
The Man Who Disobeyed His Boss and Opened the Berlin Wall - adamnemecek
http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/11/06/361785478/the-man-who-disobeyed-his-boss-and-opened-the-berlin-wall
======
rmason
I visited Germany several times before the wall fell. I can remember taking
the train from Berlin to Munich which passed through East Germany. We stopped
for some reason and there was a biergarden right there. The trains windows
were open and a waitress addressed me in English and we started talking. She
invited me to step off for a beer assuring me that it was OK.

This seemed reasonable and as I reached for the door handle on the train
someone grabbed my hand. It was the guy sharing my train car and who had
earlier feigned not knowing any English. He said in clear English, 'don't do
it the risk is too high. If the guards spot you they will prevent you from re-
boarding the train.'

Turns out the guy was an IT consultant and we had a very pleasant chat on the
way into Munich and I had dinner with him while I was there. The waitress was
cute and I've always wondered if I'd have been lucky or gotten to know the
inside of an East German jail cell.

~~~
Roritharr
This is a great story. My mother has worked on german trains as a waitress for
the past 46 years (retired this year) and she has so many awesome stories
about the cold war, east germany crossing and so on.

She is not a history nut at all so from her point of view these were just
things that happened or that she did, not something bigger. But she: \- shook
the hand of three separate Bundeskanzlers \- smuggled Nylon Socks, Coca-Cola
and Candy Bars to East Berlin \- served on a train that was driving completely
in secret, on board were politicians and military personelle(they tipped well
she said) \- served on a train on which German terrorists(RAF/Baader Meinhof,
can't remember which ATM) were captured

Besides working on a train she: \- worked in the olympic town in Munich 1972
and served some of the Israeli athletes.

For my mother nothing of this is extrodinary and these bits seep out when she
talks about "good tipping customers" or annoying workplace conditions. When I
ask her for something exciting, she tells me stories of how the onboard cook
made ad hoc dessert in 3 minutes for some poor Hungarian border patrol
guard...

Talking to my mother is my very own german version of Forrest Gump. All of
post-war German History is in there, I just have to ask the wrong questions.
I'm so proud of her.

~~~
praneshp
It's so nice to come across another person who is proud of their mother. Most
people express their attachment as love, very few say they are proud of their
parents.

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pastProlog
It was good to see the end of this evil totalitarian system, where the Stasi
would spy on civilians and monitor and record every telephone conversation.

~~~
rmc
The Statsi employed one staff member per ~160 people in the country. About 1
in 6 people in the country were informants.

I don't think the USA even comes close to how oppressive that is.

~~~
kirsebaer
[http://www.dw.de/east-german-stasi-had-189000-informers-
stud...](http://www.dw.de/east-german-stasi-had-189000-informers-study-
says/a-3184486) "About one in 100 East Germans was an informer for communist
East Germany's secret police in 1989, according to a new study. Political
ideology was their main motivation, both in East and West Germany... According
to the report, political ideals served as the primary motivation for people to
turn in their neighbors, friends and acquaintances to the secret police.
Financial incentives played only a minor role and blackmail was rare."

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-
switch/wp/2014/03/24...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-
switch/wp/2014/03/24/5-1-million-americans-have-security-clearances-thats-
more-than-the-entire-population-of-norway/) "5.1 million Americans have
security clearances. That’s more than the entire population of Norway... About
5.1 million people — or more than 1.5 percent of the population — held
security clearances last year."

~~~
vidarh
Security clearance is a poor proxy for whether or not someone is involved with
the security services.

A _lot_ of people obtain security clearances because of jobs that brings them
only in cursory contact with anything secret, either because it is a
requirement, or because it is a hassle not to.

E.g. I once did a two week contract for a Norwegian defence research group.
The stuff I worked on was not restricted in any way, but the only reason I
didn't have to be put through security clearance procedures was that they were
in too much of a rush and opted for the inconvenient alternative:

One of the senior developers spent two weeks "babysitting" me: Despite working
from an office in a wing of the building that housed no high security
projects, he had to follow me around wherever I went. Including standing
outside the toilets whenever I had to go, and follow me when I went to lunch.

~~~
hga
Last time I checked, every commissioned officer in the military gets at
minimum a Secret clearance. Per Wikipedia that's 236,826 in 2010 in the active
military, add the reserves and I'd assume it's over 300K.

------
escapologybb
I was 11 at the time the Berlin Wall came down, and I remember my mum waking
me up and telling me to come downstairs. She was patiently trying to explain
how important all this was, but as I sat there watching all of these people
joyfully smashing a giant wall to pieces I kept thinking, "I wonder if I can
ask for a sledgehammer for Christmas, if people on the telly are using them it
must be okay for me".

So yes, that was me growing up in the UK during the 80s. Cold War tensions,
threat of nuclear war, proxy wars springing up all over the place and at the
end of all that my abiding memory is "hmm, sledgehammers are cool!"

That and the film Threads[0], possibly the scariest film I've ever watched and
if offered the chance to watch it… DON'T.

[0]: Nope, not linking to it. I'm doing you a favour, seriously.

~~~
jghn
When I was a kid I remember watching Threads with my family. I had friends go
on and on about how freaky The Day After was, which I never saw until about
2000 or so.

Those kids who talked about being scared by TDA obviously didn't watch Threads
at the time. I still shudder thinking about some of the scenes.

I did rewatch it not too long ago and just kind of shrugged. I suppose that's
a statement on both how far we've come in terms of actually fearing nuclear
annihilation as well as the graphicness of horror movies.

