← Chris Distefano Presents: Chrissy Chaos
Chris Distefano Presents: Chrissy Chaos
The Depressing Truth about THE BERLIN WALL- Chrissy Chaos Presents - Christories History Lessons - ep 41
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Christopher DiStefano
Chronic spontaneous urticaria or chronic hives with no known cause. It's so unpredictable. It's like playing pinball. Itchy red bumps start on my arm, then my back, sometimes my legs. Hives come out of nowhere and it comes and goes. But I just found out about a treatment option@treatmyhives.com Take that, chronic hives. Learn more at treatmyhives.com hello and welcome to Christeries. I'm Christopher DiStefano, aka Christerie de Stefano, and this is Christeries. Today we're going to be talking about a symbol of ideological division, suppression of human rights during the Cold War, an Iron curtain that separated Western Europe and democracy from the Eastern bloc and communism. We are talking about the one, the only, Berlin Wall. Heiden Schweiderheide. So let's set the stage. We are in 1945, post World War II. Germany, they have just lost the Nazis. They got their butts handed to them by the good guys, the Allies. We nuked a hundred thousand innocent Japanese. It was bad. The ussr, the UK and the USA destroyed Hitler. Sorry, we're not gonna stand for that. Can't put people in ovens, ad. You're gonna get killed for that and you did. So what happens now? World War II ends. We have the Yalta and Potsdam conferences. The Allies, usa, ussr, Great Britain, France and a couple of others. They divide up Germany. They say East Germany is gonna go to the Soviet Union. Communism. West Germany's gonna go to us, Great Britain and France. So they divide the country. But then Berlin itself is kind of right in the middle of it all. Some other cities in Germany are just solely in West Germany, solely in East Germany. Berlin is right in between both. There is actually a wall that eventually comes down in 1989. And we're gonna get to that. But there are still parts of the wall today that are there that actually divided the city in half. Think about that. Whatever city you're living in, think about it, it being divided in half, just the wall right down the middle of it. One side is communism, one side is democracy. So how did this occupation of Germany work? It wasn't that they owned half of Germany. The Americans owned one half and the Russians own the other. It wasn't like that. It was more they controlled these zones to administer and rebuild the country. And really Nazis don't come back. I mean, still to this day, present day America 2025, we still have a base in Germany. The United States still really doesn't want Germany putting together an army. Okay, so that's why the German people are kind of doing it on their own a little bit. Shout out. White nationalism. It's back. The Western Allies, of course, they want democracy, capitalism. They want to rebuild Germany and Europe in the way that they see it. The Soviets also want to rebuild, but they want to do communism. They want to say, but we like it our way. We don't want all this democracy, freedom crap. We want communism. This is what we like. We want vodka potato. Everyone makes same money except oligarchs. They make all money. That's what is. You like prostitute. We have them in shipping containers. Here's the thing. There wasn't really a long term plan, okay? They weren't like, we're gonna do this forever. I don't even think they really had a timetable. They were like, just not forever. So France, USA and Britain were like, we're gonna kinda help West Germany get off their feet a little bit and then we'll move on. And it's gonna be cute. You're gonna see it's not so cute. The USSR and Russia doesn't really like that they're sharing Berlin with three other countries. You know, they kind of are like, hey, wtf? They felt that Berlin was actually in East Germany, so they should just have all of it. It's kind of like the Statue of Liberty debate that we have today where New Jersey is like, hey, the Statue of Liberty is closer to us. It should be ours. And New York is like, yeah, but nobody cares about you. You're New Jersey. So it's ours. And I agree, who cares about New Jersey? What is this, Colonial America? No, jk. I will be in Red Bank, New Jersey for New Year's Eve, Count Basie Theater, gonna do two shows and then I'm gonna be at the Wellmont Theater and in Montclair, New Jersey sometime in October. We haven't put that one on sale yet. Cause the show at msg, the tickets are a little slow. So here's the thing. I don't usually agree with the Russians, but in this case, if you do look at a map which put up right here, you will see that Berlin is clearly 100% all in East Germany. I mean, it's not even a little bit in West Germany. It is actually in the middle of East Germany. But the Allies tried to get cute and said, yeah, but that's the capital city. So we're also gonna take a little parts of that. So I get the Russians gripe, I really do. So the Soviets actually, they wanna try to get the Allies out From Berlin, they do a blockade. In 1948, the year my father was born. August 1, 1948. Happy birthday, dad. So what the US does, and the other allies is they respond to what's called the Berlin Airlift. Okay, the Berlin Airlift. So what's the Berlin Airlift? All right. So because Berlin was located so deep inside East Germany, all ground routes to West Berlin passed through Soviet controlled territory. And West Berlin was basically an island surrounded