Dan Snow's History Hit - The Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall

Episode Date: November 9, 2021

The Berlin Wall was an icon of the Cold War and a physical embodiment of the divide between East and West. Its rise and fall was a microcosm of the conflict and its fall marked the beginning of a new post-Cold War world.Today on the podcast Dan is joined by two eyewitnesses to the wall to hear first-hand its physical and psychological impact. First Dan speaks to Sir Robert Corbett. His military career was book-ended by the wall as his first command as a young officer in the Irish Guards was in Berlin during the 1960s and one of his last major commands before retiring was as the last Commandant of the British Sector in Berlin. He describes the tension and challenges of operating in Berlin and the ever-present possibility of conflict between the two sides. He also provides an eye-opening account of how the euphoric moment of the wall coming down was also a moment of grave danger and could have led to serious violence without his careful diplomacy.Secondly, Dan is joined by Margit Hosseini. She grew up in the city and witnessed events of the 1950s and 60s as the wall went up before leaving to live in London. She remembers her experiences of what it was like to be surrounded by the wall as it went up and to witness family's, including her own, be divided by its ominous presence.

Hi folks, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. My dad was a journalist, I talked to him the other day, and he said he remembers the day on which he realised he was getting old. And that day was the 9th of November, 1989. The anniversary, in fact, this month, which I'll point out to him. The Berlin Wall was coming down, people were climbing onto it, and he ran out in the streets with all the other young people in Berlin, everyone running around.

He tried to climb onto the wall. There we go, I'll just hold myself up and talk. And he couldn't. He couldn't. And he thought to himself, I'm getting old. So this will be a difficult episode for my dad to listen to, because on this episode, we're going to talk about the fall of the Berlin Wall. We're also going to talk about the rise of the Berlin Wall, because I've got two remarkable witnesses who were there for important pieces of history. I've got Sir Robert Corbett. He talks about the Berlin Wall from the military perspective. He was a young subaltern, a very young officer, when the wall went up in Berlin. And bizarrely, he was British military commander in Berlin the night the wall came down. He tells a very,

very interesting story about how he might have helped to smooth the fall of that wall and avoid nasty confrontation. You're also going to be hearing from Margit Hosseini. She grew up in the city. She witnessed the events in the 1950s and 60s. She remembers that wall going up and she gives a sense of what it was like to live in that traumatised, divided city. She now lives in London. It's one of those events that people knew at the time history was being made and subsequently we've had no reason to doubt their judgment. A huge, huge moment. If you want to watch history documentaries, if you want to listen to other podcasts, it's all available at History Hit TV. We've got our own Netflix for history. It's a TV channel

available online like Netflix or any of the other channels you subscribe to. You just go to historyhit.tv, historyhit.tv, and you subscribe. 30 days free if you subscribe today. I met a guy the other day in Italy. He stopped me in the street. He said he loves listening to the podcast. He came out. He just said, look, I'm really sorry I don't subscribe to the channel. I said, that's okay, man. Don't worry about it. But I like the fact that on these introductions, I mentioned it so many times that people have an unconscious urge to apologize when they see me in the flesh for not subscribing. But listen, for all you out there who are thinking about making that final step,

don't be like the young man I met in Italy. Just go and subscribe. Simple as that. Flip open that laptop. Swipe that little phone you're listening to this on. Go to historyhit.tv and your adventure can begin. But in the meantime, folks, here's to Robert Corbett and Margit Hussaini for this fascinating episode. Enjoy. So, Robert, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Pleasure. Tell me about life as a young infantry platoon commander in Berlin when you were deployed there. What are your memories of it? It was actually one of the first really important tasks, I suppose, I was ever given in that particular role.

We were in the 4th Guards Brigade, then my battalion, then Armoured Infantry, I suppose you could have called us. I was a recce, reconnaissance platoon commander, given responsibility for one of the very first trains sent through to Berlin after the building of the wall. And my orders were very clear, take this train, get it through to Berlin after the building of the wall. And my orders were very clear, take this train, get it through to Berlin. This was a resupply train for the garrison carrying ammunition and fuel and rations and stuff like that. Take this train through to Berlin and make sure that under no circumstances is it or can it be boarded by people who are trying to get freedom in West Berlin or indeed looted. And this is what you have to do. And so we set off to the formalities with the Soviets

and crossed the frontier at Helmstedt, where we took on an East German driver. Sorry, can I jump to just briefly there? When you say under no circumstances, I mean, you therefore did have permission to start World War Three, effectively. That's quite a broad remit. Well, you know, it is a funny thing. It was a terrific responsibility. I was a lieutenant then with half my recce platoon with me in the guards van at the back of this fairly long train

where we had our weapons and communications equipment and so on. And actually, we had a hard time once we'd crossed into East Germany because the East German driver was determined to really give us grief. And he kept on stopping and starting. And every time we stopped, we had to patrol the train, of course, to stop those things from happening that I just mentioned earlier. And it must have been in about first light. We would just have crossed the railway to the east of Magdeburg. We passed a fairly large party.

