German react to The Berlin Wall: America VS Communism - The Fat Electrician React

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]But that fence rapidly turned into a 12 foot high concrete wall.

[00:00:04]>> Oh no. How many centimeters is like 12 foot though? 1.5 meter. So like 12 feet is like three nilas. What? What do you mean? Hello YouTube. We are going to be reacting to another video of the fat electrician. I don't know why I emphasize on fat. Um but you guys already know. This one is going to be called the the Berlin Wall. How communism turned East Germany into a prison state. We recently watched a previous fat electrician video talking about like the Berlin airlift and it was a really nice video. It was talking about communism as well and how America helped Germany during that time.

[00:00:40]So let's see what happened during the Berlin wall. Okay.

[00:00:44]Did I mention he's >> probably going to get mad and call this video propaganda? But in my defense, it's not my fault. The only thing you have to do to make anti-communist propaganda is to open a history book and start reading it out loud.

[00:00:57]Today we're talking about the Berlin Wall. It is one of the greatest examples of capitalism versus communism, east versus west, hungry versus fed that the world has ever seen. But first, a word from our sponsor. This video is brought to you by Operation Good Boy. It's a monthly subscription box. It's got all >> Oh my god, he has a dog. Have we ever seen his dog in any of the videos we've watched?

[00:01:17]Oh, that's so cute. It feels like a Labrador.

[00:01:20]>> Mine's a good >> Are you okay?

[00:01:25]Don't puke in my office.

[00:01:27]>> Is not a Labrador. He's another species.

[00:01:31]>> Office, please.

[00:01:32]>> I mean, breed. Breed.

[00:01:34]>> Yeah, you're going to get a treat in a second if you don't puke.

[00:01:37]>> Okay, hang on one second.

[00:01:40]>> You've ruined my intro.

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[00:02:11]>> Looks like the dog has like coily hair, though.

[00:02:13]>> Oh, it's so cute.

[00:02:15]>> All right. A couple weeks ago, we talked about the biggest logistical flex of all time. That being the Berlin airlift when the USSR >> Yes, we watched that one. Don't forget to check out my video reacting to it.

[00:02:24]Thank you.

[00:02:25]>> Tried to blockade off West Berlin to force them to become communist and to join the USSR. and America and the UK teamed up to deliver them supplies using only cargo planes, landing a cargo plane into West Berlin every two minutes, all day, every day for 15 months straight, feeding and supplying an entire city with 4.6 billion pounds of supplies. If you want to watch that full video, I'll have that linked right here. If not, that's fine. Here's the bare minimum background info that you need. Right after World War II, Germany was basically split into two pieces. You had the western powers, America, the UK, and France controlling the western half of Germany. And you had the USSR controlling the eastern half. And here's where that gets weird. They did the same exact thing with the city of Berlin, where the west controlled the western half and the USSR.

[00:03:08]>> Yeah, see this one I do know. Okay, how smart am I?

[00:03:12]>> C controlled the eastern half except Berlin was a 100 miles into the USSR territory. And this is why the USSR blockaded off West Berlin and tried to force them to join because they didn't want a little speck of capitalism in their communist utopia. If Americans say billion, it's Milardan for us. They have a different scale.

[00:03:29]>> Oh yeah, I know what billion is.

[00:03:31]>> The West isn't about to back down from a challenge. So America and the UK team up. Wonder Twin powers activate. They launch the Berlin airlift. They feed an entire city using nothing but cargo planes. And after 15 months, the USSR is finally forced to end the blockade because they can't afford to try to stop them anymore. So 1949, the roads and railways to West Berlin open back up and everything goes back to working exactly how it was supposed to. And this is where the story really begins. From 1949 to 1951, we had what was known as a green border between East and West Germany. Basically, there was a border there. They're two separate countries.

[00:04:02]However, it was very, very easy to go from one country to the other and back.

[00:04:06]It was no big deal.

[00:04:07]>> Wait, to be honest though, couldn't like those in East Germany go through the water side and enter West Germany?

[00:04:16]>> Did they try that? I have no idea if they tried it though, >> at all. which was really important because you have to remember they just drew an arbitrary line right through the middle of Germany and were like, "Hey, these are two separate countries now."

