Cold war video, transit to West Berlin.

[adam2]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUJ7GbxWGoM

interesting old official film explaining the procedure for transiting East Germany by road in order to reach West Berlin.

[BritDownUnder]

All very interesting. I never went to the Eastern bloc when Communism was around. A good day when that system was gone from Europe. Unfortunately a lot of people educated in the 1960s thought it was OK and the UK is paying the price for this to this day.

[adam2]

All very interesting. I never went to the Eastern bloc when Communism was around. A good day when that system was gone from Europe. Unfortunately a lot of people educated in the 1960s thought it was OK and the UK is paying the price for this to this day.

What ! do you mean that "peace studies" was russian/communist propaganda, surely not !
Or even that "democratic" was code for communist dictatorship as in GDR or German democratic republic, meaning the bit under russian control.
At school in peace studies I enquired as to the purpose of the berlin wall "it it to keep them in, or to keep us out ?" The teacher explained that it was a barrier to keep out the fascists, that being the term applied to the West. Otherwise the workers paradise would be overrun by refugees from the fascist nations.
It seems that russia is STILL fighting for peace and democracy by sending incendiary bombs to the fascists, and by liberating Ukraine from fascists.

[BritDownUnder]

Yes the words "Anti-fascist Protection Barrier" (or their German equivalents) name for the Iron Curtain or Inner German Border still ring through the ages.

Now we have special military operations, Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea and quite a few other cliched names.

[Mark]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUJ7GbxWGoM

interesting old official film explaining the procedure for transiting East Germany by road in order to reach West Berlin.

Fascinating video - difficult to believe, but back when I was a young and fairly adventurous person, I hitched along that transit road (plus 2 mates) just before the wall came down.

We were care-free (and fairly ignorant), so just stood by the road just outside Helmstadt with our thumbs out..., after a good few hours, a West Berliner stopped and took the 3 of us, plus backpacks and a tent into his car. We had passports of course, but certainly wouldn't have had any travel packs - we must have got through security OK... My main memory was the helicopters constantly going up and down above the road. Their worry was that a W. German car might stop and an E. German would jump in the boot....

The driver was a bit mad. Once we got through the checkpoint into W. Berlin, he promptly got a big fat joint out of the glove box and floored the pedal... Remember him saying 'Ah, but in West Berlin, anything goes.....' or something similar...
And it was like that - very much a party place in those days....