I think there were 10 or 12 of them of the East German Railway Police on with those nasty little Russian submachine guns with the vented barrels and the round magazines. Didn't think any more about it. We passed them, and fairly shortly afterwards, the train came to a grinding halt. The train came to a grinding halt, and here I made an actually fairly serious mistake in that I took my excellent platoon sergeant with me, because my soldiers had been up all night long, indeed we had. It was fascinating seeing how the tank workshops in Magdeburg in the early hours of the morning were out welding and everything was going on. They were working, so that was a 24-hour operation.

Anyway, so the train stopped, and I took my platoon sergeant here on one side of the train, me on the other. And we were up the far end of the train, fairly near the engine, with a great clanking and hissing of steam and everything else. It set off. So I said, get on and get the brakes done. So we jumped on this, it was actually a fuel wagon, and wound down a couple of wheels, one on each side, which made absolutely no difference to the gathering speed of the train. And there was a noise, I remember, like the wailing of a thousand banshees as the brakes supplied would make no difference. And looking back down the train in the early morning light,

I could see that there was trouble at the other end, big trouble actually. So I said to the son of Kreml, get off. And we ran back down the train and they hauled us onto the platform at the back where there was real trouble because one of my soldiers, a very powerful man called Guardsman Kelly, 46. There were so many Kellys in the mix that he all had to be recognized by their numbers. And Kelly was hugely strong and not exactly queuing up for membership of Mensa. And he had thrown one of these people who tried to arrest him to the ground. And there was really big trouble brewing. Train had stopped, of course, by then. But everybody was on the platform at the back. And so a furious argument then arose.

Release this man to us. He has been trespassing on the sovereign territory of the GDR. And I, a German speaker, my soldiers couldn't speak German. And they thought, well, I think, well, we must support our young officers. So together, at a signal from my sergeant, they cocked their self-loading rifles. And that was enough for the people's police to cock their nasty little submachine guns. They weren't just cocked, they were pointed. And here, you just mentioned the Third World War.

I could see, you know, I was very young at the time, but it was a very tense moment. And I could see here that if there had been real problem, and if those weapons had been used, then that really might have started something terribly serious. But eventually they realized they weren't going to get anywhere, and they backed off and disappeared into the gloom. It then took a long time to bleed the air out of the braking system of the train, because I'd run inside and pull the air brake on so that the train came to a halt. And then we eventually managed to get going again. We had a radio, but couldn't say very much about what had happened. Got into the great marshalling yards at Spandau, where I obviously took care of my soldiers and make sure that they were properly looked after.

And then I went, took myself to brigade headquarters, but I saw Brigadier Whitworth, Brigadier Ricks Whitworth, who was the then commander of the Berlin Brigade, to explain myself why we were 14 hours delayed into Spandau? And I said, I'm very sorry, sir, if what I have done is wrong, and I've made a mistake. And if so, I take the consequences. He looked at me and said, no, you've done exactly the right thing. We will look after you. We will take you around, show you a bit about what's going on. And then you will be on your way back down to the West in 48 hours time. And that's exactly what happened. I breathed that huge sigh of relief. And then actually began the most fascinating time when apart from anything

else, maybe the most interesting part of this was the Reichstag building, the German parliament building, which we were taken to, which completely burnt out right up to the roof, absolutely empty in terms of floors. There was nothing like that left. Long steel ladder in the southeast corner, which together with my soldiers, we climbed up. A whole lot of Russian graffiti all the way up the burnt out interior. At the top, there was an observation post established by the Berlin garrison, looking down onto the horseshoe of the beginning of the war, just below the Brandenburg Gate.

And it's a pretty extraordinary thing to remember that now and think that that was the first sight I ever had of that abomination, frankly, which was the war. A whole lot of Grenztruppen and indeed People's Army troops below, a lot of work going on. And there we were looking down at it. And, you know, when you think that all those years later, I was there when it all came apart. I mean, that is the most extraordinary coincidence, isn't it? Well, that's why we want to talk to you.

