Great video - thank you. I served at RAF Gutersloh from 80-84 and drove once along the military corridor. I did drive through ‘C’ and remember the ‘Do not speak to any East German police/military and if if looks like you are to, you are to get back into your car, lock it and demand the presence of a Soviet Officer’ briefing at the West Berlin Olympic Stadium. I was searching for a parking slot in the East and found one by an ornate building. Having unloaded 2 push chairs, 2 kids and a wife, I see a DDR Policeman making a beeline for us. I had 2 options: throw bodies and push chairs into the car, OR see what he wanted. I chose the latter! He saluted, I returned, and he politely told me I had parked in the slot reserved for judges at the court house but if I could be quick there was an open slot the other side of the building. I often chuckle what would had happened if I had taken the first and official option. We would have sat there for hours waiting for a Soviet Officer and he would have relayed the Policeman’s message with the add on that that slot was now no longer available. Keep it up.
A commonsense approach; I found that always worked on my travels in the DDR and West Berlin in the 1980s. I never encountered aggressive or hostile Volkspolizei or Grenztruppen, but perhaps that was because I was a civilian.
I find alot of the things that lead to so much tension was the American Army's or political big wigs arrogance to not submit I.D. papers when stopped by VolksPolizei, Like the time VolksPolizei pulled over that one politician for something and next thing you know there's tanks from both sides facing off, I mean how hard is it to show your I.D.? You know it reminds me of those Sovereign Citizen loonies, Much the same attitudes there except the diffrence is the previous mentioned had some right in their standing where as them Sovereign Citizens are just loonies trying to justify minor slights and have little to no standing against Police 🤣.
I traveled in August 1988, as a young 18-year-old backpacker from Australia, from Frankfurt to Berlin by overnight train. As I arrived at the East German border, the guards came on the train and told me to move to another carriage that would continue to Berlin. My memory was that they were really rude and always shouting. I stayed at the youth hostel in Berlin and made the trip through Checkpoint Charlie for the day into East Berlin with a group of travelers from the hostel. Like everyone else, I was ripped off at the border by having to exchange West German Deutsche Marks for East German Deutsch Marks at a 1:1 exchange rate, which everyone knew was a joke. I have many memories of the trip into East Berlin, but one thing that has stuck in my mind was all the posters showing the glorious Soviet Army leaving Afghanistan and how they were victorious. West Berlin was so weird, with 'the wall' blocking many streets. I remember The Reichstag still being a burnt-out shell left after the end of the war, the Soviet memorial near the Brandenburg Gates being cordoned off by the police with guard dogs, and many VW transit vans parked near the wall with police in riot gear in the back. I did spend a good hour chatting with an MP from the British Army near one of the observation posts that you could look over the wall. Thank you for your video. Just thought I would like to share my memories.
Hi Aussie! Your memories deceive you a bit there, I mean, that's not unusual after 30+ years! 😆 The Reichstag building was not a burnt out shell anymore in 1988, it was rebuilt (albeit in a much less fancy way than before) from 1961 to 1971 on behalf of the West German government. It housed a very large parliament room which would have been more than sufficient to seat all MP's of a reunified Germany. After the Four Power Agreement on Berlin in 1971, no parliamentary sessions of the West German Bundestag could be held there anymore (in the years prior, attempts to hold Federal Presidential elections and parliamentary sessions were often disturbed by the Soviet Authorities with sonic booms by low passing fighter jets). After 1971, only minor parliamentary sessions could be held there, such as parliamentary groups. It also housed an exhibition "Questions on German history" and the huge lawn in front of the building became an occasional open air concert venue (e.g. Barclay James Harvest, Michael Jackson and others). The Soviet War memorial near Brandenburg gate was actually on a little patch of then-Soviet territory, so it was guarded by Soviet soldiers and off limits to anyone, hence it being cordoned off. The Police riot vans (West Berlin Police used Mercedes-Benz vans, the infamous and usually well dented and battle scarred "tubs" or coloquially called "six packs" as they seated 6 cops in riot gear) would probably have been there because there was a series of altercations between squatters on East Berlin territory on the western side of the wall, which the West Berlin police at first could not touch. Only after an agreed swap of the territory with East Germany it became West Berlin soil and the police tried to clear out the squatters, which made some of them scale the wall and flee to the East! They were received and detained by East German Border guards, given a breakfast and deported back to West Berlin. So to prevent further disturbances, those Police vans would probably have been parked there.
i hitch hiked my way in to berlin in spring 1981. the former reichstag was not standing as a bombed out wreck. i wonder if you might be remembering the old bombed out church that has been cleaned up and left that way intentionally.
In the summer of 1983 I travelled to West Berlin by train. While we were sitting at the station in our train car waiting for our passports to be stamped, this young DDR Border Guard in a dark green uniform trimmed in silver, helmet, and an MPIKM on his shoulder, stood on the siding looking in our window. I asked my travel companion, “Gee I wonder what he’s thinking?” An older German woman sitting across from me said, in English, “He wishes he was you.” That moment changed my life. Freedom vs. totalitarian wasn’t abstract anymore. ‘1984’ was real.
I did not do the duty train. I drove from Helmstedt to Berlin and back, like the man in the video. Even more exciting! (in 1985). I still have the travel document in English French and Russian. "Transit West Berlin" Several comments about my journey: I had to switch plates on the car from West German plates to US Army "USA" plates. My travel document had a US flag at the head. We were briefed and given a binder with step by step instructions. We had to reset the odometer to coincide with the instructions. The navigation was not hard at all, you just had to watch for the "Transit West Berlin" signs. We were not allowed any stops at all. No one bothered us on the road, it was in the middle of the night. The Soviet soldiers were very young. Very professional too. I was the driver and the one going into the offices. The office was small with Soviet propaganda around. At Alpha, I placed the documents in the "bank teller" window thing. A hand took them away. A few minutes later, a Soviet headgear insignia appeared, with a small note that said "15" Oh torment! I did not bite. The hand reappeared and took the insignia away, and returned the documents. Something similar happened at Bravo. On the Allied side you were clocked in and returned the plates and the binder. If you drove too fast (arrived too soon) I would have been ticketed.
I was a french soldier in west berlin on 1986 and had the chance to drive to west germany by this corridor. This video gives a great idea of the civilisation shock you felt during this single journey . Bravo.
Great video. Remembering the travels with my parents from West Germany to "the zone" in the 80's because of family visits. The 2-3 hours border control at Helmstedt/Marienborn, the harassments of the "Vopos" on their wreched autobahn, the permanent smell of 2-stroke motors and brown coal and the bizarre feeling of being in a country where nearly everything looks grey and blurred.
In 1988, my mothers nephew and his wife come to us, in the Netherlands. Their children did not know it, so that they would not be telling it in their school. A week before they had to go home again, i asked if i could come with them. There was some talking between them and my parents and they said it would be possible. They arranged a passport, i still have it, and a visum. Then we went on the train towards the DDR. It was very interesting to go through that border area on the east side. I spend three weeks there with my family. We also went to a camping near Müritz. I the disco near my family's house, some youngsters could not believe a was from the west. I had no passport with me but then i talked some Dutch and then they believed me. On the way back in the train, where i had my own booked seat in a coupé, the border guards came in with mirrors on a stick to look under the seats and an other guards had a shepard dog with him. It was a very good holiday. We also went with a Trabant car to east Berlin and on my nephews MZ motorbike to Torgau, where the Sovjets and the Americans met in 1945. I also was in the DDR in 1977, 1983 and in July 1990. We always took bananas, metal car toys and fruit and panties to our family.
Thank you for the trip down memory lane. I was assigned to US Forces Berlin from early ’88-summer ’92. I drove this route and passed through these checkpoints often. One of the highlights of my time in Berlin was traveling on your duty train - much better than ours. I still have a bottle “Royal Corps of Transportation” wine I purchased on the train. Good times. I returned to Berlin in 2017 for a short visit. So much has changed. Will always be among my favorite cities.
Grew up at the Berlin Wall on GDR Side on the Outskirts of Berlin. The French Sector was on the other Side. Thanks for sharing your perspective to a English speaking audience. I am sometimes worry People forget that it was a high military death machine and not just a "wall" with some colorful paintings, especially from the other side. In Berlin you actually could get really close at some points to the wall from GDR side. My Grandfather always feared the Stasi is coming immediately if we walk the today's famous East Side Gallery Sidewalk at Ostbahnhof. Nobody was walking close to the Wall even thought technical allowed.
I remember this endless (and kind of useless) sidewalk alongside today's East Side Gallery. I don't recall if I ever saw someone walking on this sidewalk. Not sure.
That was a tense video. I actually felt a sense of relief when we got to checkpoint Bravo. I can imagine some drivers needing a drink when they got to Berlin or regretting that they didn’t fly instead. I’m glad my train trip to Berlin in August 1990 after the fall of the wall was much different. My mom and I flew from my hometown of New York to Frankfurt every summer from the seventies to the nineties to visit my Oma (grandma) who lived in a city near Frankfurt called Aschaffenburg. When I visited Berlin in 1990 with my parents, uncle and cousin, a small section of the wall was still standing. Thanks for posting the video.
Remember that flights were very expensive in the 1980s and most common people had to travel by car, which was a lot more affordable back then. Also governments didnt find the urge to give everyone of their servicemen a flight ticket for the same reason.
@@valuetraveler2026 I went through Grzechotki to Kaliningrad Oblast in 2019 and bar the time spent at the checkpoint it was actually an okay experience and the staff was reasonably polite and helpful with the paperwork (I understand Russian reasonably well and speak a little bit though). The thing was that I knew that the worst thing that can happen is that the Russians turn me around :).
As I grown up on the other side (Czechoslovakia) video like this takes me back to this strange age which I do not want to undergo anymore. I remember in my childhood to dream upon a W. German's toys catalogue. I knew it was not possible to get this toys, much better then I had, and I did understand it as something normal. Something fair. Because my teacher explained me that the toys are for our enemy only. Unfortunately it was not just a nightmare,....
The only time I ever saw the "Iron Curtain" was the German/Czechoslovakian border near Passau. I don't remember watch towers, but I do remember looking out over the border. There were upright posts, with a rope between them. I understood that to be the border. And there was a whole strip of land that was just a meadow. It was obvious that the forest behind it had been felled, to provide uninterrupted surveillance of the border. It wasn't as extreme as the inner-German border though; at least, it didn't look it from where we were standing. There was a border crossing, with a lorry carrying tree trunks. You were not going to cross that border if they didn't want you to, with big metal barriers coming out of the road surface. Fast forward some 15 to 20 years from then, and I'd moved from the Netherlands to the Mediterranean. I've had colleagues from all over Central and Eastern Europe: Latvian, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, even a Russian, and loads of Serbian. Oddly enough, though, never Czech or Slovak. And then don't seem as keen as they once were to come here.
Well at least your country produced some fantastic children TV show in the 70's, when I was a kid, that became popular in the West. Pan Tau, Spadla z oblakov and other series became very popular in my country Norway. Which is amazing when you think about the iron curtain. You can ask any Norwegian kid of the 70's if they remember the girl from outer space, and they will say yes. Reason for this was we only had one TV channel run by the state. They imported a lot of the series from Eastern Europe. Becuse they got them cheap probably. A lot of interesting animated series back then I remember from my kid days.
@@bardo0007 I have growUp in Czechoslovakia...and i had an ordinary working class background family.Things were not that easy get in Czechoslovakia,but i had All toys i ever wanted.😄👍
@@bardo0007 True, some real childhood staples came from the Eastern Bloc, like Krtek, the little mole from Czechoslovakia and the East German sand-man, who have both been a firm part of my childhood, despite me being born after 2000.
Amazing! To think I walked through Checkpoint Charlie - by myself! - back in the summer of 1982. I was touring Europe with ISE, and after our tour of West Berlin, no one wanted to check out the eastern part of the city. I realized this was the chance of a lifetime, and I was NOT passing it up! Gives me chills...
Amazing that so many on your tour were not interested in the DDR, instead preferring West Berlin. On my first trip to the DDR in 1981 I travelled to West Berlin on foot for a look round... and was pleased get back after a couple of hours.
