR communist, I deplore them BOTH equally. I just find it unbearable that the elites have dragged the political spectrum so far left, that even the local chess club is a borderline proscribed extreme right wing organisation. They use the wholly justified fear of the extreme right to push the frightened masses towards the extreme left. The state control of civil liberties is already well under way.
@@AN-999 and yet in these evil "countries championing capitalism" it usually isn't a crime to leave the country
Quiro oir en español
Opposing socialism is the right thing to do.
You ever hear about Guantanamo Bay? And do you really think free healthcare and university equals oppression?
@@JasonPikachu Nothing is free. It's foolishness like that that brings the world to ruin. Opposing socialism is the right thing to do.
@FreeHomeBrew: If nothing is free, then that includes homebrew.
@@salyluz6535 Correct. It costs time and effort to produce something. Al that time and effort in freeware and libre products comes from the hours people put into other (paid) jobs and tributes/donations from users.
Nah, opposing fascism is.
I'm number 666 to like this?? Ho Ho ohhh boy that's not good. Great movie though
Perfect interrogation. Not too abusive, so the interrogated person won't point to a random person just to stop it. No permanent damage done to him either. Beautiful.
Tons of damage is done
You need to study the effects of sleep deprevation and emotional/mental torture if you think there was no damage done.
Deniz Tahsin Deniz
USA 2023
That's what it's gonna be like under Obama soon.
you could only be wrong .
You mean under Trumpolini?
Shut up communist pig. Get your libtard ass out of my country!!
+BenchPressManiac How about you get the hell out? No need for white supremacists in this country. Nazi fuck.
Alex Amerling This film is about the Communist East German state. The kind that the Left in the United States would ultimately implement if given the opportunity.
Westpropaganda!
@@christianamericandominican2470 both 😉
Sadly it was the Truth for MILLIONS of Germans