by Soviet land with no ways in except by air. So 1948, Soviets blocked all the roads, railways, canals, any way in or out connecting West Berlin to West Germany. They stopped it all. They stopped trucks, they stopped trains. Couldn't bring in food, fuel, essentials. Anything you needed cannot bring it in. We are putting up a blockade. The Russians are doing that. But instead of giving up, what does the US and the Allies say? They say, how about we do a massive airlift and we're just gonna fly supplies into West Berlin around the clock because your wall ain't tall enough to stop our planes, baby. The operation lasted nearly a year and it actually wound up successfully breaking the Soviet blockade. So we work smarter, not harder. That's what my coach said. You gotta work smarter, not harder. He's in prison now. That's a true story. So this was like a clear moment though of what the Cold War was like. Again, Cold War, not a hot war, Cold War. So it's like they're just being more like annoying. Like it's. Nobody is actually physically hurting anyone. It's just mind games. That's what a Cold War is. So it's USSR versus the us, Communism versus democracy. Influence and control over a country all without firing a single shot. So the Berlin Airlift is kind of, it's kind of a little precursor to that. Cause the Cold War keeps going and going, going into the 50s and 60s. But that's an episode for another day. So we got the economic divide, mass migration. People, of course, do not want to be living in East Germany and communist controlled East Germany, they really, really don't. And some people want to actually leave West Germany too, because maybe their families, they want to go back to their. You want to go where your family are, you want to go where your people's is. That's what it is. So West Berlin becomes this booming capitalist showcase, proud beacon of democracy, while East Germany, cause it's communism, remains economically poor. Between 1941 and 1961, 20% of the East German population fled to the West. Everybody, doctors, engineers, people were trying to get out of the east to go West. That's what it was. And this is not obviously a good look for the Soviets because they're trying to instill communism and everyone. They're trying to make communism go all around the world. And the population is like, hell no. We like capitalism. I want to buy some Yeezys. So the USSR is not having it. And Soviet leader at the time, Nikita Khrushchev, he says to East Germany, you know what? Close the borders. Close the borders. He says, close them up. That's what we're going to have to do now. We're going to have to start building a wall. That's right. So for the first 16 years, there was no wall because they were like, this is going to work. But then people will be people. And nobody really likes communism. Even though I'm a proud American and I am all for democracy and capitalism, communism just doesn't work. If you look at any moment in time in history, it just doesn't work. It works for a little bit, but then it just doesn't. August 12th to August 13th, 1961. This is a big, big day. This is a day I want you to remember why in 1961 when they start building this wall, they actually did it in the middle of the night. The East German soldiers, police officers, construction workers, they started putting up the barbed wire and a cinder block wall that was supposed to stretch 100 miles in the middle of the night. They started this. Why? I don't know. I was like, hello, you don't even have Mexicans. You're not gonna build a whole hundred mile wall in one night, folks. Now, over time, this wall evolves. Concrete walls, electrified fences, watchtowers, fortifications. It's just again, it's just Germans trying to just build another concentration camp in the middle of their city. It's what they do. So people can't cross freely anymore. Now border crossings become necessary. Now you have to have checkpoints. You got checkpoint Alpha, checkpoint Bravo, and the one you've probably heard of, Checkpoint Charlie. That's the big one, Checkpoint Charlie. And we're gonna tell you why pretty soon. Now it's like you have like a new nationality now. It's West Berliners. And now, like, if you're from West Berlin, you gotta apply for a visa to go to East Germany, vice versa. You couldn't cross it to the West. It's a mess now. Now you've created a little mess. People now could no longer, after August of 1961, you could no longer just cross freely. Now you had armed guards. You had people patrolling the wall. They were Ordered to shoot anyone trying to cross without permission. You were gonna get shot for that. It's the same way as North Korea and South Korea is today. It's mostly people from North Korea trying to get into South Korea. Nobody from South Korea is trying to get into North Korea, unless you're a YouTuber. So now that's how east and West Berlin was. Nobody from West Berlin is trying to get into East Berlin. It was East Berlin trying to get into West Berlin. That's just the way it was. Again, you have to picture how wild this truly was. Think about it. A street overnight is closing, and now they're instilling strict borders. You can't go to work, you can't see your family without having the right paperwork. I mean, think about it. You might have lived in West Germany, worked in East Germany. Your girlfriend might be living in West Germany. You live in East Germany. It's. Who the hell knows? You just went through a divorce. Your kids are in West Germany. You're in