An incredible video. Really appreciate the depth of the recreation intertwined with the older VHS footage. Its one of those critical parts of the Cold War era but I don't ever recall it being covered quite to this depth anywhere else. 10/10
A fantastic video, brought back so many memories of being stationed there in the 1980s! Thanks. Loads of things happened to me whilst transiting, usually swapping crap with the Russian soldiers for their cap badges. One trip in a VW van whilst in uniform, me and my passenger noted a Russian HGV joining the autobahn in front, and sat in the back was a load of young Russian soldiers. They spotted us behind and immediately started giving us the finger and various angry hand gestures. My passenger had a copy of Escort magazine, and lifted it up, showed the front cover, then opened the middle to show the spread. The Russian went mad in the back gesturing us to throw it to them as we passed. As we passed we gave them the finger! Great times!
I rode in a Soviet railway carriage from Heidelberg to Moscow. At the Polish-Soviet border the whole car was raised and the standard gage 4 foot 8 1/2 wheels were swapped out for the Soviet 5 foot gage. Trash was also removed from the cars and at night we heard shouting and saw that some Playboy magazines had been retrieved and were being examined with approval by the rail shop crew. Ah, the wonders of capitalism!
Born as a German in 1991 all of this was absolutely unimaginable for me. I simply can't wrap my head around the fact that my country was this deeply devided almost up until my birth. For a long time I couldn't understand the older generations talking about "die ossis" ("the eastern"=derogatory slang) in such a faul way. For me we are all the same, all from the same country. I thank you for your video as I now understand a bit more HOW devided my country was until not that long ago. Absolutely crazy for me but I understand a bit more now, how it could be that the eastern part of this country was so alien to my parents generation.
You have a great country and better now that the entire country is unified. I still find it hard to imagine I can walk up to the Brandenburg Gate the next time I'm in Berlin. However, the changing of the guard was cool when I was there, but east to live without it.
I feel the same. I was born in 1990, and my birth certificate is still East German. I grew up within a unified Germany, so I never knew this divide. I'm very happy that the Reunification happened.
Sorry, but that would be a shortsighted view. For many years, East Germans voted for Die Linke to be their shield from the free market, and now it is Alternative für Deutschland. Having lost wii and the Cold War, ossies still vote for those who resemble the darkest chapters of German history.
Absolutely fascinating video. As someone born 10 years after the Iron Curtain fell, it's almost impossible to imagine such a brutally hard border cutting straight through the centre of Europe.
In 1987 I went to West Berlin by train as a 21 year old tourist, and crossed over on foot to East Berlin for a few hours. After the wall came down, in early 1990 I hitch-hiked across, got picked up by an East German teacher couple in a Trabant. Thanks for posting your video, it certainly brought back memories of a strange time.
I had a similar experience, same years 87 and 90, see my comment above. Did the few hours in East Berlin back in August 87, was a very dismal looking place, compared to the vibrant West Berlin
Bad haircuts and po*n style taches! Priceless Andy, simply priceless!!! I'd have added stone wash jeans, dodgy mullets and badly fitting leather jackets! ...or maybe that was just the GDR in general.
Just to add my observations! From Australia I with husband and children 11,9 and a 4yr old, travelled to West Berlin in 1973.. we had family in West Germany, West Berlin and East Germany.. (as named then) Went by train from Frankfurt to West Berlin, where we eventually stayed for 12 months. During this time we travelled through the East down to Dresden, staying two weeks in a town not far. The train service- well we did make it. Other trips around the East were by vehicle, much paperwork for every movement. Also travelled back out to West Germany by train to up near Hamburg.. An Aunt and cousins ❤️ Our two elder children attended school in Berlin, fantastic experience for them. The paperwork needed to travel East was very extensive, took months, in the end was pleased to fulfil this. Elder daughter went back for a family visit in 1981 and again in 1986. Life was much the same for family members in the East, at least for the West Berlin family, much better outcome. Biggest other problem was finding items to use the Ost Mark, giving to family as much as we could- they were resisting! Also had to have receipts. Other very noticeable observation was the air pollution, not good.
This was absolutely fascinating! The attention to detail is extraordinary. I remember as an eight year old in the mid 60's, making the journey by train from London to Katowice with my Dad to visit his family. We did it 2-3 times during the 60's / 70's, until it became easier to fly. We always did the transit from West Berlin to East Berlin in the evening and the difference between the two cities was stark. I imagine how exotic and exciting this would have been through the wide eyes of an eight year old brought up in the quiet suburbs of South London!
Outstanding video, thank you! In late 1981, I went from Braunschweig to West Berlin by Deutsche Bahn (West German) and Deutsche Reichsbahn (East German) railways. Solidarity in Poland had started the revolt in Gdansk and things were very tense in East Germany. The Deutsche Reichsbahn was still using steam engines. It felt like going back in time by a quarter of a century. East Germany was utterly depressing. I can't imagine being a citizen having survived the Nazi era only to be a gilted prisoner of the Soviets.
One of my uncles worked for the US National Security Agency and was stationed in Germany in the early 1960s, at a time when the very existence of the NSA was still a secret. Right before Christmas one year (1961?), he got on a train to visit a friend stationed at Helmstedt. Unfortunately, he fell asleep on the train and didn't wake up until he was several miles on the wrong side of the border. He got off the train at the next station and tried to buy a ticket back to Helmstedt, but got spotted by the VoPos and held for 12 hours before they let him go. He bluffed his way out by claiming to be a special education teacher in the U.S. dependent schools.
I went to West Berlin via Transit from West Germany as a child. It was a summer vacation with my parents in July of 1987. It took a while to pass the border into East Germany. I remember the summer temperatures, the blue sky and the windscreen covered in smashed insects. The lightheaded magic mood you're in when the adventure just started. And occasionally seeing villages along the Transit-Autobahn. They were in bad shape. I was nine years old at the time, sitting in the back of the Ford Sierra my father bought the year before. I was told that the people of East Germany had to wait for many years until they got their Trabbi, the tiny old-fashioned cars I was now seeing all over the place. After a while, we took a break and stopped at a rest area along the Autobahn. My mother gave me a can of coke, the first sip felt great in the summer heat. That was the moment when I noticed another family, not very far away from us. They had a Trabbi and the two children of about my age were staring at me, with the Coke in my hand. I grew up in the reality of a divided country, it was kind of normal to me, because to me, it had always been that way. As I was told beforehand, it was strictly forbidden to talk to East Germans as that could get us and even more them, into big trouble, maybe even prison. So in that moment, it was impossible to share my Coca-Cola with other kids as I was used to back home. That was the moment I realised the cruelty of this separation. It felt so unjust to drink that can before their eyes. I could do nothing but stare back at them. There was just summer air between us, but also an insurmountable wall. I still wonder what became of them. I saw the Todezone (death zone) behind the Berlin Wall from a viewing platform that summer. The same wall that separated us kids. Two years later people were dancing on the Wall, tears of joy were on the news. I joined their dance in front of our TV. I forgot most of my childhood I guess, but among a few others, that Transit-moment sticks with me until today. It reminds me of the importance of freedom and that communism was, is and always will be: A very bad idea.
I grew up in Gardelegen. You can see it on the map at 4:05. I was 9 years old, when the wall came down. I really can´t understand, why people still romanticizing the "good old times" in east germany. I don´t want to have that back. Definitively not.
Growing up as a indigenous person in Canada we thought we had it bad, My mind thinks what were those kids thinking seeing you, did they long for your life style and freedom of movement or were they so use to it that they thought thats just the way it has to be,
I appreciate your service and thank you for the trip down memory lane. I attended the American high school in the American Sector of West Berlin from 1981 to 1985 while my father was stationed at Tempelhoff. I never got to make this trip. All my travels to West Germany and back (and they were many due to playing American football) I travelled at night by the military duty train. Great quality and information to your video! Looking forward to checking out your other videos focused on Berlin.
This trip is amazing and I love that you show us the old instruction videos. They are so eerie and haunting, like something made from a dystopian movie or video game. You can feel the constant tension and real danger that its trying to help you avoid. Its important we remember these times and see them from todays view and from the past
Thank you for your service as a British soldier keeping us in the West safe and free. Thank you also for the care that you took in creating this video to document the harrowing journey through East Germany, which must have been some test of nerves! I visited Berlin in the comforts of a train in 1987 and was fascinated by the contrast of being in freedom at one moment and in a repressive state a moment later as we traveled out of Berlin, the sounds of John F. Kennedy's speech echoing in my head "Lasst sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin.". It was quite an emotional journey for me. Without your service then, and others like you, so many people in Central Europe would not be enjoying freedom today (the same freedom that the people of Ukraine are fighting for now). Thank you!
I made this journey as a private citizen, with some friends in a car... but back in the mid 1970s. This video shows a greatly improved road in the late 1980s compared to my experience. In the 1970s the road surface was still the same concrete slab structure from when the road had first been built in the nazi era in the 1930s. I think the DDR/soviets had not bothered to spend any money on repairs because it was a road used by westerners in transit. My memory is the relentless rhythmic sound of the road as you drove over the slight gaps between each concrete section of the road. I also remember that in some places you had to divert across the median because the concrete was in a poor state. I think at the end of the 70s/ early 80s the West German Government was allowed to pay for the upgrade to a tarmac surface. My other memory is passing endless pine forests and going through no towns, all you could see was the soviet era tower blocks in the distance as we passed Magdeburg - it was rather a boring journey.
In 1968 and the 1970's I drove this route to Poland along with many Polish families based in the UK. After the 6 hours documentation check and payment to get into East Germany it was usually dark by the time you were near Berlin, the direction sings were not lit and there was no motorway lighting. This made it tricky to get the correct motorway to Frankfurt on Oder rather than the one to Berlin. Those cars that got it wrong were then subjected to another 6 hours of documentation check sand having to remove everything from the car for checking. Then when you got to the Polish border you were over the time limit for travelling through so you again had a thorough document and car contents check. Agonising, luckily it never happened to me. But the East German guards were vile and tried to antagonise you to react to them. They also had the biggest dogs.
I came to Germany for two years in 1984. I am still in Germany, but that's another story. We travelled the concrete road - me, wife and three young children - to Poland with a caravan in tow. There was no speed that we could drive without violent oscillation of the vehicle. We weren't accustomed to heavily armed police. Using large mirrors on wheels they searched under the car and the caravan. I also had to allow them access to the cupboards and toilet in the caravan. It scared us all. In Poland on a campsite, a Polish guy was fascinated with our car, a Renault Espace. We couldn't find any beer but he knew where to find it. (Brown beer-bottles in the shop were in fact vinegar. We later learnt thr word "Pivo"). For a ride in the car we were lead to the huge doors of a warehouse containing alcoholic beverages. Later at Easter time in the year of the fall of the wall we visited Berlin. East Berlin we visited using the subway. (U-bahn). Waiting for the stern east German guards to check our passports in an overcrowded station was very nerve racking. We tried to explain to our young children that the wall was built for ever. Little did we know. Only a few months later we witnessed the scenes on television. We experienced disbelief and elation. It is totally stupid. I have reason to visit Romania. Coming out of Romania into Hungary is similar. The tension isn't there but the complete waste of time and arrogance of some of the border police is meant to demean the traveller. No respect, no point, no sense. Value your freedom, stand up to those who want to take your freedom away for their own benefit.
I stayed in Celle for a few weeks in 1986 and palled around with Greenjackets. We visited the Innengrenze near Wolfsburg looked after by FRG police. One of my classmates thought it’d be funny to step over the line which caused the DDR goons in their tower to raise rifles and the cops by me to unlock their holsters. My pal was handheld back across by a cop and it was over. Great video, thanks
What memories this brings back. We travelled that route just before reunification, three days before Checkpoint Charlie was taken down and put into the museum. FANTASTIC!!!
I was an American soldier stationed in West Germany from 1987-1991. I never did visit Berlin, and I regret it greatly. I remember the night the wall came down vividly. Many years later in 2019 I finally visited Berlin, but I will always regret not visiting in the 80s.
Mike thanks for serving and i feel sad for your regreet so the only thing you can do is some sightseeing and read old books,but i can tell you it was a crazy time when i remember back on my truck driving times between west germany and west berlin transit i think times was better earlier stay safe
In the eighties, I have read this in the last week, and it's true, the most Americans came to East-Berlin to shopping, and buying the less luxury goods in the GDR in masses. The citizen of Berlin was angry about this, we had before also nothing.