[00:04:27]It was really complicated for a lot of people. You had people that had family members that now live in a different country. You had people whose home was in one country and job was in the other.

[00:04:36]You had farmers and property owners that now owned property in a country that >> Okay, that one I didn't know. I knew that like families were separated, but I didn't know someone could work in West Germany and live in East Germany.

[00:04:54]Then where would they be paying taxes though?

[00:04:57]That wouldn't make sense. Wouldn't it be easy to like smuggle them since they would be work? They would have like easy access to the west if they working there.

[00:05:08]That's kind of weird though. they didn't live in. It was very, very complicated.

[00:05:12]And while the border is essentially open, a ton of people from East Germany are taking advantage of it and migrating to West Germany because it's way, way better to live in West Germany, where the evil capitalist pigs from America and the UK have been funneling in billions of dollars worth of food, money, and resources helping to build West Germany back up as a country, as opposed to the USSR over in East Germany who has done the exact opposite because they said, "Hey, we want our war reparations, and we want them right now." The USSR takes over 10 billion dollars worth of hard assets and natural resources out of the East German economy and ships it back home. That is a third of the working capital of the entire country. Quite literally just took a third of their economy and got rid of it. And if that wasn't bad enough, they also liquidated almost every factory in East Germany. They took all of the machinery, all the parts, all the material that they had and shipped it back home to the USSR. Not only have they stripped East Germany of all of their product, they've stripped them of their ability to produce. They can't even work themselves out of this difficult situation. Because of this, understandably so, people start leaving East Germany in droves. Now, by 1952, the USSR identifies this problem, understanding, oh, obviously, >> wait, but couldn't those who like in the East Germany though get machines from the Soviet countries?

[00:06:27]>> Oh, well, like their machines so outdated the ones in America were way better. Is that all?

[00:06:33]>> Our policies aren't very popular. We should probably do something about that.

[00:06:36]The only question is what are we going to do about it? Do we a come up with new policies that incentivize people to stay making them want to be there and making them want to be a productive member of the society? No, absolutely not. We're going to go with option.

[00:06:50]What the [ __ ] B, old reliable good oldfashioned human rights violations.

[00:06:55]Okay, so here's the plan. We're going to shut down the border between East and West Germany. We're going to build a wall or a fence. And I know what you're thinking. walls don't work. Well, if the wall doesn't work, you know what is going to work? The landmines that we put on the other side of it. And if that doesn't work, we're going to get guard dogs. And if the guard dogs don't work, we're going to put up a bunch of guard towers. And we're going to have over 20,000 men with guns watching the border 24/7 all the time. And they have the authority to shoot anyone trying to escape on site. Now, obviously, there's one glaring hole in this plan. What if somebody is able to get past the wall, navigate through a minefield, evade the dogs, and they get seen by the guard.

[00:07:31]But be >> I mean, at that point, you're allowed to go to the west.

[00:07:36]I I mean, come on. At that point, there's no way they actually, you know, attack them. If you're able to like go through all that, you might as well just go to the west >> cuz the guard isn't East German and he probably doesn't want to be in East Germany either. What if the guard just doesn't shoot him and lets him go over to West Germany? Well, That's where the giant sand pit comes in. We're going to line the entire border between East and West Germany with a 30 foot wide pad of sand. And that way we'll be able to see any footprints when somebody runs out of East Germany into >> Oh my god. I didn't know that was a thing though. Holy >> to the west. And then we're going to know that somebody escaped and we're going to hold the guard on duty for that sector responsible and then he's going to get in trouble. Having a very secure border isn't a human rights violation.

[00:08:23]>> So like if anyone actually crossed the border, anyone that had like shift of let's say surveilling the wall during that time, that person would get in trouble as well and might maybe die.

[00:08:37]Oh no. That kind of like obligates the soldiers to actually do their job well.

[00:08:42]This is reallyed up.

[00:08:44]>> Well, right when you're using it to keep people out, but when you're using it to keep people in, it's absolutely a human rights violation. according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

[00:08:52]Let me just read that for you. Article 13, Section 2, quote, >> not just him, but his family. What?

