The Berlin wall did not divide East from West Germany. Wow !!!

I was arguing with my 14 year old daughter that the Berlin wall cut through Berlin dividing East Germany from West Germany. She said that Berlin was fully inside East Germany and she was correct. In fact the Berlin wall was a perimeter wall fully enclosing West Berlin like a small island 100 miles inside of East Germany.

I can’t believe I had such a massive gap in my general knowledge and it’s blown my mind. Please, somebody put their hands up and say me too !

That’s why the Berlin Airlift into Templehof was so critical.  The Soviets could close all the land links into Berlin whenever they wanted to.  The Airlift had to succeed to demonstrate that it didn’t matter, it could be held and supplied.

I’ll put my hands up and say I’m surprised someone didn’t know this. Thought it was pretty common knowledge. There was a wall/fence between east and west Germany too.

In my defence I went to a rubbish school in the 80’s and modern history was not taught at all. Both of my teenage kids new this from school history lessons. I’m still surprised I didn’t pick this up along the way though !

I think it’s partly confusion created by the term Iron Curtain. In my adolescent mind that was a physical wall separating east from west.

The Iron Curtain was real enough as a physical border. The fact that it was about 100 miles West of Berlin is what surprised me !

I’ll be honest I hadn’t known this until I went to Berlin

It’s not just you, this is the first I knew of this!

As you say, history wasn’t exactly taught very well at school when I was there. There was a few bits about Romans and Greeks and that was about it. Any modern history wasn’t taught.

And to be honest, it’s not something that’s ever interested me enough as an adult to read up on.

Surely you didn’t need to know History as much as Geography! Would have been fairly obvious looking at a map pre unification.

I think the clue is in the name….. The Berlin Wall.

A mate who lives in Berlin decided to ride along its path one day. Took him much longer than he expected!

IIRC West Berlin wasn’t technically part of the FRG either (though may be wrong)

IIRC West Berlin wasn’t technically part of the FRG either (though may be wrong)

Sort of. But for most day to day stuff it was effectively part of the Bundesrepublik.

Hard to believe folks were unaware of where West Berlin was and how it related to the Berlin Wall  still, every day is a school day

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Berlin

A mate who lives in Berlin decided to ride along its path one day. Took him much longer than he expected!

a bit like the interminable ride around Derwent reservoir?

In my defence I went to a rubbish school in the 80’s and modern history was not taught at all. Both of my teenage kids knew this from school history lessons.

I guess it was too recent/current being as the Cold War was still going on and the 2nd world war hadn’t ended that long ago, less than 40 years.
We were mostly taught 1st World War and older in the eighties.

On a tangent, Nicosia is fascinating if you get to go, as it’s the last divided capital city in Europe.

Other useless Berlin Wall fact is that it essentially fell by accident – DDR government were planning to relax travel rules in response to unrest, sent out a spokesman who mistakenly said it would happen immediately instead of at some unspecified point, crowds rushed the crossing points and the USSR said it wouldn’t intervene, so they had to open the gates and allow people to cross.

It only accidently fell by a few hours. The official opening of the border was supposed to be the following day when border control offices opened.

OP, I’ll put my hand up and say I also thought the same as you about the wall. It was only when I actually visited Germany in my early twenties and looked at a map, and thought “Oh, Berlin’s over there!” that I realised.

And I did geography at GCSE…

I knew, but then it didn’t come down till after i left school! Plus my dad was in the RAF and had trained for another Airlift.

The Berlin airlift is well worth an investigation.  Amazing logistics and not without danger to the pilots. I can’t remember the book I read on it, but the size/complexity was boggling!

On the A9 Autobahn between Munich and Berlin is a small town, Mödlareuth, known as Little Berlin. It sits on the border between Bavaria and Thüringen and was split like Berlin. Interesting place worth a stop.

GF used to study in Coburg (Prince Albert’s home town)and I ended up living there for a year. It was surrounded on three sides by the Iron Curtain. On a ride through the woods you would come across concrete slabs and could find the foundations of the watch towers.

A local guy said they used to ride to the border and throw bananas and chocolate over the fence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_German_border?wprov=sfla1

I genuinely thought this was going to be a new conspiracy theory, where your kids had picked up something from YT that it was all faked.

Pffffft. The Berlin wall coming down was due to David Hasselhoff alone. Talk about not knowing your history!

The official opening of the border was supposed to be the following day when border control offices opened.

I’d understood (from various places including The Rest Is History TBF) that it was meant to be several months later.