East Germany. There's problems. I mean, think about it. If it was in New York City, imagine there was a wall separating, you know, Manhattan from the Bronx. Do you think people would be trying to get in? Would you try to get into the Bronx or try to get out of the Bronx? I like the Bronx. That's where my family's from. Okay, so we got a couple of famous stories from these walls. We got Hans and his son Peter. They get separated at the Berlin Wall for years. And every night, they would go to the barrier as close, and from across the concrete, they would shout, I love you. Their voices over the bridge. Beautiful Anna and her neighbor Greta. They used to share meals all the time. And then after the wall went up, they had to wave at each other from opposite windows, and they would tap at the concrete, slip notes through the cracks. You know, they held onto their friendship despite the divide, but these people were trying to do it. Maria. There was this girl, Maria, on her sister's birthday, she climbed to the rooftop opposite the wall, and she started singing Happy Birthday and telling her sister how much she loved her when she. While she was trapped in East Berlin. And actually, that moment that became a symbol of hope during the Cold War, that was something that was very famous during the time Maria yelling Happy Birthday to her sister in East Berlin. Okay, so like I said, Checkpoint Charlie is the one you heard of, but we also had Checkpoint Alpha and Bravo. These were the main crossings between East Berlin and West Berlin. And they each had specific roles and rules. And I'm gonna tell you so Checkpoint Alpha, that was located at the start of the main autobahn, AKA highway from West Germany into West Berlin. And that controlled every entry and exit by road. That was Checkpoint Alpha. Checkpoint Bravo was the main crossing point on the outskirts of West Berlin, used for road traffic entering East Berlin. And then Checkpoint Charlie, the famous one that was in the heart of Berlin, right in the middle. And that was primarily for Allied military personnel, diplomats and foreign visitors. And. And they controlled who was going in from east and West. And they enforced the strictest travel restrictions by East Germany. That was Checkpoint Charlie. That was the big one. And you know, listen, imagine every day there was a checkpoint. You get reminded the separation, limited freedom, political conflict. It ain't easy, baby. Tension out the Wall. So you have a man named E. Allen Lightner, and he was the US Chief of Mission in West Virginia, Berlin. He represented basically American interests and maintained access to East Berlin. So he was kind of keeping the communication alive with East Berlin. And In October of 1961, couple of months after the wall was completed, East German authorities, they started acting up. They started saying, you know what, we want to enforce our border controls a little stricter here, okay? You guys think you're so great because you're democracy and capitalism. Well, we have fun stuff too. I mean, look at this pudding. We have fun stuff too. Look, everyone eats gray oatmeal and they like it. So Lightner, here's why he's important. He gets stopped by the East Germans. They wanted to challenge the U.S. presence and control who was coming in and out of East Berlin. So they tested how far the Americans would push back. They just a little test and they used Leitner. And in response, this is why you've heard of Checkpoint Charlie. Because in response, what happens is American tanks roll up, they pull up, as the kids say. They say, yo, you got our boy Lightner. We bout to pull up. So at Checkpoint Charlie In October of 1961, Allied American tanks roll up to Checkpoint Charlie. Soviet tanks roll up. And they're just looking at each other. Tense, silent standoff for hours, just looking at each other, saying, do something, mother. The world holds its breath. This is a big thing. We don't know what can happen. We don't know could World War III be happening right now. Soviets got their tanks out for battle. US got their tanks out for battle. What are we gonna do? And then of course, we get rescued, as always by our gorgeous blue eyed babe hottie with a hole in his body. JFK gets on the phone with Khrushchev and negotiated A peaceful withdrawal of the tanks. Soviet tanks withdrew first following the USA. Do not underestimate JFK's power to just be a smooth, smooth, smooth talker. He probably had sex with your grandma. Just know that. And she liked it. Guys. This Episode's sponsored by BetterHelp. Thanks to the good folks at BetterHelp. I use this service if you want to give therapy a try. Online therapy a try, choose betterhelp. I'm telling you, I like them. I've been using them. What I like most about them is they let you switch a therapist anytime you want, no additional cost. You fill out a brief questionnaire. They match you with the therapist who they think is going to work for you. If at any point during the process that therapist does not work for you, change it up. All good. Mental health awareness is growing, but there's still progress to be made. 26% of Americans who participated in a recent survey said they have avoided seeking mental health support due to fear of judgment. Come on. Mental health, very important. A lot of us don't even realize if we are mentally not healthy. BetterHelp is great. Even if you feel like maybe you don't need therapy, just give BetterHelp a try. You got nothing to lose and we got a beautiful discount