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Willem Melching

Historian Willem has already written several books about the great european history. He mainly specializes in the history of Germany. Since the berlin wall is a specific piece of history in germany, Melching explains among other things how things went in the time of the wall. 

In 1961 the Berlin wall suddenly appears there. About 60 kilometers of wall is being built, with another 100 kilometers of fencing being added. This Berlin wall separates the East from the West in Berlin. The wall is being perfected further and further: from alarm systems to booby traps and hundreds of watchtowers. It is made impossible for people to escape. The East has a deteriorated economy and is lagging behind the prosperity of the West. The oppression in the East is also not tender. People flee en masse to the West for these various reasons...

Divided Berlin

The capital Berlin is located in the middle of East Germany and not on the border from east to west. That city is no longer German territory after the Second World War. That area was then divided among the French, the Americans, the English and the Russians. They all got a piece of the area, which they then controlled. They agreed that there would be no border controls between the east and the west of Berlin. You couldn't easily cross the normal border, but you could still go from one side to the other side of Berlin by train, for example. That's how many people left East Berlin. They then arrived in West Berlin and then reported to the counter as a refugee. At this point they were sent to go on the plane to West Germany. Ironic, since they are not refugees, but countrymen. They are fellow countrymen who accidentally ended up on the wrong side of the iron curtain. These people also did not have to go through difficult procedures. They received a small check and then they received a passport and bag of money. Those people were given a job again within a week, as they were often highly educated. People were delighted with these jobs, because the lack of prosperity in East Germany was one of the reasons that they had fled at all.

Run from the East

People walked away from East-Germany. Over more than ten thousand people walked away at the same time. When the wall was built in august 1961, there were almost three million people of a population of seventeen million people. To make matters even worse, it was mainly the people with a high education who took off. These are actually the people who have to build the country and they were desperately needed after the war. But it was those people who ran away because they were dissatisfied.

 

The border

The East German government closed the border between East and West Germany very early in 1952. From that moment on you can see the beginning of the so-called "iron curtain", which meant the separation between the capitalist "West" and the communist "Eastern bloc".

 

The border in Berlin was open at first, because it was so agreed. After a while there were a few checks here and there, but that was actually not allowed. In 1961 the leader of East Germany, Walter Olbricht, goes to the Soviets. There he tells Soviet politician Khrushchev that things are no longer going on and that the country is about to collapse. The idea arose to close that line. The Soviets were not immediately ready to start with this idea as they did not know how the Americans would react to this. So the Soviets thought the Americans would mind. In contrast, the Americans did not mind this at all. They feared a war if it went on like this with East Germany, because they were afraid that if the GDR collapsed they would not pick it up and a war broke out. The Soviets had conquered East Germany after they had defeated Hitler and of course they would not just give up.

The ignorant West

President Kennedy of America gives all kinds of signals and speeches in which he shows that he does not want a war. He expressly states that he will only start a war if West Berlin is harassed. The Russians from the east listen carefully to his words and decide that it is nevertheless a good idea to lock off the GDR. They estimate that Kennedy will approve of this since they will not harm the West. The East Germans carry out the plan of the wall. They started to build with barbed wire and then with the first walls. Meanwhile, the West German secret service had no idea what was going on in the East.

 

West German politics have no idea what to do with the wall. They notice that the construction of the wall makes the GDR a lot more stable because people can't leave. The West Germans then realize that they are better at getting closer, so that they can get along better. The big man who manages that is former Chancellor Willy Brandt. He manages to get a balance in the relationships between the West and the East. He ensures that family reunions can take place or that people can go on a visit. Here the GDR had to make concessions, because they still want to be taken seriously and would rather not have a war with the West. Then you see that such a dictatorship undermines itself.

 

The 'good' West

It was all less bad for West Berlin than for the people who were trapped in East Berlin. The "Wessies", as the people from West Berlin are called, did not want to go east anyway. On the other hand, the "Ossies", the people from East Berlin, wanted to go to the West. The first years were therefore quite intense. Families were divorced and had to live with uncertainty for years. No one had a solution for this situation. Things like public transportation, sewerage, electricity were all cut off.

 

Flee

After 1970 there were people who pretended to flee, so that they ended up in prison and hopefully would be redeemed by the West. The GDR government always needed money. So they sold people from the prison to the West for large amounts. The West could redeem a normal worker for around twenty thousand euros. Someone with a higher status such as a doctor would  cost around forty thousand euros.

 

At the beginning there were quite a lot of people trying to flee. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. After a while, nobody tried it anymore. You rarely saw it around the 80s, because people knew how difficult it was. Many people died while fleeing and others were taken prisoner. These prison sentences varied from three to eight years. The longer sentences were given to people who helped others escape or who had fake papers with them, for example.

 

The fall

After the fall of the wall it continued to be hard for East Germany. They had a weak economy and a high unemployment rate of around 25 to 30 percent in some regions. Now thirty years later, it certainly has improved, but the level of prosperity in the East is still twenty percent behind the West. This remains a major frustration.

 

Nowadays, you can still see from the older people in Berlin whether they come from East Berlin or from West Berlin. Someone with bad teeth often comes from the East, because they used to have very poor health care. This is another sign of the lack of prosperity in the GDR. In addition, you often also see a difference in the way people interact and in their clothing. They often stand out for their modesty and expectancy.

The wall of Trump

The plans for the wall of Trump bring back a bit of history. Yet it is not the same as the Berlin wall. The Berlin wall had to do with an ideological conflict between capitalism and communism, and this is not the case with the Trump wall between America and Mexico. On the other hand, the people of Mexico do not just leave their country. They are socially and economically desperate. In the end it is impossible to build a wall there. If you consider how long the wall has only been in a city like Berlin, you can imagine that a wall between two large countries such as America and Mexico is not realistic.

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