During the last year of secondary school my class made a school trip to Berlin. Among other things we visited the Stasi prison 'Berlin-Hohenschönhausen' which is now a museum. The museum tour-guide was a former inmate and told many interesting things. I can't remember all the details but there was a specific jail guard/interrogator who interrogated and tormented him for months. He (the former inmate) got released when the GDR (DDR in german) ceased to exist and got an apartment in the same city district. During grocery shopping he met his former jail guard who was shopping there aswell and had his family with him. He said they just looked at each other and no word was spoken between them. The interrogator seemed to have gotten away with any real punishment since he could walk freely and have his family with him only around a year later. Another thing unrelated to the story above: If you are a German citizen and any Stasi documents from the GDR exist about you you can make an application to look at them. Many people found out that way that their best friends and family spied on them and told informations to the Stasi. (This was however not always voluntary since some of the 'unofficial Stasi employees' were blackmailed and threatened with long jail sentences.) At the end of the GDR there were 189k of these informers in a poplulation of around 16 million. Great video Johnny and greetings from Germany!
Some people like to be led by thugs or bullies who they perceive as "strong." Then blindly following them because they feel like they finally have a place they fit in. Since they value this position, they are very unlikely to criticise anything their leader does, even if it is objectively destructive
They worked under Heinrich Müller, who was the absolute embodiement of a soulless power hungry bureaucrat, so it makes sense a lot of them didn't really have any strong political convictions.
I doubt that there were many. The GDR DID use people with Nazi-past/ignored sometimes their former deeds simply because they needed their expertise or (like in Western Gemrany) simply could not or would not punish all who were guilty of crimes, because it was seen as political opportune to "forgive and forget". But overall they were less willing to use high ranking Nazis than West Germany (or the US). The STASI did use their knowledge about former Nazis to pressure sometimes such people people into cooperation/spying or to conduct propaganda against ex-Nazis who had achived high posts in Western Germany (sometimes they forged material/made things up to make their targets look more guilty).
I first heard one of my favorite jokes in this movie. It was in the cafeteria scene which you showed briefly. "Eric Honecher (the East German chancellor) gets up in the morning and looks up and says, "Hello Sun". The Sun replies, "Hello Eric". At noon he looks up again and says, "Hello Sun". Again the Sun replies, "Hello Eric". That evening Eric looks up and says, "Hello Sun". The Sun replies, "f*ck you, I'm in the West now!"
Thank you for covering this! I remember now that this film was recommended to me by a history professor over a decade ago - but I had forgotten about that completely until seeing this video. I will add this to my list of movies to watch when I can stomach something so bleak.
The hardest Stasi department to get into was their sigint department. Like its foreign intel HVA department only a minority of Stasi members ever served in it. Primarily because knowledge of advanced mathematics and computer engineering was a must. The lives of others is a movie about the generic Stasi officer the one tackling internal dissent. But the elite only served either in foreign intel or even higher sigint. Stasi sigint was in many ways better than KGB operations and close to western sigint.
The MFS (Ministry for Statesecurity) STASI was capable of letting your life completely fall apart without you even knowing it. At the same time, they would let you feel that you are at their absolute mercy.
I remember when I watched this, I commented to a German friend of mine how I felt sorry for the Stasi guy at the end because he seemed so pitiful and her response in a magnificently thick german accent was was "no fuck him, don't feel sorry for that piece of shit he's a Stasi asshole" and I've remembered that ever since any time a shred of sympathy or pity for these fuckers enters my mind.
Will find this film. The Stasi earned their scorn. I remember when East Germany fell, you could buy the reminants organization for pennies on the dollar.
Johnny, have you seen the Deutschland series (Deutschland 83, Deutschland 86 and Deutschland 89) a great collection of Cold War spy stories and the efforts of East Germany citizens to escape (or direct) the control and manipulation of the state and of Americans and West Germans to deflect and counter attack those efforts (and that's a terrible description of the three seasons)
although it may not be a war movie, an interesting one would be “The Man Standing Next”, a movie about the 1979 assassination of Park Chung Hee and the events leading up to the fateful incident, kinda like Korea’s version of Shakespeare’s Othello
I hesitated to like the vid. 101 is one of my favourite numbers and I didn't want to get rid of it. But your videos are so good they deserve all the boosting they can get😊
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more - we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward." Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Bravery comes in all forms. It's hard to ever justify groups who do things like this but I can't judge them all. Not trying to give their organisation a free-pass by any means but I'm sure some were forced into playing ball on pain of death or family being threatened/provided for
There is and never will be a system of government without corruption. It's our job to analyze and criticize every instance of it and aim for the least corrupt system of government.