It's so fascinating. All those years later, when you went that time in 1989, was there a different sense in the city when you arrived that time? There was, of course, more than underlying tension. I mean, there are just things like the fact that there were something like 50,000 Soviet troops in the immediate proximity surrounding Berlin and another 12,500 troops of the NVA, the National Volksarmee of the East German Army, groups of the NVA, the National Volksarmee, the East German Army, and night and day on the Derbeitz ranges, they were firing artillery and tank weapons and so on. So there was always this kind of rumbling going on.

And there was always, I think, even 89, when things were a great deal easier, of course, and I think we all thought we reached a sort of situation of equilibrium. I think we all thought we'd reached a sort of situation of equilibrium. Actually, it was still a place where there was a kind of strange feeling of live now, but tomorrow, none of us know what the morning may bring. And it really was like that. I mean, it wasn't like it was when I was a youngster there in 61, but it was still a very edgy sort of place.

Sounds quite fun. Oh, it was fun. When did you realise, talk me through the moment the walls started coming down, what was your first inkling that something really was changing? Well, obviously, we had been watching with great care the changing situation. Once in May 89, Hungary opened her borders with the Czech Republic, and therefore there began to be a pretty large exercise of the GDR around freedom. A lot of those people came back round, actually, and eventually found their way back into West Berlin. But we'd been watching the situations, it changed there, but the real change came when Gorbachev came to the 40th anniversary celebrations

of the GDR, a huge parade at that time. I'm just trying to remember the exact date of that. 7th of October, I think. Yeah, that's right, in 89. And I'm afraid the years are catching up with me a little bit. My memory in terms of dates, not as good as it was. But when he said that thing, the Hanukkah, those who do not learn the lessons of history will be punished by life, or words to that effect. And we realized then that what was going to happen was that the Soviets would, and indeed they did, pull the rug out from under the Hanukkah regime. And that was when things really began to change, and you began to see this movement for freedom, indeed a revolution really, which started in the great industrial cities of the southern part of the GDR, particularly in Dresden and Leipzig. And then the potential for violence,

and certainly with the unrest, ran right the way up, right the way up to Rostock on the Baltic, washing past the eastern boundaries of East Berlin. And when that started to happen, I think we were very concerned that it might easily have turned to violence. And as we both know, the Schiessbefehl, the order to shoot, was actually really just waiting to be given. And by the grace of God, that didn't happen. have happened if we in the Western garrisons in West Berlin had been put to a situation where we would have had to try to protect people, perhaps fleeing across the wall, perhaps being shot at, all that sort of stuff. Well, we were going to try and protect them. We were going to use armored vehicles, but you can see how difficult that would have been. So it definitely was a time

of great tension and great uncertainty. But what happened was, again, absolutely extraordinary. We were, to be honest with you, taken by surprise. I was there on the night that the wall opened. I was opening a radio station, 100,6, which says the sort of ridiculous thing that the British Commandant was asked to do when I was. A man called Ulrich Chamoni. And I was in there opening up this radio station when I saw my driver, Corporal Burnell, who was a very good and steady man,

literally running across the floor. And he came to halt beside me and whispered in my ear, Sir, come to the car. Something very important is happening. So I bade farewell to my host, Chamoni, went to the car, and there was my minister, my deputy, Minister Michael Burton, brilliant man, my foreign office minister. Unusually for a soldier, I had 30 diplomats under my command as well as the garrison, British garrison. And he said, Robert, Robert, they're coming across. I said, steady on, Michael. Who's coming across? And he said, I think the wall is breaking open.

who's coming across? And he said, I think the wall is breaking open. So I said, right, well, that's put into effect the plans that we have been meeting about and dealing with for the previous couple of months. And every day, our contingency plans were being updated. Every day, I was meeting with my two fellow commandants, General François Kahn of France and Ray Haddock of the United States. Every day we were spending time together on these plans. Put those plans into effect and I will be with you as quickly as I can. And that was the beginning of it. And by midnight that night, there were tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of East Berliners

who crossed through the crossing point, the three crossing points into West Berlin and were crowding particularly in the area of the Brandenburg Gate, but they were there in huge numbers. And they were actually, I think, very bemused. I think a lot of people were bemused and a lot of people were very confused about what on earth was going on. But they were, on the whole, very happy. But there was again, the potential, of course, for violence around that great Soviet war memorial at the Brandenburg Gate. Did you have time to feel happy and feel like you were witnessing history and perhaps the lifting of the great threat that you and your generation and your children lived under? Or were you just worried about the day job? I think you're right. I think it was the latter because obviously it took a little bit of time for it to really sink in. And there was such a high possibility of the whole thing getting out of hand and the whole thing turning to violence,

