The Iron Curtain (1983)

foreign has long since disappeared Swept Away in August 1961 by the building of the Berlin wall but millions of tourists come here all the same to gaze at the view that has replaced it one wonders how many of them remember the first days of the wall they come to look at oh foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] it is no longer possible to jump from east to west Berlin today there are still wreaths and Crosses along the wall but they evoke past not present dramas we live today in the era of detonte the wall belongs to an earlier period it is for most an outdated feature of the Cold War an iron curtain has fallen across Europe Churchill's famous words to President Truman in 1945 referred to the demarcation line from Lubeck to Trieste agreed with Stalin and which still Cuts Europe into two ideologically separate halves today Iron Curtain and Berlin Wall are part of the out of fashion vocabulary of the Cold War and yet the demarcation line and the wall though largely open to people from the West still exist as a physical barrier for the millions of people in Eastern Europe [Music] the methods used to stop people getting out of the East very greatly worst of the automatic scatter guns used by the East Germans triggered off by tripwires they spray dum-dum bullets at any would-be escaper some 24 000 have been installed along the inter-german frontier parents are so efficient that few people are actually killed today at the border between the two German states but at least 180 have been shot dead by border cards since the wall was built and the frontier closed in 1961. thousands of others have been arrested and imprisoned for trying to escape [Music] in the north of Germany the frontier is formed by the river elb the exact demarcation line has never been agreed on here so West and East Patrol these Waters confrontation is avoided by both sides cameras rather than guns do the shooting the East Germans rely on a network of watchtowers to guard the frontier 996 of them stand along the border one Tower every 1350 meters they seem incongruous when one sees that the elb itself is an international Waterway with barges from east and west economic necessity rather than they thought dictates this no doubt as cooperation increases between East and West more and more people from the East have to be trusted by the authorities to travel West Sailors Pilots Lorry drivers as well as industrialists and diplomats but the authorities particularly in East Germany are very careful whom they let out a flock of sheep is allowed through this gate in the frontier fence every day but the shepherd s and her dog have to stay behind and watch the Sheep go down to water [Music] foreign further south the demarcation line is marked by posts which trusted East German patrols sometimes come out to repaint the real Frontier installations are some 50 meters back from the line itself so there is a kind of East German no man's land in front of them this Patrol we surprised outside the fence hid for hours in the long grass rather than be filmed but the game of hide and seek between East and West ended to our advantage when our cameraman found a vantage point to film from Patrols in no man's land are rare they always include two officers and no consequence for the guards have more chance than most of escaping because of this they have virtually never seen alone nobody is trusted and the penalties for letting people escape are extraordinarily harsh on a road outside the city of Cologne three young cyclists train each day they hope to be selected for the West German cycling team one of them diet Marsh lithian in the white vest has the worst behind him he escaped from the East when a frontier guard on June the 9th 1977 with characteristic courage he agreed to return to the scene of his Escape for us staying this time within a few feet of East German territory it must be strange coming back here yes of course it's strange coming back to the place one escaped but it is also failure music to see the place again because at the time of my Escape it was dark no it's light I can see all the details anyway it's nicer to look at it from this side though I'm opposed to this Frontier in principle is there no danger for you no there's no danger for me they could shoot you there are too many people here and I'm well guarded by the federal Frontier guards what would happen otherwise I'm on Federal Land I'm a citizen of the federal republic I'm a German they have no right whatsoever to Shooter the people up there know you when we arrived a few moments ago there were two men on guard they will have immediately sent a report to the company and now some officers have just arrived they will observe and take notes one thing's sure they've recognized this was the best sector for me to try because there were no mines and because I could run along beneath the bridge unseen from the Watchtower you were on duty up there I was there in that tar and there were two of you yes the greatest problem was to find a way to trick my colleague into allowing me to leave the tower how did you manage it I told him I had to relieve myself but I couldn't wait so he allowed me to go so I went down to the bridge behind it there are Stone steps going down to the river I continued down to the Vera I pretended to relieve myself looked around surreptitiously at my colleague he was busy on the phone so I stepped into the water and went onto the bridge the same would no longer be possible now no they've put up a barrier now and I don't know what exactly anyone trying it now would have to step further into the river whereas I was able to stick close to the wall and the barbed wire and only got water up to my knees I came out on this side and then ran along the bridge that's still gdr territory yes all this land here is East German but I was out of sight I couldn't be seen my colleague could only hear me from the Watchtower so I ran down to that corner at the end of the bridge that was a crucial moment because I could be seen again and he could shoot me I stopped briefly turned to see if my colleague hadn't come along the bridge to look for me and then I crouched down in the grass how long did all this take from the Watchtower to that corner by the house in about five minutes and how long did you stay here 10 15 seconds I suppose and then did you run no I crawled the grass was longer at that time so I crawled over to the house where I knew I was finally safe until I got there I was afraid they would shoot me well it wouldn't have been difficult to kill me and to drag my corpse back to their side it was night time and there was nobody around once safe dietmar ran to this house where a light was on in the five longest minutes of his life he had passed from an East German Watchtower to a West German home from one world to another further south the so-called Iron Curtain seems at first sight to have disappeared between Czechoslovakia and Austria there is not always even a barrier to Mark the borderline this Austrian wholesome cart is half in the East and half in the west the track is international [Applause] the tractor behind it is in Czechoslovakia some Czech peasants are allowed to work apparently unsupervised within a few steps of Austrian territory Rosie hello I can't speak I can't hear though he had spoken to us first it was clearly to say that he wasn't allowed to talk did that [Music] I don't speak German I can read Czech and Russian but only speak dialect perhaps he knew there were soldiers nearby but we do know but had he wanted he could have stepped over the border into Austria with