[00:08:59]The whole family as well.

[00:09:02]Oh no.

[00:09:04]Oh my god. Yeah, the Soviets back then were really, really extreme though. What the hell? Jesus Christ.

[00:09:10]O, living in the east in East Germany is like hell. Not even like I feel like it was living hell for them. No wonder many of them wanted to like run away from there. Yeah. A family could go to jail until like mid70s.

[00:09:24]Oh, >> everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and return to his country. End quote. So yes, turning an entire country into a prison and refusing to let anyone leave while you oppress them is in fact a human rights violation. However, to be completely intellectually honest, I do have to tell you that the Soviet Union is one of only three nations that refused to sign the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. and they refused to sign it specifically because of article 13 section two which I just read to you. They basically said that they would only consider signing it if this was added to the end of article 13 quote in accordance with the procedure laid down in each country end quote.

[00:10:01]They were unanimously declined because that would ruin the entire point of article 13 which would basically just mean that um yeah you have a human right to leave a country unless that country tells you you can't. So what's the point of even having that as a human right? So the what the hell?

[00:10:17]Wait, so and they didn't get any punishment for like just not wanting to sign that? That's really up though.

[00:10:24]America didn't do anything. I don't know. Maybe like uh what do they always do in the UE or whatever the NATO is like sanctions or something for the Soviets. That's a really rule to have.

[00:10:37]>> The border is pretty much completely shut down. And the only exceptions to that are the fact that you can apply for a visa to leave East Germany. However, it's very expensive. You get interrogated by the government and the only people to actually get these visas awarded to them are people >> cannot force them to sign a treaty.

[00:10:54]Yeah, but that's like a I don't even think that's something they need to sign. That's like something every single country should like abide by. No, it's human rights.

[00:11:06]That's up. And what is the punishment going to be? Going to war and taking over the country and forcing them to sign cuz that's about the only way you get them to sign a treaty.

[00:11:16]I mean the Soviet during that time, you guys told me they didn't want World War II, right? So wouldn't that have like scared them to want to sign it? I don't I don't know. I don't know. I'm not I'm not sure. people that are working on behalf of the Communist Party or somebody that is obscenely rich and is for sure coming back anyways, which seems like a weird hypocritical policy for a communist regime whose ultimate goal is to have a moneyless, classless society where everybody is treated equally to have, but whatever. And then of course they have to allow travel from West Germany into West Berlin. And to do that, there's very, very strict routes anybody traveling from West Germany to West Berlin has to take. And they have to go straight from one straight to the other. and they hit multiple checkpoints along the way. And this is extremely important because it opens up the Berlin loophole because Berlin, the city that's a 100 miles into communist territory, has that little speck of capitalism in it. And there's no border between West Berlin and East Berlin. So you can literally just walk from East Berlin right into West Berlin and it's not an issue at all. So that becomes the only way to escape East Germany. People >> Oh, I do have a question though. For those who were able to like go to East Berlin for example, no, West Berlin from east um let's say one of your family member entered West Berlin.

[00:12:34]Would those in East Berlin threaten you to come back? Let's say like you still have like family members in East Berlin though. Would they tell you come back to East Berlin or you know finish your family? Was that actually like something that happened? You would be surprised about treaties and how many countries don't sign things. Ah, okay. Wait. The USSR were so big and had so many allies that sanctions did not matter as much and the US did not want World War II either. So, they can't really threaten it over simple stuff. Ah, okay. Okay.

[00:13:09]That's a shame. Depends on how important you are. What is your family status, etc. Wait, what do you mean? So like poor people could go to east no go to West Berlin without any repercussions but it was only those who were rich that couldn't go to West Berlin or do you mean like the other way around? That was actually a thing. Oh damn. The US very rarely sign stuff lately because it requires all the all of Congress to agree and that literally never happens.

[00:13:37]Oh, the other way around. Oh, so the rich could actually just go to West Ben, but the poor were obligated to stay back.

[00:13:45]I mean, true. Weren't they using the poor as like I don't want to like say slave laborers? I mean, basically sable, but I don't want to like say laborers, you know, like just using them to work.