An interesting video. I suppose making this journey as military personnel would have been a different, more tense, experience than making the same journey as a civilian with so many different rules and regulations to follow and comply with. I never travelled to/from West Berlin by road or rail but recall doing so by air, seeing the frontier from the aircraft window and the requirement to descend to 6000 feet for the 'corridor' flight. I have crossed into East Berlin twice, once on foot via one of the checkpoints (Charlie I would assume) and once by S-bahn from Belin Zoo to Berlin Friedrichstrasse. I can recall seeing the soldiers with their rifles guarding the wall from the train. It's a long time ago now but I jest remember barbed wire and all these soldiers. I recall that for passport control you put your passport on a small shelf at a small curtained semi-circular window and a hand came up from inside and took it then you waited until it was returned, never seeing the passport control officer at all, who I assume was seated at a desk below the small curtained window. I also recall my disappointment that, unlike when you transited the DDR without visa by rail or road to/from West Berlin (as a normal civilian) or entered the DDR normally with a visa when passports were stamped, when you crossed from West Berlin to East Berlin without a visa on a day visit the DDR did not stamp the passport but instead issued you with a permit on a separate piece of paper. One thought that does come to mind is that I never found the frontier officials of Eastern European communist bloc countries to be difficult or unfriendly; although having said that I have heard stories from young West Germans of all sorts of intimate searches being carried out on them by DDR customs when crossing into East Germany or transiting to West Berlin. Based on my own personal experiences though, I would rather enter the DDR than the USA when it comes to the attitude of immigration and customs officers. You mention surveillance in the video. This reminds me of an unusual incident which occurred not in the DDR but in Bulgaria. This was in 1980. I worked in the UK for a student travel organisation at the time and decided to make a quick rail trip across Europe as far as Sofia, to broaden my knowledge of the European rail product, before flying back. When I arrived in Sofia I stayed overnight in one of the better hotels before flying home the next day. The following morning, in the hotel, I was downstairs in the hotel having coffee before leaving for the airport when a young man of about my own age who spoke perfect English but was definately a local came and sat down next to me and started a conversation asking many questions. It didn't alarm me at the time and I thought very little of it but on reflection I am pretty sure that he must have been some sort of state security or police operative.
Fantastic insight into getting into Berlin during the bad old days. I’ve seen the transit instruction videos before but you’ve added so much context and really brought the process to life. Thank you for posting this.
Interesting video! Around 1988, when I was just 6 years old, my parents took me for a day trip from Poland to West Berlin, to see the city, western shops etc. I remember that even though we travelled (by car) from the east (GDR/Poland border crossing in Frankfurt Oder/Słubice), we had to drive all the way around Berlin and enter West Berlin from the west. I don't remember the exact place we crossed between GDR and West Berlin, but it's quite likely it was Check Point Bravo.
What a great video! In 1985 I immigrated to the UK and joined the British Army as my father was from Scotland. I was training at Depot Lichfield/Whittington Barracks but was discharged 6 months later for medical reasons. Afterwards I got my International Youth Hostel Card, the book Hitchhikers Guide to Europe, and took the ferry across to Hamburg, Germany and started hitchhiking through Europe. I stood at the border of East Germany with a sign saying "West Berlin" and got a ride along the corridor into West Berlin. After touring around Berlin I did the same to get back to West Germany. I was picked up by a nice man named Jurgen Grossheim who upon arrival to West Germany bought me a beer and bratwurst prior to taking me to my hostel. What a fascinating time in history, and thanks for posting this!
I travelled through East Germany to Berlin and back to Hamburg in 1989 with Deutscher Reichsbahn. The whole journey was the most surreal ever experienced in my life. I also partook the city bus tour in East Berlin (as it's called-with strong emphasis-Hauptstadt der DDR - Capital City of German Democratic Republic). I felt humbled to have lived in the democracy and market capitalism...
That was a highly informative video! During the Cold War I spent 2 tours in Korea (80-81 & 85-86), including in the DMZ, and the wall came down while I was in Panama (86-90). Many of my military friends spent a tour or two in West Germany or West Berlin but I missed out. In 1994 I first set foot in Germany and it was nothing like the Cold War era. In 2003, 2019 and 2022 I went to Berlin and I still find it highly intriguing. I drove past “Bravo” but have never visited Alpha. Sadly, the Cold War means nothing to many youngsters because history is seldom stressed in many schools (including in Asia… many young adults are ignorant of Imperial Japanese atrocities in Korea or Philippines). Your video is a highly specialized piece of history but very well done. I checked “like” and subscribed. Keep up the outstanding work!
Thanks so much for this. As a civilian when you saw those "Military" lanes, you always imagined the military had the red carpet rolled out for them - turns out it was in fact a total palaver!
I was a, student in the USSR in the early eighties. I travelled twice a year to western Europe. I never had any problem crossing into west Berlin. The checks and verifications were similar at other border crossings in western Europe.
Some American students who had been in the USSR said that when they reached the Polish-East German border the East German guard slammed the door open and shouted for passports. After that the Soviet steward on the rail car, the provodnik, said to the Americans, "The Russians and the Americans have got to straighten out these Germans again."
Fascinating. As a young captain serving in BFG in 1977, I, accompanied by my wife, drove to and from Berlin for a week-long summer holiday, staying in Edinburgh House. Your video was very reminiscent of that trip though, if I recall correctly, we received our pre-briefing in our unit a day or so ahead of the journey, not in Helmstedt. I do remember that the travel document had to be perfect as even incorrect punctuation could lead to the Soviets rejecting it, hence the final check at Checkpoint Alpha. As for Checkpoint Charlie, many Berlin based personnel crossed into East Berlin, either in one of the official military patrols (that's another possible subject for you) or socially, for example going to the opera or dining. I believe that uniform was mandatory for military personnel, thus mess dress was acceptable. I walked into East Berlin on a Sunday afternoon in summer dress to find the city full of not only allied visitors but young Soviet conscripts on their day off. Crossing into the East was fine (no checks were required, unless a Soviet officer requested my ID) but walking back felt spooky, knowing that the armed East German border guards were watching my movement from behind me - a great disincentive to break into a trot. (Some East Germans had recently escaped by dressing in fake allied uniforms.)
(Some East Germans had recently escaped by dressing in fake allied uniforms.) Some who used that method worked in the wardrobe section of an East German theater and waked out in fake US Army uniforms, with neither the tailors nor the border guards observing that the US Army has the point of the chevrons going up, not down like their homemade ones or the British Army. The real US Army soldier on guard at Checkpoint Charlie quickly asked them was going on. "Where there is a will, there is a way." Haus at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin is a museum of the Wall, and has a large section on escape attempts. It is amazing what the human mind can come up with, when strongly motivated. Secret vehicle compartments, false papers, homemade balloons, fire department respirators converted to SCUBA diving gear to use in border lakes, tunnels, a cable from the roof of a building at the border across the wall to a parking lot, and others, to include a vast range of fraudulent documentation. Tempelhof Airport also saw aircraft from Poland come over and land. The Polish national airline was LOT. The ever-creative Berliners claimed that it was for Landet Och Tempelhof, also lands in Tempelhof.
Hi Andy, I really enjoyed this post. So interesting and informative. I particularly liked the 1980's footage comparing Co;d War sites with today - particularly the removal of the T34 to be replaced with a pink truck. To have been a citizen of the DDR must have been desperate! My son just came back from Berlin ad was very enthusiastic about the trip. I'll show him this post to complete the experience. Thanks again!
Absolutely brilliant description of the way things were a short while ago. I showed this to friends and family , it's a remarkable history lesson ,and by the way a great choice of the background music at the beginning.
Andy, this was fascinating to watch, great video. In 1981 I drove from Calais to Denmark via Hamburg. I took a detour to go to Lubeck from where it was possible to see the border area, with DDR (East German) watch towers. I've probably got a photo somewhere. Later on, in December 1989 I visited Berlin by air, I still recall the descent to 10,000 feet as we entered the Berlin military corridor whilst flying over East German airspace. Also remember being told not to take any maps of West Berlin with me into East Berlin, if stopped by the police to ask for the Russian military commander, the West Berlin U-Bahn running under East Berlin streets, signs advising as crossing borders between British, American and French military sectors, Frederichstrasse interchange which was in East Berlin with shops selling western goods very cheaply but only accessible by West Berlin travellers and finally, big signs in certain shops in 4 languages advising that certain goods could not be purchased by non DDR citizens (eg sports and baby products)! This was just after the wall had been opended to German travellers who could use Checkpoint Charlie as a crossing point, but us UK citizens were not permitted to do so.
So sad times, and so great they are over. Growing up in Braunschweig near Helmstedt was sad because one direction for travelling was closed. Visiting Berlin today and crossing the border without even noticing is so delightful.
A nice slow march down memory lane. First travelled the military train in ‘71 and also used the corridor a couple of times. Our cars had the old BFG numberplates. The train, when stopped in Magdeburg, was surrounded by female guards with machine pistols. Dogs were used to sweep under the carriages. Reichbahn steam trains were still very much in use. Checkpoint Charlie was also easy to go through, minimum group of 5, in no. 1 uniform, one of the party an SNCO. We were encouraged to visit the opera and concert halls just to keep our right of entry. Being Raf, I flew into Gatow many times, including on my first visit in a Hercules, we were buzzed by a Soviet Mig because of our position in the air corridor. I have been back a few times since the Wall opened and it remains my favourite city to visit.
Thanks for this. I lived in Germany as an exchange student 1982-83. I remember visiting the Berlin wall near Helmstedt and not realizing that the wall covered the entire country! I visited East Germany twice while living there. Each time you were never sure: 1) if they would let you in or (2) if they would let you back out again. The guards were trained to give you a hard time.
Growin up during the late 70s and 80s. I remember the last years of the cold war very well. This gave an in-depth perspective on how tense it really was between the west Allies and the Soviet Union traveling behind the iron curtain. Thank you.
Andy - your narration of your videos makes them so much more authentic than "professionally" narrated documentaries, and the personal experiences that you weave into your story line adds significantly to it's credibility - pure magic to watch 🙂
For those still interested, the National Army Museum in London has a exhibit dedicated to Anglo-GDR Relations called "foe to friend", where they give particular focus on this transit route, including a full copy of the transit pack on display for you to look at. Interesting to see the authority of the VoPo wasn't recognised in the 1980s, given the UK had by 1970s de facto recognition of the DDR after all but abandoning the Hallstein Doctrine. Great Video nonetheless!
Look up the berlin airlift (Luftbrücke) and other info to see why military and their special rules and privileges were important to keep those routes open and secure until 1990. And as such, no allied military people and their countries could subject themselves to the VoPo (Volkspolizei = "peoples police", the cops in east germany) on transit routes. Afaik, local military, foreign military and local police always and everywhere have rules for their relations and jurisdictions, eg also when a soldier starts a bar fight. But of course it was different for *private* persons from the countries of the western allies who traveled in transit _as tourists._ "fun" fact: allied occupation law officially still applied until 1990 in Berlin, and thus I (as a citizen of west berlin) could theoretically (it never was enforced and done, but the law was establieshed after 1945 to fight the black market) have been shot on the spot at any time by an allied "drum roll court martial" if i didn't carry my id with me at all times.
Nice video. As a tourist in 1986 I traveled by train from Nurenburg to West Berlin on a Eurail Pass. Fascinating how the towns changed historically as we went from West Germany to East Germany. I remember having to show my American passport to East German Border Guards at the border. Even got to travel with a small tour group into east berlin through checkpoint charlie of all places. The wall was still in place then and you could not get even close to it, most rememerable for me was seeing all the old buildings in east berlin pock marked with bullet holes from WWII.
That reminds me of one old building I was fascinated by when I visited in 2018 on the corner of Am Kupfergraben and Dorotheestrasse whose thick old stonework is absolutely plastered with bullet holes especially around one of the basement windows. Made me think about the desperate defenders inside trying to hold off the inevitable Russian advance and whether they survived or not.
WOW, that takes me back. I was REME attached in Berlin 1988-91. Coming back from leave, the RMP in Helmstedt gave me a bollocking for not shaving before going through the corridor.! Ah good times..
Thank you so very much for you time and expense in the making of this video to share some Cold War history.. AMAZING! . Very well done. Greetings from Alaska..
