The Stasi and the Berlin Wall | DW Documentary

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2021-08-11に共有
For one group, at least, the erection of the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961 was a stroke of luck. Over the following decades, the Wall would be the lifeblood of the East German secret police, known as the Stasi. By the time the Wall fell, in 1989, thousands of Stasi agents were employed with a single goal: to make the Wall insurmountable.

The film tells the story of this existentially symbiotic relationship from the perspective of the Stasi under its notorious leader Erich Mielke. It’s the first time this most sensitive chapter of East Germany's history has been told in such an exemplary and coherent way: including the deaths that took place at the Wall, and the cover-up and concealment of many of those murders.

We learn about the arrests and imprisonment of tens of thousands of refugees, as well as the Stasi’s elaborate construction of tunnels and underground listening stations to track down tunnel diggers. From the billion-dollar business of selling GDR prisoners to West Germany, to the "filtering" of Western traffic at border crossings to recruit unofficial collaborators, Mielke's specialists were everywhere.

We see how Mielke's power grew, as the Wall and the border system were perfected, and how the walling-in of the population created more and more work for the Stasi. The Wall became the Stasi’s main field of activity, and its daily bread.

The fall of the Wall brought an abrupt end to both East Germany and its security apparatus. An irony of history is that, on November 9, 1989, it was a Stasi man who opened the first barrier on Bornholmer Strasse and thus initiated the fall of the Berlin Wall.

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コメント (21)
  • I visited Berlin in 1994 and our tour guide told us this joke - "many ex Stasi agents are now taxi drivers. This is good, because all you have to do is to tell them your name and they already know where you live"
  • The Stasi's behavior provides a solid example of what happens when you proceed logically and rationally from an insane premise
  • An old friend of ours was a Stasi border soldier when he was young. He told us when he saw someone attempting escape, he and some of his fellow soldiers would look the other way on purpose. The night when the wall came down, he burned his East German uniform and helped cut and clear barbed wire
  • @sgsmozart
    As a college student, I crossed into East Berlin in August of 1971. It was mandatory to exchange 5 West German marks into East German currency. After spending the day in East Berlin ..visiting museums..seeing sites...I had dinner in a restaurant and when I crossed back into West Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie...I still had 2 East German marks left !
  • This is chilling. Not one word of remorse or regret from the ex-Stasi officers for the horrors they inflicted on people. News flash....when people are fleeing your country in droves, something's seriously wrong.
  • 'The Lives of Others' is a great depiction of life in East Germany and how the Stasi went about their business.
  • @kchall5
    I wonder if those ex-Stasi guys saw the irony in that they were able to speak freely and recount their nefarious deeds without fear of retribution, something they spent their careers denying their countrymen.
  • @spivackl
    What I find fascinating is that this happened just a few years after WWII. All of the adults could remember the nazi era. And certainly everyone was told how bad that era was. But they couldn't comprehend that they were doing the same thing for a different master.
  • If you need to build a wall to keep your citizens from fleeing, then maybe you need to rethink your form of government.
  • Those old Stasi dudes really drank the koolaid. Years later - they still view their perverse mission in a positive manner.
  • @SR-pr2xz
    The best escape, I liked, were the 2 Czech guys in the 70s who used wooden chairs and climbed up the high tension power lines, hanging the chairs with rubber belts, and then pulled themselves across to Austria. Now that took balls !
  • At his sentencing, Mielke started to cry. In pronouncing sentence, Judge Theodor Seidel, told Mielke that he "will go down in history as one of the most fearsome dictators and police ministers of the 20th century."
  • The Stasi HQ in Berlin has become a museum and can be visited, it still looks as when they left it, back in 1990. You see some of the offices in this video.
  • I,m 75 years old, I still remember this like it were yesterday,Vopos shooting escaping teenage kids! I never expected to see it's demise!!
  • @Tina06019
    I visited Berlin with my parents, in the 1960s. The Berlin Wall, which we only saw from the west side, was terrifying.
  • @8rickey
    It's wild that all these ex-Stasi officers are basically like "Yeah we committed human rights violations and now are like 'whatever' about it."
  • My friend's uncle died at the wall trying to escape. What was it all for. A few politicians' egos and self-importance.
  • DDR citizen: Dude, I think the Stasi is listening to us A voice from the attic: No we aren't >:(
  • Another winner DW, as simple as that....just love your documentaries, pure quality! Haven't had much chance to watch them all due to the work load, need to make time because they're absolutely worth it! Having loved history since my school days (I'm 52 now), I need to read more about the Berlin Wall, Operation Danube, East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956....have you made any videos on those events in history, if not....do you have any planned? Much respect to you all at DW, keep up the phenomenal work! 👍🏻👌🏻👏🏻
  • I's horrifying what Soviet union had done, nearly 40 years of unending horrors in Germany. I've visited the Stasi prison in Berlin in December and went to see the underground tunnels. Our tour guide was a former Stasi prisoner. What amazed me was the advanced level of technology used in security and torment. If only that engineering acumen had been used for peaceful and constructive purposes.... So glad that the Wall had fallen and the reign of terror had ended.