[00:13:58]>> Travel to East Berlin and then simply walk into West Berlin and then they catch a car or a train or a bus from West Berlin to West Germany and then they never go back. And between 1952 and 1961, somewhere between 2 and 4 million people do this. Bear in mind, East Germany only has a population of 17 million. That's over 20% of the population walks into West Berlin and never comes back. And of the people that did leave, they were disproportionately young, highly skilled, highly intelligent people like doctors.

[00:14:28]>> And that is what the Soviets don't want.

[00:14:31]It's like all the useful people leaving the country. Imagine they just left only the old people there. What would they need the place for? Like the old people can't work. Um, yes. as they were essentially slaves. My father traveled between the blocks to work as as long as family stayed behind. Oh. Oh my god. I'm so sorry to hear that though. If you were important for USSR like a big name in sports or highly skilled works, they would get you. But they would also allowed to travel some important people.

[00:15:03]For poor people, they would probably do something bad to them in general like take their apartment or something like that. Oh, >> lawyers, skilled tradesmen, engineers.

[00:15:13]And because of this, this got the nickname the brain drain. So 1961, the USSR is like, "Oh, this is a humongous problem. All the young smart people are leaving. We got to do something about this. Should we, I don't know, incentivize highly successful young people to want to stay here?" Nah. Break out old reliable. More human rights violations for everybody. So August 13th, 196.

[00:15:35]>> So use fear instead. This is so freaking stupid of them though because like they don't understand. People are leaving your country because like it's so bad there and instead of you to like make it better, you're making it worse. Isn't that just going to like trigger more people to want to leave? What the hell?

[00:15:52]>> You want in the middle of the night a bunch of East German construction workers and cops show up with guns and they put a fence all the way around West Berlin, not to keep the West Berliners in, but to keep the East Berliners out.

[00:16:04]And east and west Berlin at this point in time were still very much intertwined. There were people that lived in the east and worked in the west and vice versa. And there were people that had family members on one side or the other side. And there were people that owned businesses and property.

[00:16:17]There were people that were seeing relatives and got separated from their families and they weren't allowed to get back on the other side of the wall.

[00:16:25]There were literally thousands of people in Berlin that woke up one day and it was just like, "Congratulations, you just lost your job. You just lost your property. You lost your business. you're now separated from your family. Because of this, people started trying to break into West Berlin or they were breaking out into East Berlin to get people and bring them back into West Berlin. At first, it was easy because it was just a fence and you could cut your way through it or you could scale it. But that fence rapidly turned into a 12t high concrete wall. And then, oh no, how many cime is like 12t though? Can someone Google how tall the Bain wall was? Um, if you're the one in control, you don't really care about others. So ruling through fear can be possible. They can't get they can't give incentive to people and not everyone. That's not communist, it's capitalist. So they use fear. That's why communist regimes rarely last. Which is why I said that like the extreme communist is also really really bad. You know I I mentioned in my previous video communism it seems good on paper. You know, it seems good in theory, but obviously obviously there's always like corrupt uh should I even like call them politicians? Corrupt politicians that just make it worse. Okay. That want to take advantage of it. 5T is about 1.5 m.

[00:17:43]So like 12 feet is like 3. What? What do you mean?

[00:17:47]>> 5 foot is about 1 comma 5 meter.

[00:17:50]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So 12t is three F 4 3.7 to five.

[00:18:04]Close.

[00:18:06]Oh, close. Yeah. 360 cm. Yeah. See, I was close. I was close. Too far left and too far right will always end in disaster. Thank you. Thank you.

[00:18:16]>> Then when people started bringing ladders to scale over the top of it, they added a gigantic round metal top to it so there was nothing to grip and pull yourself over. And then they added barbwire and guard towers and guards that were allowed to shoot you on site and turned it into a full-on demarcation line around West Berlin. And that is when the escape attempts got incredibly creative. One of the more popular ones at the very beginning was that somebody from West Berlin would remove the gas tank from their car and they would just have a little onegon jug for gas just >> Wait, I saw this in the Narco series.

[00:18:46]The way they like put coina inside. Wow.

[00:18:50]Okay. Wow. Okay. Sundan, this technique has always been >> I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This is like a serious issue, but it just reminded me of the Narco series on Netflix.