for you. We are all better with BetterHelp. If you go to betterhelp.com chaos, you're gonna get 10% off your first month. BetterHelp. That's H E L P.com chaos. You're gonna get 10% off your 1st month. You easily switch therapists anytime. No extra cost. It's easy, it's convenient, they're flexible with you. Give it a try. This confrontation became one of the most iconic Cold War moments of the entire thing. And it symbolized just how close the superpowers came to just all out conflict over Berlin. And we still get close on a daily basis, but that was real close. Now armed guards at the Berlin Wall. They are ordered to shoot anyone trying to escape. Anybody trying to get from East Berlin into West Berlin, y' all gonna get shot. Many people got killed by gunfire. They were trying to climb over or tunnel under and they would just get shot. That's just what it was. The Wall was surrounded. Ditches, barbed wires, guard dogs, searchlights, minefields. I mean, they're German. They know what to do. They know how to keep people out. I'm sorry, They're Germans. They know what to do. They know how to keep people in. So anything near the Wall, any building that was near the wall got demolished or Bricked up. You just couldn't even go near it. In East Berlin, they had that strict government control, limited freedoms. Of course, the economic hardships of communism compared to the West. People in East Berlin were like, why can't we be more like West Berlin? That looks cute over there. Not me. I'm here eating this fricking porridge. Now, East Germany, they had a lot of shortages of goods. Again, no money, fewer opportunities. It's communism. Everyone's the same. And people wanted that. They wanted political freedom, freedom of speech. They wanted a chance to better their lives. I mean, you know, people in East Berlin were like, we want to get sexual reassignment surgery too. They're doing it over there. East Germans are trying to cross the border illegally. Okay, migrants. At least 171 people, unfortunately, did lose their lives trying to cross the Berlin Wall to get from East Germany into West Germany. But there were some people out there, they got real creative. A family built a hot air balloon. They tried to fly over in the COVID of night, and they actually landed safely in West Berlin in a hot air balloon, which I would never get into in my life. I will never, ever, ever step foot in a hot air balloon. Other people, they made a zip line. They tried to zip line across, and they glided to freedom. That was. How sick is that? The guards were distracted and they actually zip lined over. That's fun. They had a tightrope walker. This guy tried to balance a narrow cable between the buildings near the wall, and he made it through. Some of them swam across the canals, like, cut. They were icy. I mean, it's Germany. It's freezing there. They risked hypothermia. Other guys, other people dug tunnels underneath. They escaped in the dead of night. One driver sped through the border without a windshield. Somehow, I don't know how this guy didn't get killed, but he just made it through without a windshield. So people defy the odds. Humans are great. Germans are great. So what actually East German authorities, then they started to do, they just bricked up or sealed any window of any building that was facing West Berlin because they did not want people to jump out and try to get over the Wall. And also people were killing themselves in East Berlin, Germany left and right, because they were so close. They could smell the freedom. If you were deeper into East Germany, you don't even know what existed for you. You didn't know the possibilities. But if you were in Berlin, it was right there. So this also, you know, they wanted to block any escapes from east and to west. Like I said, some buildings were just fully demolished because they were like, we can't guard this building safely. And I know that those little are going to escape into West Germany. Closing windows and blacking them out also kind of symbolized, not only can you not escape, we don't even want you to see it like you are. This is your world, and it's gray, baby, and it's dark, and it's communism. And all these neighborhoods, they got turned into, like prison, like zones. They're cutting off East Berliners from seeing or interacting with their Western neighbors. Don't forget, this is one city. This is not like an enemy. This is one. Not only is it one country, it's one city. Imagine, like you imagine, whatever part of whatever city you're living in, one side of it, was considered the enemy by the other side. It's not cute. So Kennedy's Berlin speech, maybe you've heard it before. It was June 26, 1963. He visited West Berlin during a very, very tense period of the Cold War. And the speech was called, Ich beIN ein Berliner. I am a Berliner. That's what that means in German. At the time, Berliners feared that the US Was gonna give up on them. And the speech showed that, no, the US Is there. They're gonna commit and do what they say they were gonna do. They're in solidarity with the people of West Berlin. West Berlin, not East Berlin. West Berlin. So Kennedy's words, they were powerful morale boosts, reassuring that West Berlin, we got the US behind us. And it became a very memorable speech in the Cold War. Symbolized the fight, freedom, democracy. It was cute, cute, cute. During the 1970s, there was this slight ease. It was called a detente. Detente, French truce period. Right. Where both sides kind of