Great video: the coincidence at 14:45 is incredible, as you pull into the former Communist border crossing, you're passed by Western Military equipment heading Eastwards.
In autumn 1983, I spent a few days in West Berlin and one Sunday afternoon in East Berlin. The contrast between the two sides of the city was amazing. Crossing to the east through Checkpoint Charlie, we had to buy 10 East German marks. These looked like monopoly money. There was nothing to buy anyway, except a ticket for the tv tower and some badly-printed postcards. We were forbidden to bring back any change and had to donate it in a bulging charity box. In the west, things looked smart and affluent, with Mercedes cars. In the East, things looked shabby and the traffic, such as it was, consisted mainly of aged Trabants or similar, trailing clouds of exhaust smoke.
I’ve watched this video several times. I’ve been to Berlin but after the Cold War. I grew up during the Cold War and find the border fascinating just the elaborate ways to secure it
Great report Andy as an ex soldier myself in 80s Germany I never did the trip but always wondered what it was like, watching the video I'm glad I never had to...after so many years it's hard to imagine what it was like in those cold war times if you didn't experience it yourself When the wall came down in November 89 I went through CP Charlie into the DDR to have a look around and was shocked how backward it all was.
From the pictures I've seen, a lot of East Germany felt firmly stuck in roughly the early-mid (pre-punk) 1970s during the mid-late 1980s - there still seemed to be a lot of orange and brown everywhere from the photos I've seen, and the ruling government still seemed quite fond of disco music. I think most of the communist countries stagnated both economically and culturally. East Germany probably didn't feel as backwards as some of the others since most people could still receive West German TV and radio reception, and the East German authorities were unable to jam these signals since it would also cause interference in nearby West Germany. I'd say that the USSR in the 1980s remained culturally stuck in the early-mid 1960s while East Germany felt stuck in a period rougly a decade later. My dad visited Leipzig during the mid-late 1990s and to him, the former East at that time felt similar to the poorer regions of West Germany, but was probably still a lot nicer than what it had been a decade prior. He saw a lot of construction work while there.
In 1973, when I was teaching German as a student in Lüneburg, I went to Berlin by (steam) train with a class of West German pupils. The contact with the East German guards on the train and during a visit to East Berlin via the Friedrichstrasse tube station made a big impression on me. Faceless men and zero fraternisation - not that we wanted to fraternise with them, we just wanted to get the formalities over. You were glad when they'd done with you. In case we should be asked where we were going, we were primed to say "To Berlin, Capital of the German Democratic Republic". In East Berlin you behaved impeccably, if you knew what was good for you.
"In East Berlin you behaved impeccably, if you knew what was good for you." That also applied to driving in the country. The max speed was 100 KM/hour, and the allowable alcohol percentage for drivers was zero. West German speed demons and drinkers had no problems in adjusting to the DDR standard.
14:36 The DDR's emblem didn't actually have a sickle but rather a COMPASS! The compass on the emblem represented the intelligentsia. The DDR's emblem was the only heraldic emblem of a European socialist state that didn't have a red star! And the emblem didn't even appear on the DDR flag until 1959 as before then, it was just the tricolor of today's German flag to symbolize illustrate the continuity between the Weimar Republic and this new German state. They also wanted reunification, but when it was made clear that the Soviets didn't want the DDR to join in, they added the emblem. East Germany and West Germany actually competed as one unified team at the 1956, 1960 and 1964 Winter and Summer Olympics.
Correct and the joint east-west german team used the horizontal black red and yellow tricolour. But in the central red stripe appeared the 5 olympic rings in white...
Very well made video! I lived in Germany in the late 1980s as a child and hope to revisit in the next couple years. I got to experience the Fall of the Berlin Wall in person...an experience I'll never forget! My family lived near Giessen (Langgöns) and we just happened to be visiting Berlin when the Wall fell, a very lucky coincidence. My Father had a camcorder at the time and recorded our experience! Thanks again for your video!
Great video. I travelled by civilian coach from Berlin to Düsseldorf along this route (in reverse) in 1983. It was pretty easy, uneventful and with a meal stop at a Raststätte. It is great to see what was going on under the bonnet.
Even crossing a regular today’s border makes me nervous (like when I travel from France to the UK since brexit). But that video just creeps me out so much. It seems like the smallest mistake could result in serious consequences. I would have feel so anxious to do this journey. I’m very grateful I was born after that, in the EU, and that I mostly travel within the Schengen area where a border is just a line on the ground or a sign.
Thanks so much for this, so fascinating! 🤗. I was born in 1961 so the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain were ‘status quo’ during all of my formative years. So amazing to see it today, never knowing what a scourge it had been. Thank you again :-)
Wow. That must have taken awhile to produce! Brings back some hazy memories as I took that journey a couple of times back in '83 - '84 only I was a 19 year old punk a$$ airman in the US Air Force. I have not driven that route since reunification and have only been back to Berlin once. Flew that time. Thanks for putting these time capsules together. I have seen some of your earlier vids about NATO/BAOR, etc. from the 80's. History's biggest pissing match...at least at the time.
Thanks for an interesting video. As an American civilian in Germany in the 1970s I had to take a train to West Berlin and cross at Checkpoint Charlie, so I never had this experience, although I knew many who did. For reasons too complicated to explain here, I did on one trip have what was almost certainly a Stasi tail. I was young, in terrific shape and I walked that poor man all over East Berlin at a pace I’m sure exhausted him. Fun for me, less so for him!
Enjoyed the video, it brought so many memories back. I travelled to Berlin many times as both Military and non military having lived in Germany for 45 years on and off. 2019 I flew into Berlin for the first times having only ever driven. I would live to have gone on the train, my dad did in the 70s. Thank you
Great video! We all thought back then that the Wall and the Warsaw Pact would survive for 100 years more. Things can change very quick and human institutions might not seem as stable as they present themselves.
Masterfully done video! I never knew that there was a series of safety videos on just driving through this one allowed stretch of the Autobahn for Westerners. I knew about the highway, but not the videos. Kudos!
I travelled with my Dad through the corridor in 85. At the ACD two MP's asked if it was our first time and that we could follow them. They then proceeded to break the speed limit all the way to Bravo before turning round to return west. Leaving myself and my Dad to explain why we were significantly early. It was all a huge adventure for my 15 yr old self.
Great video Andy. I was in the US Army in Germany during the same time period. I had to go to Berlin a couple of times and was always scared to death during the process. Keep up the great work. Cheers GS Jack
I found this video really interesting. I've read several books about Cold War, seen films and documentaries, but this video makes you "relive" what you could experience in those days. And it made me shiver...
My visit to Berlin was at the half life of the wall. Beautiful city. I was in the US Air Force and went to Berlin with a base football team as the photographer.
Many thanks, Andy! I'm a Brit living in Berlin who very regularly drives back and forth along this route to visit parents-in-law in Landkreis Helmstedt. We have previously toured the site in Marienborn, and we also always love seeing the Berliner bear on arriving home. Amazing to see how things used to be. Wonderful footage, great detail!
Thank you, that brought back memories, and gave a fascinating insight into the different experience of British military. Our border crossing was slow because I'm Australian and was crossing with three West German friends. I was also given the treatment when visiting East Berlin through Friedrichstrasse station. I could be wrong, but I think that I could use Checkpoint Charlie, but my friends couldn't, and they could use checkpoints that I couldn't. Because I was in a separate channel, it was necessary to get by on my German - which was very poor at the time. My friends had to wait 90 minutes for me to emerge.
Things were different for civilians. The transit routes had picnic spots where both westerners and easterners would go, but they always sat at separate tables and pretended not to notice each other. I had visas for being in the GDR, and not just transiting, and so countless times I left the transit routes and got on regular GDR roads, and only once, in a small village, did a Volkspolizei officer wave me over to see my visa.
When I crossed the border between West and East Germany by train in 1978, a West German in the compartment looked out at the border guards and said, "The only thing that has changed is the color of their uniforms." He was referring to the fact that under the Nazis soldiers wore field grey while under the Soviets they wore olive drab.
Yes, and the East German state railway was called the Deutsche Reichsbahn, and there were many other nods to the past. It seems that West Germany took the approach of erasing the Nazi years by totally breaking up with the past and building an entirely new country, while in the East they took the opposite approach and tried to restore as much as possible Germany as it was before Hitler (and this approach also had the added bonus that it suggested that the East German government was a natural and legitimate successor of the old Reich, after the anomalous Nazi interruption, and that was an important part of their geopolitical stance). In fact, after briefly visiting both Germanies in the 1980s, I was left with the impression that the heavy and austere atmosphere in the East was more due to preserved Prussian spirit than it was to Communism.
In 1970 I crossed from West to East Berlin by train and that was my reaction to the East German border guards as well. They were exceptionally unpleasant and obviously it was deliberate. The whole atmosphere on the train changed perceptively when we crossed the border line and the feeling I and my companions got during our brief visit to the East was that we had time travelled back to the 1940s. Very little traffic, hardly anyone spoke in public, nothing much in the shops, dingy streets with poor lighting, etc - a total contrast to the loud and bright West Berlin just a stone’s throw away across the Wall.
@@goytabr The name "Deutsche Reichsbahn" was kept so that the GDR could operate the entire Berlin S-Bahn system, even in West-Berlin. All main line trains out of Berlin were also hauled by East German locomotives. It paid to keep the old name to be in charge of this traffic.
@@goytabr the GDR government didn't want to look the VoPo and NVA (national peoples army ) looking like Russians soldiers or policemen. The uniformstyle they had before/around WWII was only slightly altered and kept in use. And for themas a bonus, that was even cheaper than styling uniforms on more costs, there wasn't that lot of money in the GDR at that present time... So the GDR people wouldn't think they were taken over by the Russian occupants - in fact they were. -
You wanna know why that is? Timejump to when the east german military was established in 1956, the east german officials asked the soviets on how their uniforms should look. The simple reply was: you are germans, dress accordingly.
Great video - thank you. I served at RAF Gutersloh from 80-84 and drove once along the military corridor. I did drive through ‘C’ and remember the ‘Do not speak to any East German police/military and if if looks like you are to, you are to get back into your car, lock it and demand the presence of a Soviet Officer’ briefing at the West Berlin Olympic Stadium. I was searching for a parking slot in the East and found one by an ornate building. Having unloaded 2 push chairs, 2 kids and a wife, I see a DDR Policeman making a beeline for us. I had 2 options: throw bodies and push chairs into the car, OR see what he wanted. I chose the latter! He saluted, I returned, and he politely told me I had parked in the slot reserved for judges at the court house but if I could be quick there was an open slot the other side of the building. I often chuckle what would had happened if I had taken the first and official option. We would have sat there for hours waiting for a Soviet Officer and he would have relayed the Policeman’s message with the add on that that slot was now no longer available. Keep it up.
A commonsense approach; I found that always worked on my travels in the DDR and West Berlin in the 1980s. I never encountered aggressive or hostile Volkspolizei or Grenztruppen, but perhaps that was because I was a civilian.
I find alot of the things that lead to so much tension was the American Army's or political big wigs arrogance to not submit I.D. papers when stopped by VolksPolizei, Like the time VolksPolizei pulled over that one politician for something and next thing you know there's tanks from both sides facing off, I mean how hard is it to show your I.D.? You know it reminds me of those Sovereign Citizen loonies, Much the same attitudes there except the diffrence is the previous mentioned had some right in their standing where as them Sovereign Citizens are just loonies trying to justify minor slights and have little to no standing against Police 🤣.