[00:19:01]Oh my god. Okay. Okay.

[00:19:02]>> Just enough gas to drive into East Berlin, pick somebody up and drive back to the west and the person would be strapped up underneath the car where the gas tank was supposed to be. But then the communists figured that out and then they had the guards at every checkpoint before a car could go into West Berlin, they would take a flexible metal wire and shove it down into where the gas tank should be to make sure it was in fact a gas tank. So then that plan was out. So one guy decided he was going to take his BMW Isetta, cut the roof off, and then he was just going to drive right underneath the checkpoint going full speed and he was going to duck. And that's how he was going to break into West Berlin. And that's exactly what he did. And because of this, the East Germans added spike strips and barricades to every checkpoint. Every time somebody escaped into West Berlin, the communists fixed however it was po >> [ __ ] They were upgrading it every single time. Oh my lord. I zoom in >> possible. They made it more and more difficult and the escape attempts got more and more creative. Some of my personal favorites include >> I love the way he said more and more creative instead of more and more difficult. It's like the Like is there safe boy difficult? It's like you know hm how do we find a more amazing way to escape this time? Hing a steel cable over the wall from a high building and then ziplining to the other side. Having somebody from West Berlin get a cow costume and tow a cattle trailer into East Berlin and then HAVE TWO OF HIS >> OH MY GOD. I'M SO SORRY.

[00:20:32]NO, this is not a laughing matter. My bad. My bad. My bad. It's just I'm trying to like imagine someone inside the cow suits going moo moo moo that is so off friends dress up in the cow costume and stand in the cattle trailer as they made it through the checkpoint stealing a tank and trying to drive it through the wall and when you got away from the Berlin wall itself and you actually went to the east and west German border the escape attempts got even crazier one group of brothers took a farmer's crop duster painted it like a Soviet Soviet MIG plane, flew it from West Germany into East Germany, picked up their other brother, and flew him back. And my absolute personal favorite escape from communism was when two fathers got together and for a year and a half gathered fabric and propane and supplies so that they could build a hot air balloon to escape to West Germany.

[00:21:28]Okay, I'm going to >> Wait, but I feel like that wouldn't work though because an air balloon, you guys know it's like super easy to like notice it in the air. No. And wouldn't it be easier to like just shoot it down by one of the soldiers or something if they catch you? I don't know. I feel like that one is kind of too obvious and more risky.

[00:21:48]>> I'm going to say that again, but a little bit slower. Eight people, two families, two fathers, two mothers, and four children escaped communism using a hot air balloon. Do you understand the gravity of what I've just told you?

[00:22:01]Because as a husband and a dad, it speaks volumes to me that two men in my situation got together, looked around, and said, "These living conditions are so horrific that the best bet for me and you and our wives and our kids, is to secretly gather up a bunch of cotton fabric, aka flammable, sew it into a balloon, attach it to a wicker basket, more flammable, and then propel it with a flamethrower as we try to get away as >> Oh my god, the flamethrower.

[00:22:31]Jesus Christ.

[00:22:33]How the hell did they think that was going to work though? Like how did they even I don't know what would be like the English.

[00:22:41]What is the English of when you have to like check if something works? So you have to Oh my god, I forgotten what was the English word. Uh whatever. Um not so easy to shoot a hot balloon with a rifle. Not really testing. Troubleshoot. Yeah, troubleshoot that. That's the English I was looking for. Like, how did they even troubleshoot it to know, okay, yeah, this is going to work. Let me pack all my family into this and let us fly.

[00:23:11]Like, what if something actually went wrong there, you know? Like, imagine that was like the first time they use it.

[00:23:19]Jesus, that was really really risky though. Hopium. They probably didn't. It was a huge gamble. Exactly. That's what I mean. Matt and Prayer. M sometimes you just have to go for it. Maybe the dad were familiar with how they work. I mean for them to be able to like come up with something like this fabric propane balloons.

[00:23:39]Maybe he he understood what he had to do. That's what he's saying. It was so bad in East Germany they gambled. Ah >> as fast as the wind will take us while the guards are shooting at us. Okay.