that actually, I think I was too busy. We all were very busy. And we were very concerned that it might really have gone very wrong. And indeed, you know, when I think about it now, actually, one of the amazing things to me is how easily it could have gone wrong. But it didn't. So to answer your question is not then. No, I was tied up in the whole business. But later on, yes, of course. I mean, it certainly seemed to me that this was a great victory, hard-won victory, because, you know, for four and a half decades, we've been there in West Berlin holding the key to the whole business of resolving the problem between East and West. So I think that came later, but it did come. You're

absolutely right to ask that question. It did come, but later. So tell me about what happened by the Soviet War Memorial and the Brandenburg Gate? Well, that's a great memorial that the Soviets have built using marble and brickwork and stuff from the Reich Chancellery to build their memorial to their huge number of deaths and casualties in what they call the Great Patriotic War. This is a magnificent memorial, flanked by a couple of T-35 tanks that had taken part, they said, in the original subjugation of Berlin, the last battle for Berlin. It had a garrison of 30 Soviet soldiers under the command of a senior lieutenant, that's the equivalent of a captain of the British army. And it was obvious to me that with these literally tens of thousands of East Berliners, many of them had a deep hatred of the Soviets,

milling around by that memorial, the Soviets being notoriously trigger happy that there might have been some kind of problem there, serious problem, possibly we're shooting and you know what would have happened then. So I had jurisdiction over the West Berlin police in the British sector. The police president, Herr Georg Skatz, was a man I knew well and he was actually quite a friend of mine. And I've gone on to him and said, now, I want you to put protection with your riot police, at least a couple of platoons of your riot police, bright shafts, polizei around that memorial and make sure under no circumstances whatsoever is it to be interfered with.

And he said, jawohl, and got on with it. And I went in the early hours of the morning to the guard post there, and the sentry that was on duty had a photograph of me in the back of his sentry post and could see that, very unusual, in fact, unique for a British general, any general ready to go near a place like that. He started cranking the handle on his telephone, and very quickly, his officer came running, luckily, with a German-speaking Dolmetscher, because I can speak reasonably fluent German, but I can't speak Russian. And I said, may I come in? I want to try and tell you in so far as I can what's happening. And you could see then the

relief coming into, he was a very fine young man actually, see the relief coming into his face and he, please come in general. And you could see that these people were all on alert. They were all out with their weapons at the high port, and they were all ready for a problem. And I said, look, you are not to worry. We have arranged for protection for you. And this memorial for which you're responsible will not, under any circumstances, be interfered with. And I said, may I speak to your men? Yes, General, he said.

And we marched together. He said, he went on ahead. I've been back to the guardroom since actually a very strange feeling of deja vu. And I got in there. He had arranged his men in three sides of a square. There was a chair for me. He stood on my right and the Dolmetscher, the translator, stood on my left. And for 20 minutes, we spoke about the things that are of concern to soldiers, the business of living in a foreign land, training in a foreign country, what's the Russians like, and all the rest of it. And then I said, I must go. And he said, will you give me a moment, General? And when I went out, they were all lined up,

doing that lovely thing that the Russians do, where they salute you like this with their arm up, and they look at you. And then he marched with me to the gate again, the way the Russians do with their arms right up like that. We saluted one another, shook each other by the hand. And I said, do not worry, all will be well. It's an amazing thing, this, because I'd been in my car on my way back to my headquarters down the Hairstrasse, probably for about 10, 15 minutes, going back to the Olympic Stadium. Hairstrasse, probably for about 10-15 minutes, going back to the Olympic Stadium. And my radio went off. And my chief of our mission to the Soviets, Brigadier-in-Frage, said, may I see you urgently, General? Something very remarkable has happened. I said, well, you can say that again. There's a lot that's remarkable going on around here.

He was waiting for me on the steps of the headquarters, and I got there. He said, you're not going to believe this, but using a channel of communication that's been closed since the blockade has come this message for you by name, which in itself is unique. And it has come from General of the Army of the Group of Soviet Forces, Germany, 350,000 men, has come this message for you, General Boris Snetkov. Thank you for what you have done. It will not be forgotten. And sure enough, all the problems I've been having with the Soviets,

