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Milkman

I don't think much of this, but here is an original news report:

Loy Toy

Well it just seems like this event happened yesterday...........How time flies!

I know a lot of former West Germans who are still pissed off about the wall coming down though.

Milkman

^ Yes, the Western Germans had to pay for it.

Here's another video - a history:

Sdigit

I remember their fat arsed Chancellor (forgot his name) told the German people that Germany would only need two years to economically reccover from the reunification
was it Helmut Cole?

Milkman

^ forgive the awful soundtrack in the background.

Here's another new one:

Milkman

A documentary:

panama hat

No, and he didn't play for Arsenal or Tottenham.

Helmut Kohl . . . Kohl is another word for Kraut in German . . . Apt!



A momentous thing to have happened . . . from something that never should have occurred in the first place . . . Superpower games

Takeovers

Also called The Black Giant because he is not only wide but high as well.

mad_dog

BillyBobThai

Had it not been for the Brits and Americans, there would have been no Berlin wall. Under Harry Truman and Churchill, the Russians were forced to conceed to an East and West Germany, and thus the wall. Had not the Americans left many thousands of tanks in Germany at the end of the war, to deter the Russians, most if not all of Europe would have become part of the USSR. The German people finally saw that capitalism and not communism, was they way to better future and took to the streets.

Milkman

I read a very interesting historical account of this.

British General Montgomery and US General Patton were heading east towards Berlin very quickly. The German troops fell apart and were just fleeing back east. The Brits and Americans were moving east at full speed - until:

They ran out of gasoline. The had to basically halt, and wait to be supplied with more gasoline. Then it was a decision between Montgomery or Patton, which one of them would get the gasoline.

This allowed the Soviet Red Army to move as far west as they did.

__________________
Military men are dumb, stupid animals, to be used as pawns for foreign policy

Takeovers

That's not what I heard. There was an agreement on the splitting up of areas between the three allies Russia, US and UK. So they stopped to let Russia occupy their part mainly. In the meantime the US moved into Peenemünde to get the V2 and the scientists who had developed it. That was a bigger concern for them than reaching Berlin, that would be shared according to plan anyway.

Plus the minor twist the US and UK let France in on the club of winners and gave them a part of their areas.

mad_dog

Had Stalin not opened the Eastern front the Britain would have been crushed. The USSR fought a bloody war and lost millions of lives to defeat the Nazis. Americas paltry European force was irelevant compared to Russia's struggle. The US did help win the war by supplying TNT and converting some civilian factories to supply Britain which was being choked under seige. The USSR won WW2 in battle while America took credit for the defeat of the Nazis. And then only allowed white soldiers to participate in the symbolic liberation of Paris (Rather ironic that they had been fighting a racial supremacist ideology and perhaps himts to the idea that if the Nazis had won they would be America's key anti Communist front in Europe...)

__________________
They champion falsehood, support the butcher against the victim, the oppressor against the innocent child. May God mete them the punishment they deserve

Fabian

That's the more historically correct version.


The fall of the Berlin wall, what a happy moment was it. Being born in West Berlin and having half of my mother's family in the east part of the city, we went to Berlin on the 10th of november.

We paid dearly for the reunification but even though a lot of the east germans are ungrateful bastards I still think it is money well spent.

Milkman

Thanks for the correction, both poster.

Fabian

I'm very curious (as an ignorant non-German).

Did East Germans accept the "Soviet System?"

What I mean is, German before 1945+ was anti-communist under Hitler, correct?

Then East German became "communized."

How did East German go from National Socialism to Communism, Soviet Style?

Because they were defeated? Or, they were actually apolitical?

Excuse my ignorance.

And when you say you were born in West Berlin but many of your family members were in the Eastern area, were you able to visit, say, for a few hours or a day?

Or, was it impossible.

Pardong the ignorance.

BillyBobThai

I have a friend to this day, who was born in west Berlin in 1953, still harbors ill feeling toward the American government to this day. Had it not been for the U.S. and Britian, he might have starved to death. We will never see eye to eye on this point.

Takeovers

Hi Milkman

Germany always had a strong left. Under the Nazis they had to go into hiding like any independent political force.

There were actually the Communists and the Social Democrats as strong groupings. When the Soviets formed the east German DDR they forcibly united the two groups into the SED, meaning Socialist Unity Party of Germany that ruled the DDR.

In free democratic elections this party could not have won any election. The way elections were run however the thrilling question about the outcome woud be if the SED would get 99,86% or 99,93% of the vote.

They had to build the wall eventually because they were losing all the educated and capable people going to the west. That drain would have caused the DDR to collapse.

To survive people in the DDR had to be apolitical and to get ahead and into leading positions they had to join the SED. Without that their children were often even denied higher education.

Before reunification the DDR like most of the Communist Block Countries were close to economical collapse. Unfortunately many in the East are not aware of that or deny it. Many elderly lost their jobs and say now "Well at least there was no unemployment then. So not everything was bad."

At the time of reunification there was a number of left wing politicians in the West who whould have liked to avoid reunification and rather start a new socialist experiment in the East. But the large majority of the people in the East did not want this.

And today even if there are many negative comments about the situation from almost anybody, very few would actually like to go back and change it all.

Milkman

^ Thanks, Takeovers.

I was born in 1970 and took an interest in the entire concept of the Berlin Wall and the "Iron Curtain" growing up.

E. and W. Berlin was especially intriguing - and strange. West Berlin was like a little island, surround by East Germany.

Another ignorant question.

To go from West Berlin, through East Germany to West Berlin,

you took a train, right? So, there was a train track line available, and technically off-limits to the East German official and of course citizens, correct?

Flying into West Berlin was impossible correct (for a plane to land)?

panama hat

Incorrect.

Milkman

Thanks for the correction.

I did recall in school in Jr. High, my teacher saying there are 3 flight paths that were allowed from the West to reach Berlin.

But I wasn't sure.

If planse to land and take off, Berlin must have been bigger than my perception of how small it was.

I'll check the square Km of West Berlin, now.