The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN
The thankfully now long gone East German government was a truly despicable regime. If their “everyone is equal” socialist system was so good, why did they have to build walls to stop their own people fleeing? Why did they shoot them when they tried to flee? In East Germany, up until 1989, the secret police, the Stasi, arrested 70,000 and killed hundreds. Their crime? Trying to escape the hell that was East Germany.
With close links to the Soviet KGB, the PLO in Palestine, Assad’s regime in Syria, Castro and Idi Amin, the East German Ministry for State Security described themselves as the “sword and shield of the party”.
Commonly known as the Stasi, they were more ruthless than the KGB and were both feared and hated by East Germans.
The Stasi’s job was to keep the Communist Party in power, at all costs. They had 100,000 regular employees and used hundreds of thousands of their own citizens to spy on and inform on others.
It is estimated that the Stasi had files on six million of its own people. They turned the GDR into a living Orwellian nightmare.
Ordinary citizens were understandably terrified of the Stasi, terrified of that knock on the door in the dead of night…
The famous Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal even said that the Stasi were “worse than the Gestapo”.
After the Second World War, Germany was carved up into four zones. If you were lucky you ended up on the western side, which was either US, French or British controlled.
Unlucky, and you ended up in the Soviet sector.
With the creation of the Soviet puppet state East Germany, people fled in their tens of thousands, and the regime decided enough was enough.
Constructed in 1961, the Berlin Wall cut the city in two. Its aim? To stop its own people fleeing. The Stasi even had a shoot-to-kill policy regarding anyone who tried to breach the wall.
Dividing walls did not just run through the city of Berlin, though.
Established by the Potsdam Agreement in August of 1945, and known as the Inner German Border, it became the recognised border between Soviet and Western zones.
On the eastern side it was one of the world’s most heavily fortified borders, with metal fences, walls, barbed wire, booby traps and minefields.
It was patrolled by around 50,000 East German troops, and ran for a colossal 1,381 kilometres from the Baltic coast up north all the way south to Czechoslovakia. It turned East Germany into the biggest open prison camp in the world.
Yet, it never seems to get any coverage, with all focus being on the wall that divided the city of Berlin. Time to right that wrong.
I aim to show, through a series of columns and photos, just how truly appalling this regime was.
It built walls, not because of any supposed outside threat, but to stop its own people from seeking a better life elsewhere.
I’d actually planned this trip four years ago. April 2020 to be precise. My planning was done, car hire booked, flights booked, hotels booked – but then Covid hit.
I was in Spain at the time, and as I watched events unfold, most focus was on the rising infections in Italy and across Europe.
We were already under lockdown in Spain, which was brutal with Guardia officers arresting those even out for a walk or a bike ride.
The UK was not yet in lockdown, but I could sense that this was all going to get much worse before it got better.
I listened to the voice in my head and cancelled my trip the day before I was due to fly to Berlin. The last thing I wanted was to be stuck in rural Germany in a hotel for what would have been months. I flew back to the UK on what I believe was one of the last BA flights, which of course they charged a small fortune for, and then the world closed in on itself.
No one, including me, had any idea how long Covid restrictions would go on for, but I was quietly confident I would make this trip happen, later that year.
Some chance.
The trip didn’t happen that year, nor in 2021 as lockdowns and restrictions continued. Then my dad fell ill, I spent much more time in Scotland, then in Spain selling up the family property, and last year I moved back to the UK.
In January of this year, I thought: “If I’m ever going to do this trip, it has to be now.”
While I have no desire to be back on the road for up to eight months per year like I used to do, I am looking forward to getting back out there, and delving into a subject that has fascinated me for as long as I can remember.
I need to do this. I need to do something for me.
Sorry Pinkie (cat), sorry Lina (girlfriend), who was just arrived from Russia. See you both soon!
Because my destinations are well off the beaten track, I’ve booked a hire car, which I’ll pick up at Berlin Brandenburg Airport. Despite how super-efficient the Deutsche Bahn – the German rail system – is, it would have been near impossible to visit these sites by public transport.
I’ve not driven in Germany for some years. Yet, I remember my first time driving on the autobahn – it was scary. I’ve never seen people drive so fast, for on huge stretches of this road network there are no speed limits. I’ll need my wits about me, that’s for sure.
Best advice I was ever given regarding driving on the autobahn was: “Keep going, don’t slow down, and stay in the correct lane so as to not annoy the Germans.”
I have six sites planned for this trip. Sites where, unlike in Berlin, large sections of the division have been preserved. It would have been a tragedy if it had all been erased. Lest we forget and all that.
After spending a couple of nights in each area, soaking up as much as I can, I’ll drive on to the next site.
The despicable East German regime might well be long gone, but its legacy still casts a long shadow over Germany.
And with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a type of new Cold War bubbling up between the West and Putin, I think my next set of columns could be rather relevant to the present day.
Right, let’s do this.
THE STASI WERE MORE RUTHLESS THAN THE KGB AND WERE BOTH FEARED AND HATED BY EAST GERMANS
MARIENBORN ON THE BORDER BETWEEN THE WEST AND COMMUNIST EAST GERMANY…