I traveled in August 1988, as a young 18-year-old backpacker from Australia, from Frankfurt to Berlin by overnight train. As I arrived at the East German border, the guards came on the train and told me to move to another carriage that would continue to Berlin. My memory was that they were really rude and always shouting. I stayed at the youth hostel in Berlin and made the trip through Checkpoint Charlie for the day into East Berlin with a group of travelers from the hostel. Like everyone else, I was ripped off at the border by having to exchange West German Deutsche Marks for East German Deutsch Marks at a 1:1 exchange rate, which everyone knew was a joke. I have many memories of the trip into East Berlin, but one thing that has stuck in my mind was all the posters showing the glorious Soviet Army leaving Afghanistan and how they were victorious. West Berlin was so weird, with 'the wall' blocking many streets. I remember The Reichstag still being a burnt-out shell left after the end of the war, the Soviet memorial near the Brandenburg Gates being cordoned off by the police with guard dogs, and many VW transit vans parked near the wall with police in riot gear in the back. I did spend a good hour chatting with an MP from the British Army near one of the observation posts that you could look over the wall. Thank you for your video. Just thought I would like to share my memories.
actually not much has changed. Germans in unified Germany are still rude and might shout at the people :D
Hi Aussie! Your memories deceive you a bit there, I mean, that's not unusual after 30+ years! 😆 The Reichstag building was not a burnt out shell anymore in 1988, it was rebuilt (albeit in a much less fancy way than before) from 1961 to 1971 on behalf of the West German government. It housed a very large parliament room which would have been more than sufficient to seat all MP's of a reunified Germany. After the Four Power Agreement on Berlin in 1971, no parliamentary sessions of the West German Bundestag could be held there anymore (in the years prior, attempts to hold Federal Presidential elections and parliamentary sessions were often disturbed by the Soviet Authorities with sonic booms by low passing fighter jets). After 1971, only minor parliamentary sessions could be held there, such as parliamentary groups. It also housed an exhibition "Questions on German history" and the huge lawn in front of the building became an occasional open air concert venue (e.g. Barclay James Harvest, Michael Jackson and others). The Soviet War memorial near Brandenburg gate was actually on a little patch of then-Soviet territory, so it was guarded by Soviet soldiers and off limits to anyone, hence it being cordoned off. The Police riot vans (West Berlin Police used Mercedes-Benz vans, the infamous and usually well dented and battle scarred "tubs" or coloquially called "six packs" as they seated 6 cops in riot gear) would probably have been there because there was a series of altercations between squatters on East Berlin territory on the western side of the wall, which the West Berlin police at first could not touch. Only after an agreed swap of the territory with East Germany it became West Berlin soil and the police tried to clear out the squatters, which made some of them scale the wall and flee to the East! They were received and detained by East German Border guards, given a breakfast and deported back to West Berlin. So to prevent further disturbances, those Police vans would probably have been parked there.
@@peligraso You get what you give, brother 😄
Wow. You are so brave man traveling Soviet area at 18 year age.
i hitch hiked my way in to berlin in spring 1981. the former reichstag was not standing as a bombed out wreck.
i wonder if you might be remembering the old bombed out church that has been cleaned up and left that way intentionally.
In the summer of 1983 I travelled to West Berlin by train. While we were sitting at the station in our train car waiting for our passports to be stamped, this young DDR Border Guard in a dark green uniform trimmed in silver, helmet, and an MPIKM on his shoulder, stood on the siding looking in our window. I asked my travel companion, “Gee I wonder what he’s thinking?” An older German woman sitting across from me said, in English, “He wishes he was you.” That moment changed my life. Freedom vs. totalitarian wasn’t abstract anymore. ‘1984’ was real.
I think dark green uniforms were West German. Grey uniforms were East German/GDR
and now America is the King of Totalitarianism
I’m with you on that fight. Stay well, brother! ✊🤝
I did not do the duty train. I drove from Helmstedt to Berlin and back, like the man in the video. Even more exciting! (in 1985). I still have the travel document in English French and Russian.
"Transit West Berlin"
Several comments about my journey:
I had to switch plates on the car from West German plates to US Army "USA" plates.
My travel document had a US flag at the head.
We were briefed and given a binder with step by step instructions. We had to reset the odometer to coincide with the instructions. The navigation was not hard at all, you just had to watch for the "Transit West Berlin" signs. We were not allowed any stops at all. No one bothered us on the road, it was in the middle of the night.
The Soviet soldiers were very young. Very professional too.
I was the driver and the one going into the offices. The office was small with Soviet propaganda around.
At Alpha, I placed the documents in the "bank teller" window thing. A hand took them away.
A few minutes later, a Soviet headgear insignia appeared, with a small note that said "15"
Oh torment! I did not bite. The hand reappeared and took the insignia away, and returned the documents.
Something similar happened at Bravo.
On the Allied side you were clocked in and returned the plates and the binder. If you drove too fast (arrived too soon) I would have been ticketed.
That older woman had only one impossible wish: to be young once again, either side of the wall
I was a french soldier in west berlin on 1986 and had the chance to drive to west germany by this corridor. This video gives a great idea of the civilisation shock you felt during this single journey . Bravo.
Great video. Remembering the travels with my parents from West Germany to "the zone" in the 80's because of family visits. The 2-3 hours border control at Helmstedt/Marienborn, the harassments of the "Vopos" on their wreched autobahn, the permanent smell of 2-stroke motors and brown coal and the bizarre feeling of being in a country where nearly everything looks grey and blurred.
Exactly how my late Father described it
In 1988, my mothers nephew and his wife come to us, in the Netherlands. Their children did not know it, so that they would not be telling it in their school. A week before they had to go home again, i asked if i could come with them. There was some talking between them and my parents and they said it would be possible. They arranged a passport, i still have it, and a visum. Then we went on the train towards the DDR. It was very interesting to go through that border area on the east side. I spend three weeks there with my family. We also went to a camping near Müritz. I the disco near my family's house, some youngsters could not believe a was from the west. I had no passport with me but then i talked some Dutch and then they believed me. On the way back in the train, where i had my own booked seat in a coupé, the border guards came in with mirrors on a stick to look under the seats and an other guards had a shepard dog with him. It was a very good holiday. We also went with a Trabant car to east Berlin and on my nephews MZ motorbike to Torgau, where the Sovjets and the Americans met in 1945. I also was in the DDR in 1977, 1983 and in July 1990. We always took bananas, metal car toys and fruit and panties to our family.
Thank you for the trip down memory lane. I was assigned to US Forces Berlin from early ’88-summer ’92. I drove this route and passed through these checkpoints often. One of the highlights of my time in Berlin was traveling on your duty train - much better than ours. I still have a bottle “Royal Corps of Transportation” wine I purchased on the train. Good times. I returned to Berlin in 2017 for a short visit. So much has changed. Will always be among my favorite cities.
I rather think that on the label of that bottle of wine, if you look at it, it says 'Royal Corps of Transport'.
RCT Yay.
I was there in W. Berlin November 1979 with a British tank unit. Great experience.
Did you stop at or use the rastatten?
Grew up at the Berlin Wall on GDR Side on the Outskirts of Berlin. The French Sector was on the other Side. Thanks for sharing your perspective to a English speaking audience. I am sometimes worry People forget that it was a high military death machine and not just a "wall" with some colorful paintings, especially from the other side. In Berlin you actually could get really close at some points to the wall from GDR side. My Grandfather always feared the Stasi is coming immediately if we walk the today's famous East Side Gallery Sidewalk at Ostbahnhof. Nobody was walking close to the Wall even thought technical allowed.
I remember this endless (and kind of useless) sidewalk alongside today's East Side Gallery. I don't recall if I ever saw someone walking on this sidewalk. Not sure.
That was a tense video. I actually felt a sense of relief when we got to checkpoint Bravo. I can imagine some drivers needing a drink when they got to Berlin or regretting that they didn’t fly instead. I’m glad my train trip to Berlin in August 1990 after the fall of the wall was much different. My mom and I flew from my hometown of New York to Frankfurt every summer from the seventies to the nineties to visit my Oma (grandma) who lived in a city near Frankfurt called Aschaffenburg. When I visited Berlin in 1990 with my parents, uncle and cousin, a small section of the wall was still standing. Thanks for posting the video.
if you want to have a taste of what the Soviet border might have felt like I would recommend a land crossing to Kaliningrad
Roger Moore found filming Octopussy at Checkpoint Charlie a little unnerving.
Remember that flights were very expensive in the 1980s and most common people had to travel by car, which was a lot more affordable back then.
Also governments didnt find the urge to give everyone of their servicemen a flight ticket for the same reason.
@@valuetraveler2026 I went through Grzechotki to Kaliningrad Oblast in 2019 and bar the time spent at the checkpoint it was actually an okay experience and the staff was reasonably polite and helpful with the paperwork (I understand Russian reasonably well and speak a little bit though). The thing was that I knew that the worst thing that can happen is that the Russians turn me around :).
I bet your grandma knew some stories 😮😊
As I grown up on the other side (Czechoslovakia) video like this takes me back to this strange age which I do not want to undergo anymore. I remember in my childhood to dream upon a W. German's toys catalogue. I knew it was not possible to get this toys, much better then I had, and I did understand it as something normal. Something fair. Because my teacher explained me that the toys are for our enemy only.
Unfortunately it was not just a nightmare,....
Wow what a memory. You have a real insight.
The only time I ever saw the "Iron Curtain" was the German/Czechoslovakian border near Passau. I don't remember watch towers, but I do remember looking out over the border. There were upright posts, with a rope between them. I understood that to be the border.
And there was a whole strip of land that was just a meadow. It was obvious that the forest behind it had been felled, to provide uninterrupted surveillance of the border. It wasn't as extreme as the inner-German border though; at least, it didn't look it from where we were standing.
There was a border crossing, with a lorry carrying tree trunks. You were not going to cross that border if they didn't want you to, with big metal barriers coming out of the road surface.
Fast forward some 15 to 20 years from then, and I'd moved from the Netherlands to the Mediterranean. I've had colleagues from all over Central and Eastern Europe: Latvian, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, even a Russian, and loads of Serbian. Oddly enough, though, never Czech or Slovak. And then don't seem as keen as they once were to come here.
Well at least your country produced some fantastic children TV show in the 70's, when I was a kid, that became popular in the West. Pan Tau, Spadla z oblakov and other series became very popular in my country Norway. Which is amazing when you think about the iron curtain. You can ask any Norwegian kid of the 70's if they remember the girl from outer space, and they will say yes. Reason for this was we only had one TV channel run by the state. They imported a lot of the series from Eastern Europe. Becuse they got them cheap probably. A lot of interesting animated series back then I remember from my kid days.
@@bardo0007 I have growUp in Czechoslovakia...and i had an ordinary working class background family.Things were not that easy get in Czechoslovakia,but i had All toys i ever wanted.😄👍
@@bardo0007 True, some real childhood staples came from the Eastern Bloc, like Krtek, the little mole from Czechoslovakia and the East German sand-man, who have both been a firm part of my childhood, despite me being born after 2000.
Amazing! To think I walked through Checkpoint Charlie - by myself! - back in the summer of 1982. I was touring Europe with ISE, and after our tour of West Berlin, no one wanted to check out the eastern part of the city. I realized this was the chance of a lifetime, and I was NOT passing it up!
Gives me chills...
herd mentality is no fun
Amazing that so many on your tour were not interested in the DDR, instead preferring West Berlin. On my first trip to the DDR in 1981 I travelled to West Berlin on foot for a look round... and was pleased get back after a couple of hours.
An incredible video. Really appreciate the depth of the recreation intertwined with the older VHS footage. Its one of those critical parts of the Cold War era but I don't ever recall it being covered quite to this depth anywhere else. 10/10
A fantastic video, brought back so many memories of being stationed there in the 1980s! Thanks. Loads of things happened to me whilst transiting, usually swapping crap with the Russian soldiers for their cap badges. One trip in a VW van whilst in uniform, me and my passenger noted a Russian HGV joining the autobahn in front, and sat in the back was a load of young Russian soldiers. They spotted us behind and immediately started giving us the finger and various angry hand gestures. My passenger had a copy of Escort magazine, and lifted it up, showed the front cover, then opened the middle to show the spread. The Russian went mad in the back gesturing us to throw it to them as we passed. As we passed we gave them the finger! Great times!
I rode in a Soviet railway carriage from Heidelberg to Moscow. At the Polish-Soviet border the whole car was raised and the standard gage 4 foot 8 1/2 wheels were swapped out for the Soviet 5 foot gage. Trash was also removed from the cars and at night we heard shouting and saw that some Playboy magazines had been retrieved and were being examined with approval by the rail shop crew. Ah, the wonders of capitalism!
This memory should be promoted to a movie scene!
@@Dutch_UncleThe lifting of the wagons and putting onto wide gauge boggies still happens today.
@@qqlequnfortunately in today's woke world such a scene would be cancelled
Born as a German in 1991 all of this was absolutely unimaginable for me. I simply can't wrap my head around the fact that my country was this deeply devided almost up until my birth. For a long time I couldn't understand the older generations talking about "die ossis" ("the eastern"=derogatory slang) in such a faul way. For me we are all the same, all from the same country. I thank you for your video as I now understand a bit more HOW devided my country was until not that long ago. Absolutely crazy for me but I understand a bit more now, how it could be that the eastern part of this country was so alien to my parents generation.
