Opinions on the Berlin Wall?

My opinion is i don't agree with the wall or the shootings of the people who tried to cross.

Yes i agree with the building of the wall but not the shooting of people who tried to cross over to the west.


I can't justify these shootings to myself.

I would amend the law. Pay back your welfare checks and compensate the state for your education and your child's university education, then you can cross the wall!!@@!!

"Es gibt nichts wiederzuvereinigen" / "There is nothing to (re)unite." - Egon Krenz, last Chairman of the State Council of the German Democratic Republic

Yes i agree with the building of the wall and the shooting of people who tried to cross over to the west.

What was it, 119 deaths total from the Berlin Wall? How many of them were criminals? How many were traitors? I don't really care and it's not like it matters, they're dead and the Wall is gone. But considering that at least a few hundred people have died on the US-Mexico border over just the last couple years effectively overshadows any negativity brought on by the Wall.

Voted in favor of the wall and the shootings in the unique situation that the GDR found itself in.

Dagoth Ur wrote:

What was it, 119 deaths total from the Berlin Wall? How many of them were criminals? How many were traitors? I don't really care and it's not like it matters, they're dead and the Wall is gone. But considering that at least a few hundred people have died on the US-Mexico border over just the last couple years effectively overshadows any negativity brought on by the Wall.

Voted in favor of the wall and the shootings in the unique situation that the GDR found itself in.

Deaths crossing the US-Mexican border annual is about twice the number shot crossing the berlin wall in the entirety of it's existence.

Quote:

But considering that at least a few hundred people have died on the US-Mexico border over just the last couple years effectively overshadows any negativity brought on by the Wall.

What does the US border-wall have to do with the E.German one?
Besides, these people were shot while trying to get in, while in Berlin it was the opposite.

Loz wrote:

What does the US border-wall have to do with the E.German one?
Besides, these people were shot while trying to get in, while in Berlin it was the opposite.

Actually considering the amount of people that want to build a wall there, it's quite relevant.

I guess you can raise the question in response to "if socialism was so great, why did they have to build a wall?" as "if capitalism is so great, why do hundreds die every year fleeing from it in Mexico?"

Yes but Mexican border guards don't shoot Mexicans trying to get to America.

Loz wrote:

Yes but Mexican border guards don't shoot Mexicans trying to get to America.

THey don't, but the people die nevertheless. Whether they are dying from third and exposure in the Arizona desert or shot by guards doesn't change that they are dying ultimately, due to economic and social conditions.

The second option. It's not like people living in the Warsaw Pact were forced to stay in the same place forever, plus they could travel across the whole bloc with relatively little hindrance.
The wall was of economic importance, stopping a lack of skilled workers, professionals etc. from depriving the rest of society, allowing it to grow quite healthily. It probably also played quite an important role in hindering the FRG from carrying out their bizarre Revanchist aims, like wanting to have half of Poland back.

Loz, there is as much state criminality in allowing somebody to die through sheer negligence as there is with the state appointing someone with permission to shoot to kill, in fact, both are highly symbolic acts. Nevertheless, I can only but support GDR policy re: the wall.

Yes i agree with the building of the wall but not the shooting of people who tried to cross over to the west. For me the wall was more symbolic than everything else. I learned that the majority of the people who crossed the wall did it for political reasons rather than economic ones, once again showing that the socialist economic system was far from being the main problem.

I voted for the wall and for the shootings. But I don't think the shootings were really a good thing. I mean, the minefields were maybe sufficient. If people managed to get through, then they deserved to live.

I'm for the wall but against shooting those who try to cross. Even if there was no one attempting to escape to West Berlin, the wall would serve as a measure of security for any western agents or loonies trying to get into the East.

What is the use of the wall if you are not going to shoot those who cross it. C'mon were not hypocrites here. Everyone of us communists happen to carry that homicidal streak in us. What for did Canadian law state that "Provocation is a valid defence for homicide" if we don't have. By the way, I do not even have the gall to kill an ant.

It was not intended to troll. For example somebody provokes you in the bus, how would you react if you were terribly humiliated and embarrassed. You feel like beating the pulp out of him, don't you? I think first before I accused you as agent provocateur..Plenty in other websites and forums like these..

soviet78 wrote:

[
With regard to the subject, considering how many East Germans immigrated to the West through other illegal, or even legal methods, the choice to cross the border at the Wall seems like a provocative, symbolic, perhaps even suicidal decision. I don't want to write off an entire group of people who literally risked their lives for a different way of life, but surely some of them had the above mentioned thoughts in their heads for choosing the most heavily fortified and patrolled location to cross.

That's very true: The traditional, well-known method of defection was to take a vacation to either Hungary or Yugoslavia and then travel towards West Germany. It was sometimes hard to visit Yugoslavia from the DDR, but that's a non-issue: You could travel to another Eastern Bloc country and then to Yugoslavia. Travel between Eastern Bloc countries wasn't very difficult: Eastern bloc tourists didn't always travel to adjacent countries, so crossing from one country you're visiting to visit another wouldn't raise eyebrows.

There were rural places in the border that were way less heavily patrolled (and probably easier to climb). Crossing through the goddamn Berlin Wall is an act of deliberate defiance... or desperation.

As for the Wall, it sadly needed to be built: Uncontrolled crossings between East Berlin and West Berlin would've allowed all sorts of black market profiteering and Western sabotage/espionage. There probably should have been way fewer restrictions on who could cross and when (after all, being separated from loved ones clearly demoralized some people), but keeping track was essential for national security.