Stasi agents were recruited and trained by Moscow directly so their first priority was serving the Soviet Union, not Eastern Germany. The moment they opened up the apartment and installed all their devices, I thought: they can do this anywhere. Anytime. J. Edgar Hoover anyone?
My teachers played this movie when we were on a school trip to Leipzig, b4 visiting the Stasi museum, and its stuck with me since, its a really great film that I think does a good job of communicating a lot in little time, e.g. the cafeteria scene and the way authority works, or the sort of quick shots of all the set up it takes to bug someone, and especially how well its edited between the Stasi who’s listening-in and the couple and how a connection forms between them. There’s few films like it
It's always quite comfortable to point one's finger at foreign regimes and leaders like Putin but it would be more honest and appropriate to address how for example political dissidents are treated nowadays in our so-called free West.
Putin literally kills hundreds of people everyday. If that was going on in Canada I too would take issue with it. And we do take issue with local politics in the West that's why we vote and protest etc.
@JohnnyJohnsonHistory "kills literally hundreds of people every day" Does the same standard apply to any head of state of any Western nation that does wage a war? Because otherwise, I would rate such a viewpoint as hypocritical.
@JohnnyJohnsonHistory You're entitled to do so, of course. Just like me noticing how certain people who express disgust with Putin seem strangely oblivious to countries like the UK locking more people away for social media posts than Russia does. Or the US being ruthlessly creating chaos and misery in advancing their own imperialistic interests all over the globe (all of this while promoting "freedom, "democracy" and "western values"). That's what triggered my comment in the first place, but I'm just going to assume that you aren't one of those people, then.
Really? I felt it was pretty damning of the "police-state" and too much government power. I could see the movie appealing to many different political ideologies.
One might look for the percentage of Gestapo officers that were hired by western regime for police, right after nazis were defeated. It's close to 100%. Not saying that USA-led West kept around 100k nazi soldiers equipped to fight Soviet Union under the "Unthinkable" plan. Honourable mention is Gehlen organisation, that USA established to collect nazis and make them fight Soviet Union. Mostly ukrainian nazis, the followers of Bandera and Schuchevich (state heroes of Ukraine), that were hiding in the woold and pillaged villages and small towns. Soviet Union killed the CIA controlled nazis, though some were stolen by USA and Canada ("Paperclip" operation), so USA would keep ukrainina nazis for future use. Guess when USA and US-led West would use that ukrainian community of former nazis.
During the last year of secondary school my class made a school trip to Berlin. Among other things we visited the Stasi prison 'Berlin-Hohenschönhausen' which is now a museum. The museum tour-guide was a former inmate and told many interesting things. I can't remember all the details but there was a specific jail guard/interrogator who interrogated and tormented him for months. He (the former inmate) got released when the GDR (DDR in german) ceased to exist and got an apartment in the same city district. During grocery shopping he met his former jail guard who was shopping there aswell and had his family with him. He said they just looked at each other and no word was spoken between them. The interrogator seemed to have gotten away with any real punishment since he could walk freely and have his family with him only around a year later.
Another thing unrelated to the story above: If you are a German citizen and any Stasi documents from the GDR exist about you you can make an application to look at them. Many people found out that way that their best friends and family spied on them and told informations to the Stasi. (This was however not always voluntary since some of the 'unofficial Stasi employees' were blackmailed and threatened with long jail sentences.) At the end of the GDR there were 189k of these informers in a poplulation of around 16 million.
Great video Johnny and greetings from Germany!
Kinda crazy some Stasi could have been Gestapo. Basically doing the same job just under a different dictatorship.
No. Gestapo doesn’t tell every Germans to spy on other Germans during peace time. You also forget as if the FBI doesn’t do this.