[00:23:49]Look, all I'm saying is I've never seen anybody that determined to escape capitalism. It's all I'm saying. But that's not real communism. Of course, it's not because it's never real communism. Whenever something goes bad, but whenever something goes bad under capitalism, it's 100% capitalism's fault and we should get rid of it and do communism instead. Granted, communism ever.

[00:24:09]>> Okay. Do people actually say this though? I really hope not. Yeah, that's kind of like a crazy thing to have.

[00:24:17]>> Every other time we've tried, it's ended in and murder and human rights violations. But hey, I'm feeling it this time, guys. We're just like we're this close. Just one, maybe two more and we're going to have that communist utopia. We should keep trying. I can't.

[00:24:31]I need a beer. Jesus.

[00:24:36]>> Oh, hell no. I would not want to live in a communist country. What the I know that like, you know, there are some bad things. There's some cons about capitalism, but no, I'm good here.

[00:24:47]I'm actually good. I would never want to live in a communist place. No, no, no, no, no, no.

[00:24:54]>> Sorry, I got carried away. I apologize.

[00:24:56]Anyways, the wall around Berlin gets more and more impenetrable and eventually the only way to actually escape into West Berlin is to dig a tunnel and crawl your way out, which a ton of people did. Now, obviously, this is a PR nightmare. The communists have to explain to everybody why on earth they blocked off West Berlin and they're not letting anybody through. And because of that, they decide to give the Berlin Wall their name, the Anti-fascist Rampart. Fascism, obviously referring to Nazis, which makes this, I believe, one of the first historical appearances of the unfortunately still prevalent line of thinking that anybody that disagrees with me or how I live my life or my politics must be a Nazi. Yeah, that >> what?

[00:25:37]Wait, is this how what I don't understand this though? I don't understand what the fat electrician just said.

[00:25:46]If someone Wait, let me go back. What the hell does he mean there?

[00:25:50]>> The first historical appearances of the unfortunately still prevalent line of thinking that anybody that disagrees with me or how I live my life or my politics must be a Nazi. Yeah, that >> that's not what a NASA is, though.

[00:26:06]Like what? That's literally not what a NASA is. That doesn't make sense. Is that what you guys is that how is it like urban dictionary in America to like call people like that Nazis? It's not like you can't just come to Germany and start saying, "Oh my god, you don't like my politics. I'm going to call you a Nazi." You can do you cannot do that here in Germany. That's so stupid. I I guess that has to be like an English thing. But why would you guys use the word Nazi? I don't even want to know.

[00:26:32]Whatever.

[00:26:33]>> That was the official stance of the Soviet Union. Basically accusing every Western power of being a fascist regime and saying they built the wall to quote protect against fascist elements conspiring to prevent the will of the people. despite the fact that the apparent will of the people was to leave their communist regime. But whatever.

[00:26:51]Just excuse me one more time. I'm so sorry. I just have to Google something real quick.

[00:26:54]>> Is a common practice in America. Usually done by radicals.

[00:26:58]>> I mean, I feel like you guys should have used another word, though.

[00:27:01]>> How to recognize a cult. Absolute authoritarianism without accountability.

[00:27:05]Check. Uh, zero tolerance for criticism or questions like getting arrested for political junk. So, I'm going to go with check. Uh, lack of meaningful financial disclosure regarding the budget. Check.

[00:27:16]Unreasonable fears about the outside world that often involve evil conspiracies and persecutions.

[00:27:22]Check. Okay, sorry. Anyways, back to the video. Despite all the propaganda saying the Western world was literally just a bunch of Nazis, most people in East Germany didn't buy it, and a ton of them still tried to escape to the West. Over the duration of the Berlin Wall, over a hundred thou >> Wait, this is actually so weird.

[00:27:38]The reason why they use that word is cause it's the most evil thing you can think of. So they're saying anyone who doesn't agree with me is the evilst person around.

[00:27:48]>> Oh, I I genuinely think it's kind of crazy.

[00:27:52]I don't know why you guys are using it.

[00:27:55]I wish you guys would like use another word, but I I guess like what the hell? Imagine you like start calling someone, you know, H, the H word, you know, the guy, the Austrian painter. Imagine you start calling someone that.