Also, there’s some sort of gravel bike path down the track of the inner German border and there’s a race along it

I’ll put my hands up and say I’m surprised someone didn’t know this. Thought it was pretty common knowledge.

given many people in the U.K. would struggle to put major cities in their own country geographically in the right place on a map, and struggle to even name the 27 countries of the EU I’m not at all surprised if someone was not aware exactly where the border of a country lay in 1989 and how that relates to a city within that country.   I suspect that if you gave most brits a blank map of Germany today and asked them to put a pin where Berlin is it would on average be no closer to the “right” answer than if you asked them to put a pin in Bonn.   In fact, if tv show pointless is a useful judge of random people’s knowledge, I’d say you’d get < 65% who could identify modern Germany from its outline and unless there was some special clue in the question <30% who would recognise either FDR or GDR from their previous borders.

my children take great delight in telling me that everything I learned in modern studies (including Berlin Wall) is now taught in history and therefore I am basically a dinosaur.  I think realistically anyone under about 50 is probably too young to have understood enough west/east Germany stuff simply by force feeding and so would need to have shown some actual interest.

@thebees

I also thought the same as you until this thread. And I’ve been to Berlin!

Thanks

‘History is just one **** thing after another.’

I was unaware of this until i read this thread, I also thought that the Berlin Wall actually went right through, er, Berlin.
at least I’m not the only one.

Yep, I’ll admit I learnt something this morning. Thought the “Iron Curtain” and the “Berlin Wall” were one and the same, so assumed it just ran through Berlin. A* in GCSE history (😇), but we didn’t study that period and region. In my defence, I hadn’t yet had my first birthday when the Berlin Wall fell.

I’m surprised more people didn’t think the same… Or is that a self-reporting bias?

They tend to avoid most modern history on a national curriculum as it could influencal political view. When I was at school ww2 was the cut off but its  probably long enough now that the cold War is in.

I’d understood (from various places including The Rest Is History TBF) that it was meant to be several months later.

There was a marvellous German TV series – Deutschland 89 – that covered this from the perspective of a fictional East German secret agent. It deals with the DDR politburo realising the game is up because Gorbachev won’t support them with sending in the tanks, and how an intention to allow controlled visits to the west turned into a free for all at the Berlin Wall  because of an off the cuff response to a question on a TV interview.

I kind of knew but not sure through school, it was a bit long ago to recall the details I was taught.

I’d say it’s the way it’s taught and name, that’s not made clear of how the boundary lay.

Nice interactive map.

https://berlinwallmap.info/map

You are not alone. The number of people I have discussed that with over the years who think Im mental when I tell them it was inside E Germany.

I was unaware of this until i read this thread, I also thought that the Berlin Wall actually went right through, er, Berlin.

It did. the wall split the city roughly in two, but continued round the western half to encircle it. The convenient fact it was the West side (Its a roughly N/S split) hid the fact it was in E germany. If it had been the East side, it would be far more obvious!

I was lucky enough to visit Berlin just after the wall fell. The difference between East and West was stark and most of the wall was still in place. There was a Benetton shop and a Macdonald’s that had both just opened up on the East side of the city. Also, the bit of the East that could be seen from West Berlin was like a façade. It all looked great, but behind it much of the city was in poor condition, with ruins, shoddy building work and many areas of squalor. Driving through East Germany it was amazing how many rural communities still relied on horse and cart.

I haven’t visited, but I was told that the railway crossings all passed over open-structure bridges so that the GDR border guards could see if anyone was hanging on underneath.

Dunno what they did for the road crossings. Anyone??

Yep, I’ll admit I learnt something this morning. Thought the “Iron Curtain” and the “Berlin Wall” were one and the same

Me three. Not something I was ever taught. I have previously read about the Berlin airlift too, which makes much more sense now that I think of it as an island within E. Berlin…

West Berlin was quite complicated constitutionally. It was still occupied territory split into three sectors, one for each of the three allied powers, until reunification such that the three commanders-in-chief were the ultimate political power and Berliners didn’t elect MPs and didn’t have voting members in the West German parliament. I went to Berlin – both sides -before the wall came down.

Another good angle to look at the Cold War around Berlin is to read about BRIXMIS

This was the military liaison that allowed allied military to travel within the East German zone and they basically ‘spied’ on the activities of the soviet and east german forces – they got into some really crazy scrapes and unfortunately some lost their lives

some fascinating books out there from former BRIXMIS staff.

They tend to avoid most modern history on a national curriculum as it could influencal political view.

My daughters GCSE History syllabus ran up to events in Afghanistan the month she first started the course – though she did have a fantastic and politically active History teacher.

Called Mr Poland.

Who came from Ireland.

Dunno what they did for the road crossings. Anyone??

There were set “corridors” that you drove on – you had to check in and out – mileage was logged and you had a window of time you had to complete the journey in.

Interrailing in the 1980s we decided to go to Berlin.

What we hadn’t allowed for was that the tickets didn’t include east Germany. We got arrested on the train by an east German train guard and on arrival in West Berlin got marched at gun point to the ticket office.

Scary at the time. We bought return tickets!