Some people like to be led by thugs or bullies who they perceive as "strong." Then blindly following them because they feel like they finally have a place they fit in. Since they value this position, they are very unlikely to criticise anything their leader does, even if it is objectively destructive
Even today the world is made worse by sheep who fancy themselves wolves
They worked under Heinrich Müller, who was the absolute embodiement of a soulless power hungry bureaucrat, so it makes sense a lot of them didn't really have any strong political convictions.
I doubt that there were many. The GDR DID use people with Nazi-past/ignored sometimes their former deeds simply because they needed their expertise or (like in Western Gemrany) simply could not or would not punish all who were guilty of crimes, because it was seen as political opportune to "forgive and forget". But overall they were less willing to use high ranking Nazis than West Germany (or the US). The STASI did use their knowledge about former Nazis to pressure sometimes such people people into cooperation/spying or to conduct propaganda against ex-Nazis who had achived high posts in Western Germany (sometimes they forged material/made things up to make their targets look more guilty).
growing up in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, I loved this movie. It's spot on. Great movie, can't be recommended enough!
I first heard one of my favorite jokes in this movie. It was in the cafeteria scene which you showed briefly. "Eric Honecher (the East German chancellor) gets up in the morning and looks up and says, "Hello Sun". The Sun replies, "Hello Eric". At noon he looks up again and says, "Hello Sun". Again the Sun replies, "Hello Eric". That evening Eric looks up and says, "Hello Sun". The Sun replies, "f*ck you, I'm in the West now!"
Thank you for covering this! I remember now that this film was recommended to me by a history professor over a decade ago - but I had forgotten about that completely until seeing this video. I will add this to my list of movies to watch when I can stomach something so bleak.
I may have wrong, but the STASI files on so many people are in an archive and are so detailed, it’s almost as if a camera were following the people.
It wasn't uncommon for people to be compelled to spy on their spouses.
The hardest Stasi department to get into was their sigint department. Like its foreign intel HVA department only a minority of Stasi members ever served in it. Primarily because knowledge of advanced mathematics and computer engineering was a must. The lives of others is a movie about the generic Stasi officer the one tackling internal dissent. But the elite only served either in foreign intel or even higher sigint. Stasi sigint was in many ways better than KGB operations and close to western sigint.
Nice video Johnny
The MFS (Ministry for Statesecurity) STASI was capable of letting your life completely fall apart without you even knowing it.
At the same time, they would let you feel that you are at their absolute mercy.
I remember when I watched this, I commented to a German friend of mine how I felt sorry for the Stasi guy at the end because he seemed so pitiful and her response in a magnificently thick german accent was was "no fuck him, don't feel sorry for that piece of shit he's a Stasi asshole" and I've remembered that ever since any time a shred of sympathy or pity for these fuckers enters my mind.
Thanks for the review, will have to give this one a watch
Will find this film. The Stasi earned their scorn. I remember when East Germany fell, you could buy the reminants organization for pennies on the dollar.
Johnny, have you seen the Deutschland series (Deutschland 83, Deutschland 86 and Deutschland 89) a great collection of Cold War spy stories and the efforts of East Germany citizens to escape (or direct) the control and manipulation of the state and of Americans and West Germans to deflect and counter attack those efforts (and that's a terrible description of the three seasons)
No I haven't but I will look them up forsure. Thanks for the info!
Definitely worth it! A little more comedy but still good movies…
Film is on Amazon
.
Tank you Johnny,I would never know of this movie if it was not by you.
although it may not be a war movie, an interesting one would be “The Man Standing Next”, a movie about the 1979 assassination of Park Chung Hee and the events leading up to the fateful incident, kinda like Korea’s version of Shakespeare’s Othello
Man I love this movie. Can't believe you are reviewing this movie. Your videos are awesome
I hesitated to like the vid. 101 is one of my favourite numbers and I didn't want to get rid of it. But your videos are so good they deserve all the boosting they can get😊
Superb film! Academy Award winning film.
It wasn't hard to meet GDR intelligence services as a tourist back in the 80's. Had a close shave but I don't know if it was the actual Stasi.
Thanks for this. Definitely a must-see movie in my books. It is an incredibly uplifting story, which is sorely needed these days.
If you have the opportunity, visit the museum in Berlin.