I ordered our engineers to put ropes and ladders into the bank of the spray beside the Reichstag building where some people had tried to escape earlier on. Some make it easier for them. And the Russians, acting on behalf of Honoka, had sent for my political advisor, who had served in easier for them. And the Russians, acting on behalf of Honoka, had sent for my political advisor, who had served in Moscow, so he knew the form, three times saying, tell your commandant to get those ropes and ladders removed, otherwise the consequences for him will be serious. What are we going to do, General,

said Donald Armand. We're not going to do anything. We're going to leave them there. And they were still there. And all that problem just evaporated completely. And the medal came through the posts and books and a Russian general's fur hat and a great thing and some vodka too, which I haven't still got. I've still got the books and the hat, but nothing else. So that was a very remarkable thing. And I think what it shows you is the way in which really one small action can really make a difference. Because if they had been shooting by that memorial, I know you can see and I can see that that might really have ended in the most terrible disaster. In fact, it didn't. It was a good fortune, really. Let's just fast forward through to the end of the story of a divided Berlin, really. You were present at another piece of history as Germany was reunified.

Yes, that's extraordinary. In fact, it so happened, the chairmanship of the Allied Kommandantor, whereby since the end of the war, the governance of West Berlin, the Soviets withdrew in 1948 at the time of the blockade. But we three Western allies, the French, Americans, and British, we had continued to run the Allied Kommandantur. And all the legislative and executive decisions on the governance of Berlin, they were made, of course, by the democratic parliament in Berlin, but nothing, no laws could be signed off without them being signed by we three

commandants. And that ultimate legislative and executive authority was vested in we three generals. It so happened that I was the chairman commandant in October 1990, when the whole thing came to an end. So it fell to me to make the farewell speech in the Berlin parliament from the Western allies to the Berlin authorities authorities and indeed the federal German authorities. And in my speech, I used some words which was given in German, which were taken from a speech by Churchill, the post-war speech in which he said, the division of Germany is a tragedy which cannot endure. But I was able to say, the tragedyiditragudia sits for by, the tragedy is now over. And as I said that, I looked up and there, 15, 20 feet in front of me in the front row in the parliament, was sitting Willy Brandt, who had been the great governing mayor at the time of the putting up of the wall in 1961.

And the tears were pouring down his face. And, you know, I will never forget. That was an absolutely indelible moment. I've never forgotten it. And anyway, again, because by great good fortune, I was invited to go and stand on the desk in front of the Reichstag of German Parliament building at the moment of German unity, 2nd, 3rd of October 1990, when a huge flag, it would have been 20 feet by 20 feet, German flag was hauled to the top of a 100 foot high flagpole. And that German flag had never been allowed to be flown in West Berlin in the whole, or indeed in Berlin in the whole of the post-war era. This

was the moment of German unity. And very amazingly, my beloved wife Susie and I were standing on the desk. We were the only non-Germans there, besides President Weizsäcker. It sounds as if I'm dropping names. I'm not. This is what happened. And Chancellor Kohl and Genscher, who was the foreign minister, and the governing mayor, who was a very good friend of ours, actually, Walter Mompa. And in the low ground in front of that building, there were over a million Germans. And as that flag went up, with one accord, they began to sing, Deutschland, Deutschland über alles. And that is a serious moment of history.

And that is a moment I will never forget. And the hairs went up on the back of my head. I don't mean that in a negative sense, but it was such an extraordinary moment of history, and that is a moment I will never forget, and the hairs went up on the back of my head. I don't mean that in a negative sense, but it was such an extraordinary moment of history, that. And then, as we were walking back through that building, which I'd first visited as a young lieutenant all those years before, when it was in ruins, beautifully restored, magnificently, Norman Foster restored, I find myself walking beside Chancellor Cole, a great big tall man, and for want of being polite, I said to him, Chancellor, may I congratulate you on this great moment for the German people, because that's exactly what it was. You know, there I was. I was Her Majesty's representative.

Of course I was. He looked down at me, and I thought, well, I've said something I shouldn't have said, and a great smile crossed his face, And he said, General, there is no way we could have done this without you allies. Now, you just imagine what that meant to me, who'd been there all that time before, not a diplomat, although I suppose I'd had to excise some diplomacy. Thank heavens, not a politician. But I was a soldier. And what an absolutely amazing moment that was. And what kind of fate is it that brings the wheel around like that, having seen it at the beginning and then be there at the very end?

And it's extraordinary, really. So, you know, what a privilege, really. Never forget it. You've been there then at these hinge points of history. On the front line, you know, scuffle with East Germans and standing next to German presidents. And what's your sense of how is history? Do you think we individuals, do we change things or are we swept along on great currents of history?

Or do you think there were moments in your career where you or the Soviet officer or a German policeman, they really, really could have swung the course of history in quite a radically different direction. Yes, there were many moments in that long history from 1945 onwards until the opening of the wall and the collapse of communism when, as we were saying earlier, I think things could have gone terribly wrong. And I think very often in life, it is really the small things and the action of people on the ground that determines however clever the diplomacy is going on in the background.

