Conrad Schumann fleeing East Berlin
Who built the Berlin Wall and why? According to a recent piece by Keith Veronese at io9:
The Berlin Wall spanned 155 kilometers, combining concrete walls and razor wire topped fences to create the border. Numerous checkpoints and over 300 watchtowers stretched along the wall. The German Democratic Republic constructed the wall to keep anti-socialist individuals present in West Germany out of East Germany.
Au contraire. In contrast to the propaganda that Keith apparently fell for (back in the day, the GDR used very similar words that Keith used), the GDR actually built the wall to stymie a brain drain, the exodus of East Germans fleeing to the West.
Just how big was this exodus? Between the partitioning and gerrymandering of Germany following WWII with the Potsdam Declaration in 1945 and 1961 (when the wall was built), there were roughly 3.5 million East Germans who fled to the West.
So yea, Keith’s claim is quite a head scratcher — who are these “anti-socialistic individuals” trying to get into the East? David Hasselhoff? Heidi Klum? Thomas Mann?
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