Mal eine Frage Hast Du nicht im Geschichtsunterricht aufgepasst? Oder was habt Ihr im Geschichtsunterricht gemacht?
You have a great country and better now that the entire country is unified. I still find it hard to imagine I can walk up to the Brandenburg Gate the next time I'm in Berlin. However, the changing of the guard was cool when I was there, but east to live without it.
I feel the same. I was born in 1990, and my birth certificate is still East German. I grew up within a unified Germany, so I never knew this divide. I'm very happy that the Reunification happened.
Sorry, but that would be a shortsighted view. For many years, East Germans voted for Die Linke to be their shield from the free market, and now it is Alternative für Deutschland. Having lost wii and the Cold War, ossies still vote for those who resemble the darkest chapters of German history.
Absolutely fascinating video. As someone born 10 years after the Iron Curtain fell, it's almost impossible to imagine such a brutally hard border cutting straight through the centre of Europe.
This is amazing! It's wonderful to hear the POV of someone who actually was there!
In 1987 I went to West Berlin by train as a 21 year old tourist, and crossed over on foot to East Berlin for a few hours. After the wall came down, in early 1990 I hitch-hiked across, got picked up by an East German teacher couple in a Trabant. Thanks for posting your video, it certainly brought back memories of a strange time.
I had a similar experience, same years 87 and 90, see my comment above. Did the few hours in East Berlin back in August 87, was a very dismal looking place, compared to the vibrant West Berlin
@@155gerard nothing really changed haha
Me too in 87. It was chilling to see the atmosphere over there and a big relief when I got back to the Western side. So glad I went though.
Bad haircuts and po*n style taches! Priceless Andy, simply priceless!!! I'd have added stone wash jeans, dodgy mullets and badly fitting leather jackets! ...or maybe that was just the GDR in general.
Just to add my observations! From Australia I with husband and children 11,9 and a 4yr old, travelled to West Berlin in 1973.. we had family in West Germany, West Berlin and East Germany.. (as named then) Went by train from Frankfurt to West Berlin, where we eventually stayed for 12 months. During this time we travelled through the East down to Dresden, staying two weeks in a town not far. The train service- well we did make it. Other trips around the East were by vehicle, much paperwork for every movement. Also travelled back out to West Germany by train to up near Hamburg.. An Aunt and cousins ❤️ Our two elder children attended school in Berlin, fantastic experience for them. The paperwork needed to travel East was very extensive, took months, in the end was pleased to fulfil this. Elder daughter went back for a family visit in 1981 and again in 1986. Life was much the same for family members in the East, at least for the West Berlin family, much better outcome. Biggest other problem was finding items to use the Ost Mark, giving to family as much as we could- they were resisting! Also had to have receipts. Other very noticeable observation was the air pollution, not good.
This was absolutely fascinating! The attention to detail is extraordinary. I remember as an eight year old in the mid 60's, making the journey by train from London to Katowice with my Dad to visit his family. We did it 2-3 times during the 60's / 70's, until it became easier to fly. We always did the transit from West Berlin to East Berlin in the evening and the difference between the two cities was stark. I imagine how exotic and exciting this would have been through the wide eyes of an eight year old brought up in the quiet suburbs of South London!
7:13 "like utter dirt" - ouch. Thank you for this interesting video.
Outstanding video, thank you! In late 1981, I went from Braunschweig to West Berlin by Deutsche Bahn (West German) and Deutsche Reichsbahn (East German) railways. Solidarity in Poland had started the revolt in Gdansk and things were very tense in East Germany. The Deutsche Reichsbahn was still using steam engines. It felt like going back in time by a quarter of a century. East Germany was utterly depressing. I can't imagine being a citizen having survived the Nazi era only to be a gilted prisoner of the Soviets.
One of my uncles worked for the US National Security Agency and was stationed in Germany in the early 1960s, at a time when the very existence of the NSA was still a secret. Right before Christmas one year (1961?), he got on a train to visit a friend stationed at Helmstedt. Unfortunately, he fell asleep on the train and didn't wake up until he was several miles on the wrong side of the border. He got off the train at the next station and tried to buy a ticket back to Helmstedt, but got spotted by the VoPos and held for 12 hours before they let him go. He bluffed his way out by claiming to be a special education teacher in the U.S. dependent schools.
I went to West Berlin via Transit from West Germany as a child. It was a summer vacation with my parents in July of 1987.
It took a while to pass the border into East Germany.
I remember the summer temperatures, the blue sky and the windscreen covered in smashed insects. The lightheaded magic mood you're in when the adventure just started. And occasionally seeing villages along the Transit-Autobahn. They were in bad shape.
I was nine years old at the time, sitting in the back of the Ford Sierra my father bought the year before. I was told that the people of East Germany had to wait for many years until they got their Trabbi, the tiny old-fashioned cars I was now seeing all over the place.
After a while, we took a break and stopped at a rest area along the Autobahn. My mother gave me a can of coke, the first sip felt great in the summer heat.
That was the moment when I noticed another family, not very far away from us. They had a Trabbi and the two children of about my age were staring at me, with the Coke in my hand.
I grew up in the reality of a divided country, it was kind of normal to me, because to me, it had always been that way.
As I was told beforehand, it was strictly forbidden to talk to East Germans as that could get us and even more them, into big trouble, maybe even prison.
So in that moment, it was impossible to share my Coca-Cola with other kids as I was used to back home. That was the moment I realised the cruelty of this separation. It felt so unjust to drink that can before their eyes. I could do nothing but stare back at them. There was just summer air between us, but also an insurmountable wall.
I still wonder what became of them. I saw the Todezone (death zone) behind the Berlin Wall from a viewing platform that summer. The same wall that separated us kids.
Two years later people were dancing on the Wall, tears of joy were on the news. I joined their dance in front of our TV.
I forgot most of my childhood I guess, but among a few others, that Transit-moment sticks with me until today.
It reminds me of the importance of freedom and that communism was, is and always will be: A very bad idea.
I grew up in Gardelegen. You can see it on the map at 4:05. I was 9 years old, when the wall came down. I really can´t understand, why people still romanticizing the "good old times" in east germany. I don´t want to have that back. Definitively not.
Growing up as a indigenous person in Canada we thought we had it bad,
My mind thinks what were those kids thinking seeing you, did they long for your life style and freedom of movement or were they so use to it that they thought thats just the way it has to be,
Best short book I’ve ever read right there
I appreciate your service and thank you for the trip down memory lane. I attended the American high school in the American Sector of West Berlin from 1981 to 1985 while my father was stationed at Tempelhoff. I never got to make this trip.
All my travels to West Germany and back (and they were many due to playing American football) I travelled at night by the military duty train. Great quality and information to your video! Looking forward to checking out your other videos focused on Berlin.
Thanks so much for documenting this history so well.
I was lucky enough to be in Berlin in November 1989. Absolutely incredible experience
This trip is amazing and I love that you show us the old instruction videos. They are so eerie and haunting, like something made from a dystopian movie or video game. You can feel the constant tension and real danger that its trying to help you avoid. Its important we remember these times and see them from todays view and from the past
Hearing true stories about people who risked and lost their lives in the pursuit of freedom should make us appreciate ours.
Thank you for your service as a British soldier keeping us in the West safe and free. Thank you also for the care that you took in creating this video to document the harrowing journey through East Germany, which must have been some test of nerves! I visited Berlin in the comforts of a train in 1987 and was fascinated by the contrast of being in freedom at one moment and in a repressive state a moment later as we traveled out of Berlin, the sounds of John F. Kennedy's speech echoing in my head "Lasst sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin.". It was quite an emotional journey for me. Without your service then, and others like you, so many people in Central Europe would not be enjoying freedom today (the same freedom that the people of Ukraine are fighting for now). Thank you!
I made this journey as a private citizen, with some friends in a car... but back in the mid 1970s. This video shows a greatly improved road in the late 1980s compared to my experience. In the 1970s the road surface was still the same concrete slab structure from when the road had first been built in the nazi era in the 1930s. I think the DDR/soviets had not bothered to spend any money on repairs because it was a road used by westerners in transit. My memory is the relentless rhythmic sound of the road as you drove over the slight gaps between each concrete section of the road. I also remember that in some places you had to divert across the median because the concrete was in a poor state. I think at the end of the 70s/ early 80s the West German Government was allowed to pay for the upgrade to a tarmac surface. My other memory is passing endless pine forests and going through no towns, all you could see was the soviet era tower blocks in the distance as we passed Magdeburg - it was rather a boring journey.
I remember the on and off ramps being made from cobblestones or bricks in some places. Probably the original stone and bricks from the 1930s.
In 1968 and the 1970's I drove this route to Poland along with many Polish families based in the UK. After the 6 hours documentation check and payment to get into East Germany it was usually dark by the time you were near Berlin, the direction sings were not lit and there was no motorway lighting. This made it tricky to get the correct motorway to Frankfurt on Oder rather than the one to Berlin. Those cars that got it wrong were then subjected to another 6 hours of documentation check sand having to remove everything from the car for checking. Then when you got to the Polish border you were over the time limit for travelling through so you again had a thorough document and car contents check. Agonising, luckily it never happened to me. But the East German guards were vile and tried to antagonise you to react to them. They also had the biggest dogs.
I came to Germany for two years in 1984. I am still in Germany, but that's another story. We travelled the concrete road - me, wife and three young children - to Poland with a caravan in tow. There was no speed that we could drive without violent oscillation of the vehicle. We weren't accustomed to heavily armed police. Using large mirrors on wheels they searched under the car and the caravan. I also had to allow them access to the cupboards and toilet in the caravan. It scared us all. In Poland on a campsite, a Polish guy was fascinated with our car, a Renault Espace. We couldn't find any beer but he knew where to find it. (Brown beer-bottles in the shop were in fact vinegar. We later learnt thr word "Pivo"). For a ride in the car we were lead to the huge doors of a warehouse containing alcoholic beverages. Later at Easter time in the year of the fall of the wall we visited Berlin. East Berlin we visited using the subway. (U-bahn). Waiting for the stern east German guards to check our passports in an overcrowded station was very nerve racking. We tried to explain to our young children that the wall was built for ever. Little did we know. Only a few months later we witnessed the scenes on television. We experienced disbelief and elation. It is totally stupid. I have reason to visit Romania. Coming out of Romania into Hungary is similar. The tension isn't there but the complete waste of time and arrogance of some of the border police is meant to demean the traveller. No respect, no point, no sense. Value your freedom, stand up to those who want to take your freedom away for their own benefit.
Did you enjoy the Intershops at the service stations?
I stayed in Celle for a few weeks in 1986 and palled around with Greenjackets. We visited the Innengrenze near Wolfsburg looked after by FRG police. One of my classmates thought it’d be funny to step over the line which caused the DDR goons in their tower to raise rifles and the cops by me to unlock their holsters. My pal was handheld back across by a cop and it was over. Great video, thanks
What memories this brings back. We travelled that route just before reunification, three days before Checkpoint Charlie was taken down and put into the museum. FANTASTIC!!!
I was an American soldier stationed in West Germany from 1987-1991. I never did visit Berlin, and I regret it greatly. I remember the night the wall came down vividly. Many years later in 2019 I finally visited Berlin, but I will always regret not visiting in the 80s.
You must have so much cool stories to tell ✌🏻
Mate, you missed out..first time i had seen oppression on a grand scale. Soilders with AKs 10 ft away...as a teenager..it was awesome
You really missed the good old WestBerlin. I miss the old good times.
Mike thanks for serving and i feel sad for your regreet so the only thing you can do is some sightseeing and read old books,but i can tell you it was a crazy time when i remember back on my truck driving times between west germany and west berlin transit i think times was better earlier
stay safe
In the eighties, I have read this in the last week, and it's true, the most Americans came to East-Berlin to shopping, and buying the less luxury goods in the GDR in masses. The citizen of Berlin was angry about this, we had before also nothing.
An interesting video. I suppose making this journey as military personnel would have been a different, more tense, experience than making the same journey as a civilian with so many different rules and regulations to follow and comply with.