It's those people who actually have to make it work and who actually in those long decades stood by Berlin. So the divisional problem as between East and West, was ultimately the key to that, actually. I always thought it started with Lech Waleska in the No. 2 Gdansk shipyard, a place I visited, incidentally. But really, actually, I think it was Gorbachev and then the collapse of communism. But it was the fact that we had stood behind and in support of and in protection of Berlin that really resolved this terrible division between East and West, which I think we all thought at the time and which we know really brought freedom to countless millions of people in the East. about it really. It was the steadfast service of actually British servicemen and women wonderfully supported, particularly in Berlin, by their diplomats. Really good, strong, sensible, tough diplomats. That was what resolved the problem. And in the end, that is people, isn't it? So we can all make a difference. Thank you very much, Sir Robert, for coming on this podcast. Tell us all about it. That was fascinating.

So pleasure. Thank you very much. You're listening to Downstairs History. I'm talking about the Berlin Wall. Going up, coming down, or coming up. There are stories to tell, myths to explore, legends that shaped the medieval world to captivate the imagination. I'm Matt Lewis, and with my co-host, Dr Kat Jarman, I've gone medieval. We're waiting here for you to join us. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and let everyone know that you've gone medieval with History Hits. land a viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series

Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. There are new episodes every week. Well, that was fascinating. Good to hear from Sir Robert Corbett, a remarkable story about his interaction with the Soviets that night. Next up, let's hear from Margaret Hussaini, who grew up in the city, witnessing everything in the 1950s and 60s.

Margaret, what are your first memories of a divided Berlin? Well, I have to go back. I'm born in Berlin, or rather outside of Berlin, because by the time in 1944, when I was born, all the pregnant women were sent out of the town because of the bombing, which annoyed me immensely later when I was grown up. Because on my birth certificate, it says born in Buchu, which nobody knows. And nevertheless, my father was originally French. He came from Alsace. And Alsace, as you know, has always moved between the two countries. During the war, he joined the army, well, he was forced to join the German army. But quietly, he joined the resistance in France. I explain that to you because when we moved out of Berlin, my father decided in 1947, during the blockade,

that Berlin is not a safe place anymore. We have to move. And we moved to Mulhouse in France. We had a terrible time there because Germans weren't awfully popular after the war. My mother had a nervous breakdown. She couldn't cope with it. We were spit at, we were stoned.

And for a small child, it was confusing. I didn't understand why this happened to us. In 1953, we moved back to Berlin. 1953 was the time when the riots were in East Berlin. And the workers went out to strike, starting in East Berlin, but it went all over East Germany. My first impression moving back to Berlin, I was, or it was a hate or something like that, I was stunned by the utter, utter devastation. You could walk along streets with just rubble, heaps of rubble, with people living in basements, and you could see little windows sticking out of the rubble, which was the basement windows.

And mother had explained to us beforehand, to my sisters and to me, that Berlin is like a cake. It is divided in four large slices. When my parents married in 1935, my father decided to buy a house, which turned out to be the American sector, luckily for us, because all my mother's family, they all were Berliners for generations. We lived there. They all lived in the very centre near Alexander Square. And of course, so all my mother's family, all my family, they were all in East Berlin. We were the only ones who were in West Berlin because of my father's buying this house. It was difficult for a small child to understand why there was this sharp division between East and West. And it was so very obvious there weren't any division lines, but there were big posters saying, for example, you are leaving now the American sector. And the vision of two parts were obvious.

I mean, it was miserable and grey in the whole of Berlin, but much, much more so in East Berlin. Because in the West, we had a lot of help from the Americans. But also, as I grew older, realizing that you were in a kind of war zone, a permanent one. You were bombarded with the Western propaganda through the American radio station, and RIAS was the West Berlin one, which was heavily influenced by the Americans. And there you were bombarded nonstop by political propaganda, how evil the East is and how wonderful the West. But on the other side, you had the same from the East. We lived in the southwest of West Berlin, and the border was probably about 15 kilometers away, but we could hear they had the fighter planes crossing the borders. And with huge loudspeakers and enormous noise, they thrown their propaganda across the western side.

thrown their propaganda across the western side. When we visited my mother's family, which we always did because it was possible with the S-B of well what I imagined as a child a kind of prison you were reminded not to ask awkward questions by the adults because it might have been somebody who was an informer and reported the adults. So it was oppressive in a way. I got fairly used to it living in this island, I was made aware how I have adjusted when I took my husband in 74 the first time to Berlin and moving at the time from West Berlin to East Berlin, you needed a visa. As West Berliner, you had centres in West Berlin where you could apply for a daily visa that started seven o'clock and finished midnight. When you went across, there was tension at the border. You were checked. You were asked questions. You had to show what you brought into the country. You were forced to change a certain amount of money. Because I've lived with it all my young life, I didn't notice it anymore. Moving from west to east to the border points, we always changed it at Friedrichstrasse, the very center of Berlin, East Berlin.

