Opinions on the Berlin Wall?

I agree with the wall and the shootings. The people that left the GDR were taking with them state-sponsored education and benefits. They were the definition of free-loaders. It's the equivalence of the US killing Awlaki because he used state interests for the destruction of the state. The GDR was not so terrible that people were running for the border in mass numbers, so it seems a bit silly to want to risk being shot to make a lot of money.

I think the biggest harm from the wall was less people genuinely wanting to leave, and more the idea that people couldn't leave. "oh yeah? Says who?" basically.

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The people that left the GDR were taking with them state-sponsored education and benefits

The state paid for my education and a lot of other things, does that mean I shouldn't have the right to leave the UK?

You shouldn't expect the UK not to call a bounty on your head if you use your education to move to Yemen or the DPRK and openly oppose them through military means, especially if you do it illegally.

It's not an appropriate comparison: If you're a rebel/insurgent militarily opposing their government they'd put a bounty, but they probably wouldn't put a bounty over people who just leave.

They probably wouldn't even call a bounty on your head if you were to defect to, say, Cuba or North Korea... Unless you'd just stolen lots of classified information or done anything significant to piss'em off. Most countries tolerate economic emigration and civilian defections. Exit visas are uncommon. Shooting civilians that attempt to emigrate is a rarity.

Abandoning socialism is adopting a bourgeoisie mentality and becoming an advocate for the bourgeoisie. They are class enemies, and should be treated as such. Brain drain is a problem in socialist countries that should be prevented to preserve the intellectual interests of socialism.

I agree with the building of the wall, but not with shooting people who cross.

I voted for the Wall and for the shooting of those illegally trying to cross it in either direction.

The DDR did have an emigration policy in place, it was possible to leave, just not easy. The Federal Republic of Germany did pay compensation to the DDR for the emigration of literally thousands of DDR citizens and rightly so. You were guaranteed an education, a home, a job, medical care, the basics of life and much more. You were not going to be living in the streets in the DDR. All of those things cost money. From birth to your late teens / early twenties, you were essentially a "taker" and contributed practically nothing to society, those people along with the highly educated folks with advanced degrees in engineering, medicine, etc, who paid NOTHING for those educations, were the ones attempting to "escape" and take with them all that they had been given. That is theft, pure and simple.

No such guarantees were made in the West and till today, the US is fighting tooth and toenail over health care reform, one of the most basic rights a human being can have and truly needs.

For those who are interested, there is a very interesting website to explore, it has multiple pictures of the Wall and the surrounding barriers that encircled the Independent Political Unit of West Berlin.

http://berlin-wall-map.com/map#center=52.52291728,13.37898195&zoom=15&infobox=item:1025720235&sidebar=legend&type=satellite

Fascinating to explore, to access the pics, click on focus points and then view details in one of the sub categories that interest you, you will see a small window with a pic in the lower right hand section of the screen, click on it and it brings up a large view of the pic and you can scroll through them.

I chose the second option. While I can agree with points made about brain drain and proximity to culturally-similar West Germany, the shooting of people crossing the border only handed the West yet another weapon in their propaganda arsenal. Making emigration bureaucratically cumbersome, and then arresting escapees on the charge of "not following proper emigration procedures" would have been a more diplomatic approach.

And the Wall was not built for that purpose alone. It was built as a response to a concerted sabotage/terrorism campaign that the West waged on East Germany, manipulating the formerly porous borders. When defending the Wall, we should be focusing on that aspect of the protection that the Wall afforded East Germany.

I agree with the wall and the shootings.