us the authorities clearly trusted him as they do all those allowed close to the Border the real Frontier installations are at least a kilometer back in places it is hard to see the barbed wire along the frontier between Hungary and Austria but it runs uninterrupted along that border all the same like the Czechs the hungarians have agreed with the austrians to keep their more formidable Frontier installations several kilometers back this avoids incidents but though the frontier is peaceful there is at times a nasty atmosphere as this little scene shows this Hungarian peasant saw us ignored us finally waved and walked away There Were Soldiers very near reckons he died 500 meters further on the peasant ignored my calls but we saw that he was now closer to the demarcation line don't take pictures a Hungarian soldier who witnessed the scene was anxious to stop us filming conversation in Hungarian was difficult but the gist was clear photography foreign meanwhile The Peasant had come close enough to the frontier fence to be able to hear us a high wind made conversation difficult so he resorted to eloquent mimicry yeah yeah most refugees from Eastern Europe find themselves first of all in the huge tries kierken camp south of Vienna in Austria it is an extraordinary place where some 1400 people from all over the world 75 percent of them from Eastern Europe live on average five months before getting permission to move to their adopted country many come out by car with holiday visas but more and more usually dissidents are stripped of their citizenship and given exit visas Paul stereu his wife and child were let out of Romania in this way we signed the letter from Paul Goma the letter addressed to the Belgrade conference [Music] and after three months of repression and harassment by the security people and the Romanian police news we finally got a stateless passport and came here where we are waiting to leave for the United States uh [Music] I was all treated in front of my wife and Child by three people in Bucharest is a uh they took our child away because the Romanian State considers we're not capable you are not capable of being a parent yes that's it you had already been in trouble yes I had crossed the front here with my wife on the Black Sea which we tried to cross in a rubber box to Turkey to the key meh um was very rough the bird capsized in the Black Sea and when you find your souls in Bulgaria yes in Bulgaria we were arrested and immediately escorted back to Romania where I was condemned to three years in prison for illegally passing the frontier and my wife two years but stereo's story should not hide the fact that the era of detonte has brought with it great benefits for many in socialist countries in particular in Hungary which was the only socialist country to allow us to film on her territory though cars are searched and waiting can be long one can see that people from all East European countries except East Germany cross into the West here the hungarians do not seem deterred in their liberalization policies by the fact that some of these tourists ask for political Asylum Once In The West [Applause] even between the German states things are better than they were West Germans and West berliners can visit the East quite easily the same applies to old and handicapped people from the East wanting to visit the West new agreements have been signed traffic on the transit motorways across East Germany to West Berlin is easier and all would be well were it not for the fact that young people anybody in fact with a useful life in front of him cannot leave East Germany legally this girl is in East Berlin with her mother her fiancee is standing on a platform for tourists west of the wall she is unable to join him in the west because she is neither a pensioner nor a disabled person so they must meet like this across the wall on this particular day they were out of luck he was seen and the police immediately arrived they failed to identify the girl whose only crime it was to have waved to her fiancee in the West and this all happened in front of the people's solidarity Club no picture of detonte would be complete without the example of Finland which has 1200 kilometers of common Frontier with the Soviet Union there are few official Crossing points at the border and those there are are mainly used by commercial traffic Finland has shown that cooperation with the East is possible on a very large scale 23 percent of its foreign trade is with Comic-Con countries all right economic cooperation often born of necessity a spear-headed de taunts both here and elsewhere in Europe but the fins have gone further than any other capitalist country no doubt because their geographical position gives them little option [Music] they don't just export goods but Manpower hundreds of Finnish workers travel each day across the border between the Finnish town of imatra and set a gosk in the Soviet Union they are building a huge paper mill complex for the Russians [Music] president kekonen recently suggested that as many as 80 000 Finns are now engaged directly or indirectly on contracts for the Soviet Union in a country where 180 000 are out of work that is a very large number [Music] the workers require no passports each has a three-part identity card one part is left with the finished border guards one is given to the Soviet border guards 100 meters further on and the worker keeps the third whilst on Soviet territory controls are strict and filming of the Soviet side is forbidden by the Finns Helsinki bends over backwards to make sure that the Soviet authorities have nothing to complain about but in Finnish eyes that kind of apparently excessive politeness is a necessary part of the taunt [Music] [Music] Ed Churchill spoke of an iron curtain stretching down to Trieste this is no longer the case the barbed wire ends at the triangle formed by the meeting of Hungary Austria and Yugoslavia or rather instead of continuing to Trieste between Austria and communist Yugoslavia it continues eastwards and separates Hungary and Bulgaria from Yugoslavia which is therefore today in no sense behind an Iron Curtain opening up Frontiers in both directions is clearly an essential part of ditant Yugoslavia are in Finland and to a lesser extent Hungary have shown this but East Germany whilst encouraging West Germans to come eastwards has done all she can to close her Frontier more hermetically than ever to her own citizens at the cost of 1 million marks per kilometer a so-called modern Frontier is being built to keep people in work has been going on for several years and is carried out by conscripts guarded at all times by professional and therefore trusted soldiers in some other conscripts are made to remove their shirts for easy identification if they step over the red wire behind them to the West they are liable to be shot on site [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] the taunt can only work if both sides want it to the border between East and West Europe today shows this very clearly in cases where no fundamental problems exist as between Hungary and Austria the border is no longer a dividing line between two worlds but in the case of Germany a country and people remain divided that fundamental problem must be solved if the Iron Curtain between the two German states is ever to disappear [Music] foreign

Channel: Mike Guardia

Views: 62,477

Keywords: Cold War, East Germany, East Berlin, Inner German Border, Checkpoint Charlie, NATO, Warsaw Pact, Berlin Wall

Id: rT31DkuXKqc

Length: 30min 57sec (1857 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 03 2023