[00:28:11]And that would be really, really weird.

[00:28:13]That would genuinely be really, really weird. You know, thousand people would be captured and imprisoned for either telling political jokes, criticizing the government, or attempting to escape. In just a couple years, by 1964, these political prisoners were starting to stack up. really really quickly and the USSR had to do something about it because it was costing them money and the prisons were full and they had to get rid of all these people. So I mean what's a communist regime to do? Well that's easy. We've got all these prisoners that we don't want. They don't want to be here. Let's ransom them over to the West. And that's exactly what they do. They ransomed 33,000 political prisoners to the West. And the West paid on average 4,000 Deutsch marks per person. I say on average.

[00:28:55]>> Oh, how much would be 4,000 like in euro right now though? Like is this like a lot of money?

[00:29:03]I maybe like it doesn't really have any value right now anymore.

[00:29:11]Most likely. Yeah. Yes. A lots of money.

[00:29:13]Okay. Okay. Okay.

[00:29:14]>> Because it wasn't a static price. The USSR put different values.

[00:29:18]>> Currently change happened. One mark was 51 cent. Oh, okay. One mark was 51 cents. Okay. Okay.

[00:29:27]>> Different people based on their skills and job set. For example, a general laborer might only bring 1,800 Deutsch marks, whereas a doctor could bring 15,000. Now, granted, I'm probably reading way too far into this, but I do find it tiny bit hypocritical that the communist government, the same government that >> Yeah. is using money TO LIKE Oh my god, my brain just clocked in.

[00:29:50]What the hell?

[00:29:52]That is a capitalist thing to do.

[00:29:55]They're buying. No, they're like selling the people. They're literally selling the people. That is insane.

[00:30:02]>> That supposedly is striving to create a moneyless, classless society where everybody is equal is also taking political prisoners, assigning different values on their life based on their ability to produce an economic output.

[00:30:15]Almost like they're putting them into separate classes, implying that some people are worth more than others, and then they're turning around and trying to sell them to another government for money, which is allegedly something else they don't want, which is, >> you know, weird. It's almost like it's all a bunch of talking points and so they can have a bunch of control.

[00:30:32]>> Yeah. The irony. The irony. Holy.

[00:30:37]>> I could do this all day. How How long?

[00:30:40]How what is it going to take to convince you that communism is tell me >> why would it does it really take that long for people to not like communism is bad?

[00:30:50]>> That's why I said it was only good in theory though. It was only good in theory. I never said it was like a good thing.

[00:30:57]>> I'll do it.

[00:30:58]>> YOUR HONOR, I OBJECT.

[00:31:00]>> And why is that, Mr. Reed?

[00:31:02]>> BECAUSE IT'S DEVASTATING TO MY CASE.

[00:31:04]>> OVERRULED.

[00:31:05]>> Good call. In addition to the 33,000 political prisoners that the USSR essentially auctioned off for money, they also agreed to release 215,000 East German citizens for the low low price of 2.3 billion Deutsch marks.

[00:31:20]Between 1945 and 1989, over 600 Germans were killed either trying to cross the border from East to West Germany or from East to West Berlin. And that >> Oh, to be honest, I was expecting a higher number.

[00:31:33]Oh, okay. 600.

[00:31:35]I'm not going to lie, I was actually expecting like a higher number to be honest. I'm glad it was only Okay, never know. Let me like rephrase my English.

[00:31:44]I'm not saying I'm glad it was only 600.

[00:31:48]That's like That's still a lot of people. Okay, that's still a lot of people. Chill out.

[00:31:54]Chill out. Chill out. Chill out. But I was kind of expecting like a huge huge number, you know, because of how long it's been going on. Yeah.

[00:32:05]>> That is considered to be a very low, very conservative number because the USSR didn't want to release the actual numbers or admit that they'd killed anyone because every single person they killed trying to escape communism was a huge political hit to them. Which raises the question, what happened in 1989?

[00:32:22]Well, that's the best part of the whole story. By 1989, the Soviet Union was going bankrupt. They were beginning to crumble. They were losing their sphere of influence. And more and more civil unrest started to occur. And by November of 1989, in East Germany, there were protests. People demanding that they had the freedom of speech, the freedom of >> protests in East Germany.