I never travelled to/from West Berlin by road or rail but recall doing so by air, seeing the frontier from the aircraft window and the requirement to descend to 6000 feet for the 'corridor' flight. I have crossed into East Berlin twice, once on foot via one of the checkpoints (Charlie I would assume) and once by S-bahn from Belin Zoo to Berlin Friedrichstrasse. I can recall seeing the soldiers with their rifles guarding the wall from the train. It's a long time ago now but I jest remember barbed wire and all these soldiers. I recall that for passport control you put your passport on a small shelf at a small curtained semi-circular window and a hand came up from inside and took it then you waited until it was returned, never seeing the passport control officer at all, who I assume was seated at a desk below the small curtained window. I also recall my disappointment that, unlike when you transited the DDR without visa by rail or road to/from West Berlin (as a normal civilian) or entered the DDR normally with a visa when passports were stamped, when you crossed from West Berlin to East Berlin without a visa on a day visit the DDR did not stamp the passport but instead issued you with a permit on a separate piece of paper.
One thought that does come to mind is that I never found the frontier officials of Eastern European communist bloc countries to be difficult or unfriendly; although having said that I have heard stories from young West Germans of all sorts of intimate searches being carried out on them by DDR customs when crossing into East Germany or transiting to West Berlin.
Based on my own personal experiences though, I would rather enter the DDR than the USA when it comes to the attitude of immigration and customs officers.
You mention surveillance in the video. This reminds me of an unusual incident which occurred not in the DDR but in Bulgaria. This was in 1980. I worked in the UK for a student travel organisation at the time and decided to make a quick rail trip across Europe as far as Sofia, to broaden my knowledge of the European rail product, before flying back. When I arrived in Sofia I stayed overnight in one of the better hotels before flying home the next day. The following morning, in the hotel, I was downstairs in the hotel having coffee before leaving for the airport when a young man of about my own age who spoke perfect English but was definately a local came and sat down next to me and started a conversation asking many questions. It didn't alarm me at the time and I thought very little of it but on reflection I am pretty sure that he must have been some sort of state security or police operative.
Fantastic insight into getting into Berlin during the bad old days. I’ve seen the transit instruction videos before but you’ve added so much context and really brought the process to life. Thank you for posting this.
Interesting video! Around 1988, when I was just 6 years old, my parents took me for a day trip from Poland to West Berlin, to see the city, western shops etc. I remember that even though we travelled (by car) from the east (GDR/Poland border crossing in Frankfurt Oder/Słubice), we had to drive all the way around Berlin and enter West Berlin from the west. I don't remember the exact place we crossed between GDR and West Berlin, but it's quite likely it was Check Point Bravo.
What a great video! In 1985 I immigrated to the UK and joined the British Army as my father was from Scotland. I was training at Depot Lichfield/Whittington Barracks but was discharged 6 months later for medical reasons. Afterwards I got my International Youth Hostel Card, the book Hitchhikers Guide to Europe, and took the ferry across to Hamburg, Germany and started hitchhiking through Europe. I stood at the border of East Germany with a sign saying "West Berlin" and got a ride along the corridor into West Berlin. After touring around Berlin I did the same to get back to West Germany. I was picked up by a nice man named Jurgen Grossheim who upon arrival to West Germany bought me a beer and bratwurst prior to taking me to my hostel. What a fascinating time in history, and thanks for posting this!
Sir, this is extremely informative. It's discovering a piece of history i knew nothing about other than just hearing about it. Thank you.
This is fantastic, a great resource for future historians. You shuld save it somewhere. Although they might not believe it! Such a bizarre situation.
I travelled through East Germany to Berlin and back to Hamburg in 1989 with Deutscher Reichsbahn. The whole journey was the most surreal ever experienced in my life. I also partook the city bus tour in East Berlin (as it's called-with strong emphasis-Hauptstadt der DDR - Capital City of German Democratic Republic). I felt humbled to have lived in the democracy and market capitalism...
That was a highly informative video! During the Cold War I spent 2 tours in Korea (80-81 & 85-86), including in the DMZ, and the wall came down while I was in Panama (86-90). Many of my military friends spent a tour or two in West Germany or West Berlin but I missed out. In 1994 I first set foot in Germany and it was nothing like the Cold War era. In 2003, 2019 and 2022 I went to Berlin and I still find it highly intriguing. I drove past “Bravo” but have never visited Alpha. Sadly, the Cold War means nothing to many youngsters because history is seldom stressed in many schools (including in Asia… many young adults are ignorant of Imperial Japanese atrocities in Korea or Philippines). Your video is a highly specialized piece of history but very well done. I checked “like” and subscribed. Keep up the outstanding work!
You mention 2 of the 3 countries divided after 1945, Germany and Korea. The third was Vietnam.
This is fascinating. Literally one of the best films I've ever seen on YT.
That was one of the coolest videos on this subject that I've ever seen. Great job!
Thanks so much for this.
As a civilian when you saw those "Military" lanes, you always imagined the military had the red carpet rolled out for them - turns out it was in fact a total palaver!
Palaver is a word I’ve never heard of before.
Meaning that those using the lane had to endure complex and complicated procedures in order to proceed
I was a, student in the USSR in the early eighties. I travelled twice a year to western Europe. I never had any problem crossing into west Berlin. The checks and verifications were similar at other border crossings in western Europe.
Some American students who had been in the USSR said that when they reached the Polish-East German border the East German guard slammed the door open and shouted for passports. After that the Soviet steward on the rail car, the provodnik, said to the Americans, "The Russians and the Americans have got to straighten out these Germans again."
What an amazingly interesting video. So many fictional stories turning into blockbuster movies could be made about this stretch. Thanks so much.
Fascinating. As a young captain serving in BFG in 1977, I, accompanied by my wife, drove to and from Berlin for a week-long summer holiday, staying in Edinburgh House. Your video was very reminiscent of that trip though, if I recall correctly, we received our pre-briefing in our unit a day or so ahead of the journey, not in Helmstedt. I do remember that the travel document had to be perfect as even incorrect punctuation could lead to the Soviets rejecting it, hence the final check at Checkpoint Alpha.
As for Checkpoint Charlie, many Berlin based personnel crossed into East Berlin, either in one of the official military patrols (that's another possible subject for you) or socially, for example going to the opera or dining. I believe that uniform was mandatory for military personnel, thus mess dress was acceptable. I walked into East Berlin on a Sunday afternoon in summer dress to find the city full of not only allied visitors but young Soviet conscripts on their day off. Crossing into the East was fine (no checks were required, unless a Soviet officer requested my ID) but walking back felt spooky, knowing that the armed East German border guards were watching my movement from behind me - a great disincentive to break into a trot. (Some East Germans had recently escaped by dressing in fake allied uniforms.)
(Some East Germans had recently escaped by dressing in fake allied uniforms.)
Some who used that method worked in the wardrobe section of an East German theater and waked out in fake US Army uniforms, with neither the tailors nor the border guards observing that the US Army has the point of the chevrons going up, not down like their homemade ones or the British Army. The real US Army soldier on guard at Checkpoint Charlie quickly asked them was going on. "Where there is a will, there is a way."
Haus at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin is a museum of the Wall, and has a large section on escape attempts. It is amazing what the human mind can come up with, when strongly motivated. Secret vehicle compartments, false papers, homemade balloons, fire department respirators converted to SCUBA diving gear to use in border lakes, tunnels, a cable from the roof of a building at the border across the wall to a parking lot, and others, to include a vast range of fraudulent documentation.
Tempelhof Airport also saw aircraft from Poland come over and land. The Polish national airline was LOT. The ever-creative Berliners claimed that it was for
Landet Och Tempelhof, also lands in Tempelhof.
Hi Andy, I really enjoyed this post. So interesting and informative. I particularly liked the 1980's footage comparing Co;d War sites with today - particularly the removal of the T34 to be replaced with a pink truck. To have been a citizen of the DDR must have been desperate! My son just came back from Berlin ad was very enthusiastic about the trip. I'll show him this post to complete the experience.
Thanks again!
Absolutely brilliant description of the way things were a short while ago. I showed this to friends and family , it's a remarkable history lesson ,and by the way a great choice of the background music at the beginning.
Andy, this was fascinating to watch, great video. In 1981 I drove from Calais to Denmark via Hamburg. I took a detour to go to Lubeck from where it was possible to see the border area, with DDR (East German) watch towers. I've probably got a photo somewhere. Later on, in December 1989 I visited Berlin by air, I still recall the descent to 10,000 feet as we entered the Berlin military corridor whilst flying over East German airspace. Also remember being told not to take any maps of West Berlin with me into East Berlin, if stopped by the police to ask for the Russian military commander, the West Berlin U-Bahn running under East Berlin streets, signs advising as crossing borders between British, American and French military sectors, Frederichstrasse interchange which was in East Berlin with shops selling western goods very cheaply but only accessible by West Berlin travellers and finally, big signs in certain shops in 4 languages advising that certain goods could not be purchased by non DDR citizens (eg sports and baby products)! This was just after the wall had been opended to German travellers who could use Checkpoint Charlie as a crossing point, but us UK citizens were not permitted to do so.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and your video. History should never be forgotten.
You've earned yourself one more subscriber 👍🏻
So sad times, and so great they are over.
Growing up in Braunschweig near Helmstedt was sad because one direction for travelling was closed. Visiting Berlin today and crossing the border without even noticing is so delightful.
A nice slow march down memory lane. First travelled the military train in ‘71 and also used the corridor a couple of times. Our cars had the old BFG numberplates. The train, when stopped in Magdeburg, was surrounded by female guards with machine pistols. Dogs were used to sweep under the carriages. Reichbahn steam trains were still very much in use. Checkpoint Charlie was also easy to go through, minimum group of 5, in no. 1 uniform, one of the party an SNCO. We were encouraged to visit the opera and concert halls just to keep our right of entry. Being Raf, I flew into Gatow many times, including on my first visit in a Hercules, we were buzzed by a Soviet Mig because of our position in the air corridor. I have been back a few times since the Wall opened and it remains my favourite city to visit.
My uncle was based in RAF Gatow at various times in the 1960s & 70s
Great video! US Army Würzburg 84-87 and Stuttgart 88-91. I spent a lot of time on the Coburg border. The video brought back a lot of memories.
Great video. Thanks for all the detail and diagrams. The instruction videos are a great insight to this period of history.
Thanks for this. I lived in Germany as an exchange student 1982-83. I remember visiting the Berlin wall near Helmstedt and not realizing that the wall covered the entire country! I visited East Germany twice while living there. Each time you were never sure: 1) if they would let you in or (2) if they would let you back out again. The guards were trained to give you a hard time.
Growin up during the late 70s and 80s. I remember the last years of the cold war very well. This gave an in-depth perspective on how tense it really was between the west Allies and the Soviet Union traveling behind the iron curtain. Thank you.
Andy - your narration of your videos makes them so much more authentic than "professionally" narrated documentaries, and the personal experiences that you weave into your story line adds significantly to it's credibility - pure magic to watch 🙂
For those still interested, the National Army Museum in London has a exhibit dedicated to Anglo-GDR Relations called "foe to friend", where they give particular focus on this transit route, including a full copy of the transit pack on display for you to look at.
Interesting to see the authority of the VoPo wasn't recognised in the 1980s, given the UK had by 1970s de facto recognition of the DDR after all but abandoning the Hallstein Doctrine.
Great Video nonetheless!
Look up the berlin airlift (Luftbrücke) and other info to see why military and their special rules and privileges were important to keep those routes open and secure until 1990.
And as such, no allied military people and their countries could subject themselves to the VoPo (Volkspolizei = "peoples police", the cops in east germany) on transit routes.
Afaik, local military, foreign military and local police always and everywhere have rules for their relations and jurisdictions, eg also when a soldier starts a bar fight.
But of course it was different for *private* persons from the countries of the western allies who traveled in transit _as tourists._
"fun" fact: allied occupation law officially still applied until 1990 in Berlin, and thus I (as a citizen of west berlin) could theoretically (it never was enforced and done, but the law was establieshed after 1945 to fight the black market) have been shot on the spot at any time by an allied "drum roll court martial" if i didn't carry my id with me at all times.
What you have done here, is documenting an important piece history. Very well done!