~~~
escapologybb
You know, I tried to rewatch Threads a couple of years ago just to see if I'd
been desensitised to graphic violence. I hadn't been! I don't watch horror
movies and graphic violence on the telly, they genuinely scare and disturb me.
So that's my excuse for not making it through the first 45 minutes of Threads
as an adult!

I think one of the scariest things for me was that it was set in the north of
England where I'm from. Normally disaster movies are all about London and the
south-east corner of the UK if they are set in the UK at all. I'm from the
North West, and it was the sheer ordinariness of the people that they managed
to capture so perfectly that made themselves empathetic to me. It actually
felt as though I might have known some of these people. I think it was that
deep empathy that made it much easier to place oneself in their position,
fucking terrible position though it was.

You know, I was thinking about what you said about fearing nuclear
annihilation and I think I'm more worried about it now. At least in the good
old days there were only two likely candidates to start lobbing nukes about
the place, these days who knows who's going to be the first to set one off.

~~~
jghn
Oh, I think that nuclear activity is at least as, if not moreso, likely than
it was back then. But IMO it's much less likely for it to be a full scale,
global thermonuclear war (to borrow a phrase).

I just don't see people living in fear that any day might be the day that the
entire world ceases to exist as we know it. For instance, I'm guessing that
grade schoolers don't have a nuclear attack drill (which were laughable, now
that I think back).

Personally I fall into that camp, but if I woke up one morning to find out
that some large city had a nuclear device go off in it via a terrorist attack,
or (purely an example) Israel dropped a bomb somewhere in Iran, I wouldn't be
surprised at all.

~~~
escapologybb
I agree with you 100% that the likelihood of global thermonuclear war has
decreased, I definitely think it's going to be a small scale incident when it
happens. If there is any such thing as a small-scale nuclear event.

But yes, I don't think anybody would be surprised if there was a limited
exchange between Iran and Israel one day. Or maybe a container ship containing
a nuke goes off in a harbour somewhere in a terrorist attack, we'd be
horrified, but not surprised.

The thing that struck me as a kid was the mental image of two groups of
generals and leaders sitting over a map, one in Downing Street and the other
in the Kremlin. I always wondered why they didn't just play Diplomacy[0]
instead, but play for real countries instead of the imaginary ones in the
boardgame. They still get to do all the scheming, backstabbing and other
diplomatic shenanigans that politicians seem to love but without the loss of
life and destruction.

Not sure my idea would gain traction these days though!

[0]:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_\(game\))

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I always wondered why they didn 't just play Diplomacy[0] instead, but play
> for real countries instead of the imaginary ones in the boardgame. They
> still get to do all the scheming, backstabbing and other diplomatic
> shenanigans that politicians seem to love but without the loss of life and
> destruction._

The reason is, of course, the metagame. The first one to drop a real H-bomb on
the other or launch a real assault would win, hence both sides need to play at
the least simulated level available.

Also, you have just reminded me of ST:TOS episode "A Taste of Armageddon",
where two planets fought a virtual war in which computers simulated the mutual
bombing and after such fire exchange a computed number of people were
euthanized.

------
Kliment
There is a lovely, very recent film about this (in German) called "Bornholmer
Strasse" starring many of the people who were actually there 25 years ago.

~~~
junto
Came here to say this. It was on ARD in the week. I enjoyed it a lot.
Interesting to see what a pickle Herr Jaeger was left in by his superiors.
Amazing really that nobody was shot.

------
MCRed
I spent several months in Berlin a couple years ago and was particularly
fascinated by the wall. There are many exhibits. To the north is a recreated
section of the wall, with a guard tower, etc and a museum across the street.

Near checkpoint charlie is a good museum of people's attempts to escape the
wall. Unfortunately it's usually overrun with tourists and tough to get thru-
so physically packed with bodies.

Berlin has done a good job of memorializing the wall, and you will see its
impact wherever you go in the city.

To be honest, if you have any geographic flexibility, go spend 3 months in
berlin doing a startup-- great startup scene, great place in europe, wonderful
city, and lots of stuff worth experiencing.

There's even a section of the metro that was closed for 40 years because it
was in east berlin... that you can now see.

We stayed in east berlin in an AirBnB apartment. It was winter and despite all
the snow I loved it. Alexander Platz has the Festrum(sp) a fantastic, east
german version of the space needle, well worth visiting.

If you get homesick the Sony theater in Potsdamer Platz runs american movies
in english.

But above all, the wall really made a huge impression on me. A much bigger
impression than, say, stonehenge.

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mjevans
The most fascinating aspect of this is that he sounds like an absolutely
ordinary guy 'just following orders'; it's likely what he actually was and has
been.

The evil of legitimizing immoral actions is that they become what is, within
that context, justice.

~~~
phaer
> The evil of legitimizing immoral actions is that they become what is, within
> that context, justice.

Yes, that's a very important point to learn from at least the 20th century,
I'd say. I you haven't already, read Hannah Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem".

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tek-cyb-org
now lets get some israelis to take down the apartheid wall in palestine. Lets
stop israeli colonialism and racism, and oppression of the indigenous arabs
that live in palestine.