The S-Bahn stopped in Friedrichstrasse and you had to go upstairs to go to the Western Park, the Zoo in West Berlin. But going upstairs, you were in this huge hall and all around the hall, I mean, it was enormous. There were kind of balconies around and on top were all these soldiers with machine guns pointing down at the people on the platforms. And my husband said, don't you find that unnerving? I said, look, I'm so used to. I'm not thinking about it anymore. He found it terrible.

How could you live in that way? But we were used to it. In any ways, it always was a reminder that you are an island, that you were surrounded by danger, I would say. Did your family in the East come to resent you? You go on these trips across and you would start saying things about your life. Did it start to divide families from two families? Before the physical wall went up, was there a division within families

that started to become apparent? No, not in my family. I mean, they might have well been in families where the Eastern inhabitants were communists. We weren't. My father was rather a socialist. He did not agree with the communist regime. My mother had one cousin who came occasionally to visit us, even later when she could. My father didn't want anything to do with that family. But generally, no. You were looked upon as helping because we brought oranges we brought the things which they couldn't get in the east so it made us in some ways even closer you didn't take anything for granted anymore and what do you remember about the wall do you remember the atmosphere around the summer of 1961 when the wall was about to go up?

Yes, very much so. It happened on a Sunday morning. My sister went to see an aunt who lived just outside of East Berlin, where she actually wouldn't have been allowed, but she did go for the weekend, staying with his aunt. They lived at the outskirts of East Berlin. And Gabi told me later, we heard this terrible rambling, and she got out of bed and looked out at night and she saw this endless line of Russian tanks moving into the eastern part of East Berlin. The next morning, there was total chaos. My mother realized that she'd lost one of her children who were in the east. It was closed and they were building already the flimsy first attempt of proper wall. She went with my elder sister to Friedrichstrasse and had a terrible time to get my sister out. My aunt brought Gabi to Friedrichstrasse as well,

and it took hours until my mother got her back. We were terrified, absolutely terrified. That was quite different from my family in East Berlin. They were angry. They weren't terrified. They were very, very angry. And do you remember, did you watch the wall being built? Yes, I did.

We all did. My family, they went to Bernauer Straße. You saw it there. You saw its building. And on one side, on the eastern side, was the eastern police. On the western side was the West Berlin police and further back American soldiers. And the West Berliners were very angry that the American soldiers were totally passive. They didn't do anything. They were just watching. And that was also later reflected in, at the time, Willy Brandt was the mayor of West Berlin. It was voiced by the whole population of West Berlin. Why don't the Americans help us? They can see that we are in dire need. And I have to say,

growing up in West Berlin, you were always aware if there was something in the world the fragile balance of East-West out of place, like the Cuba crisis or the Hungarian crisis, it all reflected in the tension of Berlin. We always thought, oh god, now they will overrun us, they will come and take West Berlin into the fold of the whole of East Germany. It was, and I really do believe, even now, not the younger generation, but my generation, who lived through it, we were damaged forever. It has left big scars, and they don't go away. Tell me about when you saw the young man trying to cross the wall. I was with friends who lived in a high-rising block of flats near Bernauer Straße.

And from the flats, we all could overlook the wall and East Berlin. And at the time, because there was a lot of tension all the time, even enjoying ourselves at the party in this flat, we always, from time to time, looked out and we saw suddenly there was a kerfuffle, something happening, and I stood at the window. I didn't go back into the flat anymore. I stood at the window and saw the two young men trying to get over the wall and the fence. One of them managed, but the other one got shot and fell back onto the eastern side. And he was lying there in a kind of S-shaped. And he just cried. and he shouted for help. Every time when I think about it,

I get really, really upset because you felt totally impotent. There was somebody who was in dire, dire need of help. East and West kept very, very quiet. Nobody moved, not the East German police nor the West German police. They were quiet, waiting. And his cries for help went over time lower and lower until he finally stopped. And I thought, he must have died now. And then the East German police came and collected the body and carried him away.