[00:32:44]Wait, did they actually allow them to protest?

[00:32:51]In Poland, too. Yeah, but I'm talking about like in East Germany though.

[00:32:57]No, right. Like I'm thinking what the hell? There's no way they would allow them to protest. Oh, but they still did.

[00:33:04]So they were like risking their life to protest then. If you protested, you were putting your life on the line. Yeah, that's that's like the answer I wanted to get. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

[00:33:14]>> Expression, the ability to critique their government without getting arrested. And most importantly, the freedom of travel. The communist government knew that they had to give the people an inch before the people turned around and took a mile. And the one inch they were willing to give them was they were going to get rid of the travel ban and finally start granting people visas. They weren't going to charge them money. They weren't going to have to have some special circumstance to do it.

[00:33:34]>> But people could just use their visa and make it like a one-way ticket. No.

[00:33:39]Wouldn't that bring them all back to like square one like in the beginning when people were like traveling from east to west and just staying there in the west and not going back?

[00:33:49]Why would they allow the visa then? I feel like they're probably going to like revoke that again.

[00:33:55]>> And most importantly, they were actually going to approve people and they were going to do it quickly. These new travel regulations were drafted on November 8th. They were going to be announced to the public on November 9th on live TV.

[00:34:06]And on November 10th, they would go into effect and people could show up to the passport office, apply, and ideally get accepted and have the freedom to travel west. And that's kind of what happened.

[00:34:16]November 8th, the new regulations get drafted. That's fine. November 9th, they hand the new regulations to a government spokesperson by the name of Gunter Shabowski, and he's going to read them on a government press conference on live TV. He didn't have time to read through all the papers. Nobody took the time to explain it to him. So on live TV, he just kind of wings it.

[00:34:32]>> WE'LL DO IT LIVE.

[00:34:34]>> HE READS OFF WHAT HE THINKS is important, which is just here's the new rules that we're living by. And everybody's like pretty happy about it.

[00:34:39]And one journalist asks, when does this go into effect? And Gunter, not having time to have read through all the papers, kind of shuffles through them real quick, looking for an effective date in which he doesn't see one. It's there. He just doesn't see it. So, he just kind of shrugs and he's like, "As far as I know, quote, immediately without delay."

[00:35:02]>> And with that going out on live TV, East German.

[00:35:06]>> Oh, so many people. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I know what's about to happen then.

[00:35:09]Germans got up and started going to the wall. Now, this announcement was at the ass end of a boring government press conference, so not a lot of people saw it, but then the news outlets started picking it up and they started airing it.

[00:35:21]>> Oh, I've seen this. I've seen this. I've seen this. They've shown this in like my history class, >> both in East and West Germany. And then even more people started showing up on both sides of the wall. And within just a few hours, tens of thousands of people had shown up to Checkpoint Charlie, one of the main checkpoints for the Berlin Wall to go from east to west. And they demanded to be let go because they had just been told by their government on live TV that they had the freedom of travel. And the guards had no idea what was going on. And they were outnumbered tens of thousands to one. And eventually the guards were forced to simply let people through. And then word spread that they actually let them through. And all of Berlin, both east and west, came out and had basically the biggest block party the world has ever seen as a city that had been divided in half for 28 years was finally reunited. And then they celebrated this reunification by tearing down the wall that had separated them for so long. In conclusion, Germany after World War II is the closest thing to a controlled experiment that you can have pitting capitalism against communism to see which one would triumph in real life. They took one country with one people, divided it down the middle, and gave each a set of rules to live by.

[00:36:32]And while capitalism is far from perfect, and it has a ton of things that we can improve upon, I think the results of this experiment speak for themselves.

[00:36:40]Thank you for watching. Best way to support the channel is buy some merch at fatrician.com just by accident.

[00:36:47]>> Really, really good history class. I really, really enjoyed this video though. And also, I learned like a bunch of stuff. Where was this? This was two years ago. Wow. This was actually two years ago. I liked it. I actually did like it. Really good video.

[00:37:15]My two