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Post by epaul on Nov 10, 2014 13:38:38 GMT -5
Something that has puzzled me ever since I saw a series of films in 9th grade history showing people being gunned down while they attempted to cross the 27-mile long strip of the Berlin Wall laced with guard towers, machine gun nests, and cameras known as the "Death Strip"...
why attempt to cross at a narrow, heavily fortified, 27-mile-long strip when the border between East and West Germany was approximately 900 miles long, running from the Baltic Sea to Czechoslovakia? No doubt roads had armed checkpoints, but no way that entire 900-mile-long border was guarded. And even if there was a fence along the whole way (that's a lot of fence), snipping an unguarded barb wire fence surely should have been preferable to trying to scale a 12-foot-high wall embedded with gun towers.
I am not soft pedaling the horrors of anything, but as 9th grade history student who saw three or four Berlin Wall movies that one week, I wondered why someone would pick the worst spot possible to try cross a border, and I wondered why there happened to be movie cameras in place, and I wondered why it looked like the same family was gunned down twice in two different movies. (Dwight Dyrud thought they looked like the same people, too.)
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Post by Deleted on Nov 10, 2014 13:53:53 GMT -5
Paul, the entire border, from the Baltic to the tri-border area, was fenced and guarded.
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Post by Marshall on Nov 10, 2014 13:54:59 GMT -5
I'm a bit surprised that the 25th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall wasn't a bigger story. The real reason it wasn't a big story over here, is that the media is controlled by Liberals, (as we all know), and if they made a big deal over the Berlin Wall coming down, they might have to tacitly admit it was Ronald Reagan who won the Cold War.
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Post by millring on Nov 10, 2014 13:57:57 GMT -5
Something that has puzzled me ever since I saw a series of films in 9th grade history showing people being gunned down while they attempted to cross the 27-mile long strip of the Berlin Wall laced with guard towers, machine gun nests, and cameras known as the "Death Strip"... why attempt to cross at a narrow, heavily fortified, 27-mile-long strip when the border between East and West Germany was approximately 900 miles long, running from the Baltic Sea to Czechoslovakia? No doubt roads had armed checkpoints, but no way that entire 900-mile-long border was guarded. And even if there was a fence along the whole way (that's a lot of fence), snipping an unguarded barb wire fence surely should have been preferable to trying to scale a 12-foot-high wall embedded with gun towers. I am not soft pedaling the horrors of anything, but as 9th grade history student who saw three or four Berlin Wall movies that one week, I wondered why someone would pick the worst spot possible to try cross a border, and I wondered why there happened to be movie cameras in place, and I wondered why it looked like the same family was gunned down twice in two different movies. (Dwight Dyrud thought they looked like the same people, too.) I think one of the answers is that, though it seems probable that an individual (especially a healthy, athletic, thirty-something that usually fills this hypothetical spot in our mind) could make a crossing cross-country, it becomes increasingly less probable with a family. And a family ties one down both ways -- you can't travel stealthily like the Von Trapps climbing every mountain with eight kids, and if the family can't go, it's increasingly less likely that those who could will ever try.
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Post by millring on Nov 10, 2014 14:04:14 GMT -5
I'm a bit surprised that the 25th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall wasn't a bigger story. The real reason it wasn't a big story over here, is that the media is controlled by Liberals, (as we all know), and if they made a big deal over the Berlin Wall coming down, they might have to tacitly admit it was Ronald Reagan who won the Cold War. Don't forget -- they also never thought of the Soviet Bloc as a threat in the first place. How could they? ....they shared the same economic philosophy.
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Post by fauxmaha on Nov 10, 2014 14:36:26 GMT -5
Its a false altruism that begins with the necessity of control.
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Post by aquaduct on Nov 10, 2014 14:41:20 GMT -5
I'm a bit surprised that the 25th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall wasn't a bigger story. The real reason it wasn't a big story over here, is that the media is controlled by Liberals, (as we all know), and if they made a big deal over the Berlin Wall coming down, they might have to tacitly admit it was Ronald Reagan who won the Cold War. And don't forget the Pope. Today's militant atheists would be apoplectic if they had to concede that there just might be a decent side to religion.
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Post by j on Nov 10, 2014 16:06:40 GMT -5
I'm presenting a concert by a Berlin-based US guitarist playing music by Berliners. Does that count?
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Post by Doug on Nov 10, 2014 16:15:49 GMT -5
I'm presenting a concert by a Berlin-based US guitarist playing music by Berliners. Does that count?
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Post by theevan on Nov 10, 2014 17:13:15 GMT -5
Counts for me, Dr J.
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Post by fauxmaha on Nov 10, 2014 17:23:35 GMT -5
Jeff, There is a nostalgia in parts of Eastern Europe for those days, especially in Russia. I guess the only thing worse than communist oppression is the sense that "I coulda been a contender! I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum." I can certainly see how from a perspective of national pride, the collapse of the USSR was devastating to the Russian people. Back in the day, they stood astride the world stage, and depending on the extent to which they bought into their own propaganda, really believed they were a force for good. Its easy to see the appeal of Putin. Even though he presides over what is largely a third-world country that happens to have a pretty good army, he knows how to push the buttons of the Russian people and exploit their sense of national pride. Fascinating article in The Atlantic on Putin's Russia.
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Post by aquaduct on Nov 10, 2014 17:40:55 GMT -5
I think it's obvious that it's been overshadowed by the 39th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
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Post by billhammond on Nov 10, 2014 18:05:48 GMT -5
I think it's obvious that it's been overshadowed by the 39th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Or, as one of our reporters, I kid you not, once called it, "The F. Scott Fitzgerald."
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Post by dradtke on Nov 10, 2014 18:11:06 GMT -5
The legend lives on from the Great Gatsby on down.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 10, 2014 19:18:10 GMT -5
Over here the coverage was largely eclipsed by remembrance Sunday. I rewatched "The Lives of Others" recently. That's a great film about some East Germans in the time before their release.
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Post by millring on Nov 10, 2014 19:27:32 GMT -5
The legend lives on from the Great Gatsby on down.
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Post by dickt on Nov 10, 2014 19:45:07 GMT -5
Over here the coverage was largely eclipsed by remembrance Sunday. I rewatched "The Lives of Others" recently. That's a great film about some East Germans in the time before their release. Was that the deal with poppies on the EPL unis and moments of silence before kickoff?
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Post by TKennedy on Nov 10, 2014 19:51:18 GMT -5
Over here the coverage was largely eclipsed by remembrance Sunday. I rewatched "The Lives of Others" recently. That's a great film about some East Germans in the time before their release. That was a great movie!
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Post by Cornflake on Nov 10, 2014 19:55:06 GMT -5
The wall came down because the USSR was a big mess and its limits caught up with it. Anniversaries of things like this don't interest me.
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Post by Rob Hanesworth on Nov 10, 2014 20:24:18 GMT -5
I have a piece of the Berlin wall on my bookshelf. My son-in-law was stationed in West Berlin when the wall fell and was on top of the wall helping East Berliners over.
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