It was a terrible experience. Really, really terrible for me. I mean, he just wanted his freedom. He wanted to be able to move from one side to the other. He paid with his life for it. Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence.

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No, that is the other strange thing. We didn't talk to each other. I never said to my parents when I came home. I've never spoken to anyone about it. Except many, many years later when I was in London I worked for the German embassy and at one time I had lunch with a British journalist from the ITV and that was the first time I actually told somebody that I have seen that and I find it really really worrying upsetting I felt it was my fault that I passively just watched and didn't do anything and I think it is a way of maybe dealing with

something really bad which happened to you, you try to forget it, to push it in your subconscious. As I'm listening to you, I'm thinking of your generation, your parents' generation. The people of Berlin had been bombed and they'd been assaulted and they'd been divided because of these great power rivalries. At least a couple of generations, the powerlessness is what feels so extraordinary, both your parents' generation and yours. Well, that is exactly it.

But in a way, it has made me personally, politically, very, very much aware. I'm mistrusting. Whatever news, I will analyse it. I will think, what good can it be for this side of the other side? But my younger sister is opposite me. She just is totally unpolitical. She just gets angry and that's it. But I think, you you know just see being angry

doesn't help anything my father was so disappointed by all the happenings in the 20th century when he died in 74 he never ever voted again and And he always told us, your voice is important, do it. But he didn't. He was just so disappointed. In his youth, he was a communist. Later, he changed to socialism. But I think you feel you are a kind of pawn. The surrounding is playing with you and there is not much you can do. But this didn't have the effect on me. I felt, no, you can do something. You have to persevere and you have to be aware. Were you aware of John Kennedy's visit to Berlin, the famous visit by JFK in 1963?

That's it, yes. By that time, I was running a bookshop in Berlin in the Rheinstraße. Rheinstraße is a big, long shopping street starting from Zehlendorf, the southwest of Berlin, and going all the way through the town, West Berlin, to the Schöneberger Rathaus, that was the West Berlin town hall. And that day, all the shops closed. Everybody went to, in front of the town hall was a huge square. And we all, all of us went to that square to listen to Kennedy. We arrived very early. We were

quite close to the stand where Kennedy could climb up and speak to. But as time got closer to him arriving, more and more people came. There were hundreds, thousands of people. When Kennedy arrived and stepped up and started talking, there was a kind of thrill went through all these thousands of people. They moved forward to thank him for being there. I was carried horizontally and got in such a fright, was fighting to come down to reach the ground again. come down to reach the ground again. I fought my way out of it. And I was so scared and frightened that I actually missed the talk. I heard it later on radio. But at the time, I was just so shocked that even now I cannot go to any kind of demonstrations with all these people. That frightens me to death. But the people of West Berlin were so grateful that he came

and that he assured them that there will be help. There will not be just simply gone over, overrun by the Russians. That reminds me, you know, when we moved back to Berlin, my father told me the Russians are the bears and they are coming from east to west. So to me, when I saw my first Russians in East Berlin, I was so surprised they weren't bears. They were just normal men in soldier uniforms.

It's just such an unnatural life that it shapes you. It makes you what you are. Now, walking through the united Berlin, I am so happy that things are growing together again. But even now, my generation, there is a difference thing that the capital was moved from Bonn to Berlin, because a lot of people from Bonn and the western part of Germany moved into West Berlin. So this atmosphere, like I in my young days, in my student days, we always felt superior to the rest of West Germany because we felt we had a particular position to represent not the rich West Germans from Stuttgart who are clean-tidy and

not very revolutionary minded but that influence was in some ways quite positive at unification because it brought a new sense of being but even now when I talk to my cousin who is my age in East Berlin, there is a difference because they lived for 40 years under a completely different sort of surrounding and different influence. You just try in some ways not to stick into this Aussie-Wessie attitude, which was so prominent after the fall of the wall. Well, I'm glad it's happy to walk through Berlin today for you. That's a lovely thought. It's a lovely place to end on. So Margit Hosseini, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Thank you. I feel the hand of history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs,

this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thank you for making it the end of this episode of Dan Snow's History. I really appreciate listening to this podcast. I love doing these podcasts. It's a highlight of my career. It's the best thing I've ever done. And your support, your listening is obviously crucial for that project. If you did feel like doing me a favor,

if you go to wherever you get your podcasts and give it a review, give it a rating, obviously a good one, ideally, then that would be fantastic and feel free to share it. We obviously depend on listeners, depend on more and more people finding out about it, depend on good reviews to keep the listeners coming in. Really appreciate it. Thank you. you