Nice video. As a tourist in 1986 I traveled by train from Nurenburg to West Berlin on a Eurail Pass. Fascinating how the towns changed historically as we went from West Germany to East Germany. I remember having to show my American passport to East German Border Guards at the border. Even got to travel with a small tour group into east berlin through checkpoint charlie of all places. The wall was still in place then and you could not get even close to it, most rememerable for me was seeing all the old buildings in east berlin pock marked with bullet holes from WWII.
That reminds me of one old building I was fascinated by when I visited in 2018 on the corner of Am Kupfergraben and Dorotheestrasse whose thick old stonework is absolutely plastered with bullet holes especially around one of the basement windows. Made me think about the desperate defenders inside trying to hold off the inevitable Russian advance and whether they survived or not.
WOW, that takes me back. I was REME attached in Berlin 1988-91.
Coming back from leave, the RMP in Helmstedt gave me a bollocking for not shaving before going through the corridor.! Ah good times..
Andy, ABSOLUTELY outstanding! Thank you for the hard work and the attention to detail, my friend!
Superb video thanks.
Thank you so very much for you time and expense in the making of this video to share some Cold War history.. AMAZING! . Very well done. Greetings from Alaska..
Great video: the coincidence at 14:45 is incredible, as you pull into the former Communist border crossing, you're passed by Western Military equipment heading Eastwards.
In autumn 1983, I spent a few days in West Berlin and one Sunday afternoon in East Berlin. The contrast between the two sides of the city was amazing. Crossing to the east through Checkpoint Charlie, we had to buy 10 East German marks. These looked like monopoly money. There was nothing to buy anyway, except a ticket for the tv tower and some badly-printed postcards. We were forbidden to bring back any change and had to donate it in a bulging charity box. In the west, things looked smart and affluent, with Mercedes cars. In the East, things looked shabby and the traffic, such as it was, consisted mainly of aged Trabants or similar, trailing clouds of exhaust smoke.
I’ve watched this video several times. I’ve been to Berlin but after the Cold War. I grew up during the Cold War and find the border fascinating just the elaborate ways to secure it
Fantastic video.
As an Australian who spent time in the armed forces I understand your way of thinking.
Brings back a lot of memories.
Great report Andy as an ex soldier myself in 80s Germany I never did the trip but always wondered what it was like, watching the video I'm glad I never had to...after so many years it's hard to imagine what it was like in those cold war times if you didn't experience it yourself
When the wall came down in November 89 I went through CP Charlie into the DDR to have a look around and was shocked how backward it all was.
From the pictures I've seen, a lot of East Germany felt firmly stuck in roughly the early-mid (pre-punk) 1970s during the mid-late 1980s - there still seemed to be a lot of orange and brown everywhere from the photos I've seen, and the ruling government still seemed quite fond of disco music. I think most of the communist countries stagnated both economically and culturally. East Germany probably didn't feel as backwards as some of the others since most people could still receive West German TV and radio reception, and the East German authorities were unable to jam these signals since it would also cause interference in nearby West Germany. I'd say that the USSR in the 1980s remained culturally stuck in the early-mid 1960s while East Germany felt stuck in a period rougly a decade later.
My dad visited Leipzig during the mid-late 1990s and to him, the former East at that time felt similar to the poorer regions of West Germany, but was probably still a lot nicer than what it had been a decade prior. He saw a lot of construction work while there.
The Allies recognized the authority of the GDR being recognized by the FRG. There's your difference.
In 1973, when I was teaching German as a student in Lüneburg, I went to Berlin by (steam) train with a class of West German pupils. The contact with the East German guards on the train and during a visit to East Berlin via the Friedrichstrasse tube station made a big impression on me. Faceless men and zero fraternisation - not that we wanted to fraternise with them, we just wanted to get the formalities over. You were glad when they'd done with you. In case we should be asked where we were going, we were primed to say "To Berlin, Capital of the German Democratic Republic". In East Berlin you behaved impeccably, if you knew what was good for you.
"In East Berlin you behaved impeccably, if you knew what was good for you."
That also applied to driving in the country. The max speed was 100 KM/hour, and the allowable alcohol percentage for drivers was zero. West German speed demons and drinkers had no problems in adjusting to the DDR standard.
Yes, you were right about that last sentence. Alles in ordnung.....
14:36 The DDR's emblem didn't actually have a sickle but rather a COMPASS! The compass on the emblem represented the intelligentsia. The DDR's emblem was the only heraldic emblem of a European socialist state that didn't have a red star! And the emblem didn't even appear on the DDR flag until 1959 as before then, it was just the tricolor of today's German flag to symbolize illustrate the continuity between the Weimar Republic and this new German state. They also wanted reunification, but when it was made clear that the Soviets didn't want the DDR to join in, they added the emblem. East Germany and West Germany actually competed as one unified team at the 1956, 1960 and 1964 Winter and Summer Olympics.
Correct and the joint east-west german team used the horizontal black red and yellow tricolour. But in the central red stripe appeared the 5 olympic rings in white...
my understanding is that it's a sextant, for marine navigation
Very well made video! I lived in Germany in the late 1980s as a child and hope to revisit in the next couple years. I got to experience the Fall of the Berlin Wall in person...an experience I'll never forget! My family lived near Giessen (Langgöns) and we just happened to be visiting Berlin when the Wall fell, a very lucky coincidence. My Father had a camcorder at the time and recorded our experience! Thanks again for your video!
And now those videos are on YT
Thank you for your service in Germany during this time.
Best regards from Potsdam.
Thank you too!
Great video. I travelled by civilian coach from Berlin to Düsseldorf along this route (in reverse) in 1983. It was pretty easy, uneventful and with a meal stop at a Raststätte. It is great to see what was going on under the bonnet.
Even crossing a regular today’s border makes me nervous (like when I travel from France to the UK since brexit). But that video just creeps me out so much. It seems like the smallest mistake could result in serious consequences. I would have feel so anxious to do this journey. I’m very grateful I was born after that, in the EU, and that I mostly travel within the Schengen area where a border is just a line on the ground or a sign.
Thanks!
Welcome!
Great video and a minor correction at 14:38: The GDR insignias were the hammer and compass.
Thanks so much for this, so fascinating! 🤗. I was born in 1961 so the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain were ‘status quo’ during all of my formative years. So amazing to see it today, never knowing what a scourge it had been. Thank you again :-)
Big thanks you, for keeping this piece of history alive. It´s always nice, to gt it from people, who actually experienced it.
I love all the "then and now" comparisons, I've seen that military instructional video before but your new footage really grounds it.
Wow. That must have taken awhile to produce! Brings back some hazy memories as I took that journey a couple of times back in '83 - '84 only I was a 19 year old punk a$$ airman in the US Air Force. I have not driven that route since reunification and have only been back to Berlin once. Flew that time. Thanks for putting these time capsules together. I have seen some of your earlier vids about NATO/BAOR, etc. from the 80's. History's biggest pissing match...at least at the time.
Thanks for an interesting video. As an American civilian in Germany in the 1970s I had to take a train to West Berlin and cross at Checkpoint Charlie, so I never had this experience, although I knew many who did. For reasons too complicated to explain here, I did on one trip have what was almost certainly a Stasi tail. I was young, in terrific shape and I walked that poor man all over East Berlin at a pace I’m sure exhausted him. Fun for me, less so for him!
Enjoyed the video, it brought so many memories back. I travelled to Berlin many times as both Military and non military having lived in Germany for 45 years on and off. 2019 I flew into Berlin for the first times having only ever driven. I would live to have gone on the train, my dad did in the 70s. Thank you
Great video! We all thought back then that the Wall and the Warsaw Pact would survive for 100 years more. Things can change very quick and human institutions might not seem as stable as they present themselves.
What wonderful, well researched, well thought out, well filmed, and well narrated video. Thank you so much!
Masterfully done video! I never knew that there was a series of safety videos on just driving through this one allowed stretch of the Autobahn for Westerners. I knew about the highway, but not the videos. Kudos!
Christ! What a way to live! Great blend of old and new footage. Well done.
I really enjoyed your calm and down to earth style to make this video. That is a rare treat these days! Thank you very much and greetings from Berlin!
Thank you very much!
I travelled with my Dad through the corridor in 85. At the ACD two MP's asked if it was our first time and that we could follow them. They then proceeded to break the speed limit all the way to Bravo before turning round to return west. Leaving myself and my Dad to explain why we were significantly early. It was all a huge adventure for my 15 yr old self.
Typical for some military personnel; break all the rules, but expect others to obey them. jobsworths.
Subscribed!!
My passion is everything about the WWII!!
Thank you for this information!!
Many thanks for this amazing journey into a bygone cold era and greetings from free Poland.
Great video Andy. I was in the US Army in Germany during the same time period. I had to go to Berlin a couple of times and was always scared to death during the process. Keep up the great work. Cheers GS Jack
I found this video really interesting. I've read several books about Cold War, seen films and documentaries, but this video makes you "relive" what you could experience in those days. And it made me shiver...
My visit to Berlin was at the half life of the wall. Beautiful city. I was in the US Air Force and went to Berlin with a base football team as the photographer.
Many thanks, Andy! I'm a Brit living in Berlin who very regularly drives back and forth along this route to visit parents-in-law in Landkreis Helmstedt. We have previously toured the site in Marienborn, and we also always love seeing the Berliner bear on arriving home. Amazing to see how things used to be. Wonderful footage, great detail!
Living in Berlin, former East or West?
Thank you, that brought back memories, and gave a fascinating insight into the different experience of British military.
Our border crossing was slow because I'm Australian and was crossing with three West German friends. I was also given the treatment when visiting East Berlin through Friedrichstrasse station.
I could be wrong, but I think that I could use Checkpoint Charlie, but my friends couldn't, and they could use checkpoints that I couldn't.
Because I was in a separate channel, it was necessary to get by on my German - which was very poor at the time. My friends had to wait 90 minutes for me to emerge.
Things were different for civilians.
The transit routes had picnic spots where both westerners and easterners would go, but they always sat at separate tables and pretended not to notice each other.
I had visas for being in the GDR, and not just transiting, and so countless times I left the transit routes and got on regular GDR roads, and only once, in a small village, did a Volkspolizei officer wave me over to see my visa.
can you do a video on Templehof Airfield ?
When I crossed the border between West and East Germany by train in 1978, a West German in the compartment looked out at the border guards and said, "The only thing that has changed is the color of their uniforms." He was referring to the fact that under the Nazis soldiers wore field grey while under the Soviets they wore olive drab.
Yes, and the East German state railway was called the Deutsche Reichsbahn, and there were many other nods to the past. It seems that West Germany took the approach of erasing the Nazi years by totally breaking up with the past and building an entirely new country, while in the East they took the opposite approach and tried to restore as much as possible Germany as it was before Hitler (and this approach also had the added bonus that it suggested that the East German government was a natural and legitimate successor of the old Reich, after the anomalous Nazi interruption, and that was an important part of their geopolitical stance). In fact, after briefly visiting both Germanies in the 1980s, I was left with the impression that the heavy and austere atmosphere in the East was more due to preserved Prussian spirit than it was to Communism.
In 1970 I crossed from West to East Berlin by train and that was my reaction to the East German border guards as well. They were exceptionally unpleasant and obviously it was deliberate. The whole atmosphere on the train changed perceptively when we crossed the border line and the feeling I and my companions got during our brief visit to the East was that we had time travelled back to the 1940s. Very little traffic, hardly anyone spoke in public, nothing much in the shops, dingy streets with poor lighting, etc - a total contrast to the loud and bright West Berlin just a stone’s throw away across the Wall.
@@goytabr The name "Deutsche Reichsbahn" was kept so that the GDR could operate the entire Berlin S-Bahn system, even in West-Berlin. All main line trains out of Berlin were also hauled by East German locomotives. It paid to keep the old name to be in charge of this traffic.
@@goytabr the GDR government didn't want to look the VoPo and NVA (national peoples army ) looking like Russians soldiers or policemen. The uniformstyle they had before/around WWII was only slightly altered and kept in use. And for themas a bonus, that was even cheaper than styling uniforms on more costs, there wasn't that lot of money in the GDR at that present time... So the GDR people wouldn't think they were taken over by the Russian occupants - in fact they were. -
You wanna know why that is? Timejump to when the east german military was established in 1956, the east german officials asked the soviets on how their uniforms should look. The simple reply was: you are germans, dress accordingly.