I've read that the Stasi would gaslight a target by entering their apartment when they were away and rearrange things.
Do the baader meinhof komplex next
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more - we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward." Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Really good and interesting movie. I watched it a long time ago, but it is still kept somewhere in mind
this movie is fantastic
Bravery comes in all forms. It's hard to ever justify groups who do things like this but I can't judge them all. Not trying to give their organisation a free-pass by any means but I'm sure some were forced into playing ball on pain of death or family being threatened/provided for
I hate to be "that guy" but this stuff is still going on all over the world, including the West.
There is and never will be a system of government without corruption. It's our job to analyze and criticize every instance of it and aim for the least corrupt system of government.
These guys must have trained the FBI because this is exactly how the US treats its citizens now.
That is a big microphone
It distracts from my giant head I think
Purchased a Stasi LT Col tunic on ebay after watching this movie
A good choice...we seem to be turning into snitches about everything these days...cheers Johnny...E...
Stasi agents were recruited and trained by Moscow directly so their first priority was serving the Soviet Union, not Eastern Germany.
The moment they opened up the apartment and installed all their devices, I thought:
they can do this anywhere. Anytime.
J. Edgar Hoover anyone?
Oh i remember this film, i saw it in my german class
brilliant film gd choice johnny
My teachers played this movie when we were on a school trip to Leipzig, b4 visiting the Stasi museum, and its stuck with me since, its a really great film that I think does a good job of communicating a lot in little time, e.g. the cafeteria scene and the way authority works, or the sort of quick shots of all the set up it takes to bug someone, and especially how well its edited between the Stasi who’s listening-in and the couple and how a connection forms between them. There’s few films like it
Has anyone noticed that the young Putin looks almost exactly like Ilya Kuryakin, a former agent for UNCLE?
Wasn't Angela Merkel in the Stasi?
It's always quite comfortable to point one's finger at foreign regimes and leaders like Putin but it would be more honest and appropriate to address how for example political dissidents are treated nowadays in our so-called free West.
Putin literally kills hundreds of people everyday. If that was going on in Canada I too would take issue with it. And we do take issue with local politics in the West that's why we vote and protest etc.
@JohnnyJohnsonHistory "kills literally hundreds of people every day"
Does the same standard apply to any head of state of any Western nation that does wage a war?
Because otherwise, I would rate such a viewpoint as hypocritical.
Of course it does. I protest and vote according to these things. Right now I'm voicing my disgust with Putin.
@JohnnyJohnsonHistory You're entitled to do so, of course.
Just like me noticing how certain people who express disgust with Putin seem strangely oblivious to countries like the UK locking more people away for social media posts than Russia does.
Or the US being ruthlessly creating chaos and misery in advancing their own imperialistic interests all over the globe (all of this while promoting "freedom, "democracy" and "western values").
That's what triggered my comment in the first place, but I'm just going to assume that you aren't one of those people, then.
Bad things in then west doesn’t make bad things outside of the west ok.
Find another way to simp for dictators.
After the Wall....
Interesting
This movie is a favourite amongst the modern left 😅
You bet me to it
Really? I felt it was pretty damning of the "police-state" and too much government power. I could see the movie appealing to many different political ideologies.
@@JohnnyJohnsonHistory I agree
He was making a funny, but didn't quite make it for everyone.
I have no idea anymore. I've witnessed people making a political argument out of riding the bus these days. @.@
Thumbnail 🥛 awooga !!!
😍
👐
Boucy bouncy 😊
America in 2024
Bruh
One might look for the percentage of Gestapo officers that were hired by western regime for police, right after nazis were defeated. It's close to 100%. Not saying that USA-led West kept around 100k nazi soldiers equipped to fight Soviet Union under the "Unthinkable" plan. Honourable mention is Gehlen organisation, that USA established to collect nazis and make them fight Soviet Union. Mostly ukrainian nazis, the followers of Bandera and Schuchevich (state heroes of Ukraine), that were hiding in the woold and pillaged villages and small towns. Soviet Union killed the CIA controlled nazis, though some were stolen by USA and Canada ("Paperclip" operation), so USA would keep ukrainina nazis for future use. Guess when USA and US-led West would use that ukrainian community of former nazis.
Deleted comment lol youtueb