cooled down temporarily. So we're not gonna fight right now. Let's just try to talk this out civilly. The Western leaders, they tried diplomacy. They had the four powers agreement of 1971, which made it much easier to travel from East Berlin into West Berlin. East Berlin was allowing visitation rights, East Berliners, that you could go for a short visit to the west, but not the other way around. If you went into East Berlin, you were never coming out. That's just what it was. During the 1980s. You had stagnation with the talks. It kind of just flatlined. Economic trouble in the east again, Shortages, frustration, more defections, people trying to go to Hungary. Imagine how bad your life is that you're like, I'm going to Hungary. I'm gonna risk my Life to get to Hungary. That's how much I don't want to be in East Berlin. Oh, Hungary's beautiful. You should go Kranz, Budapest. Shut up. I do comedy. Stop commenting with, you know, stuff that's not jokes. Don't make fun of Hungary. Don't knock it. It's actually beautiful. Shut up. I know. You're a pest from Budapest. Okay. That detente truce period kind of ended in roughly 1979 when the Soviet Union just straight up invaded Afghanistan. That's just what they did. And that triggered a whole new wave of Cold War tension, because then US President Ronald Reagan had to take a hard line stance and he had to increase military spending against the ussr. And that's when he started calling the USSR an evil empire. Because don't forget, at this time in the 1970s, 1980s, Afghanistan was on our side. Don't forget that. Just go watch the movie Rambo. In the beginning of the first movie Rambo, they're saying that they're defending Afghanistan. So Afghanistan didn't turn around to be the bad guys until a few years later, little thing called 9, 11. Oh, you know, it's a cute little fun fact here. Detent that truce period. Cause you know how like, English is clearly the national language, soon to be overtaken by Chinese. But English right now is the national language. I'm sorry. England is the world universal language. Back in those days and from a lot of history, French was. French was like a universal diplomatic language, especially in Europe and international relations. So for centuries, French was used in treaties, diplomacy, politics. So that's why the detente, that's why it was called that. Because it would have been called the truce period today, but back then, French was still pretty popular. Shout out French fries. Shout out Pink Panther. Shout out armpit hair on women. June 1987. Now we're getting close. Now we are getting close to the fall of the Berlin Wall. June 1987. President Ronald Reagan stood at what was called the Brandenburg Gate, right next to the Berlin Wall. And he delivered this powerful message that was heard around the world. And he praised freedom, criticized communism, and he directly appealed to the new leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. You know him, he's got a big birthmark on his head. I don't know what the hell that is. So Ronald Reagan says, as long as this gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. So why does that matter? Because Reagan boldly challenges Soviet leader Gorbachev with the birthmark on his head, to turn his promises of reform into real action, which symbolized the West's refusal to accept Berlin's division as permanent. So they're basically. Ronald Reagan is basically saying, yo, Gorbachev, you talk a lot of smack. Why don't you do a lot of smack? Don't do smack, kids. It's not good for you. Listen, initially, Reagan's speech at Steen is a little dramatic, but the kid was an actor, and, you know, sometimes he doesn't want to save the drama for his mama. But it actually captured global attention. It really did. And it helped build pressure that eventually contributes to Berlin's. The collapse of the Berlin Wall just a couple of years later. And that became, I think, the defining moment of the Cold War. I was just five years old, so I don't remember the Berlin Wall coming down, but my mom told me a lot about it. So actually, ready for this? This is something you may not know. The wall falling down was actually a mistake. I'm gonna tell you why. So there's protests and unrest in East Germany. They can't take it anymore. November 9, 1989. The government of East Germany tries to calm things down by announcing new travel rules allowing East Germans to cross into the West. A German communist official. East German communist official, kind of was like an unofficial spokesman. He announced a new travel freedom that allowed East Germans to apply for visas in a very orderly way. So it was more organized. And he said, unprepared interview. He tells the press he doesn't have the full information. This guy, he basically just came out his pocket. He just came out his face and just said something that if Hitler was still alive, this guy would have got killed for this. But he said when the press was talking to him, and they said, well, when is this gonna start? What is the rules about? He said, look, East Germans are allowed to leave through any border crossing effective immediately without delay. And people are like, what? Heiden, Schweine, Heide. So the East German start sprinting. Tens of thousands of people start sprinting to get to the checkpoints to get the hell out of East Germany and never come back. So it creates this, like, festive atmosphere, like it's a party. It's Coachella at the Berlin Wall. So it starts as a miscommunication, and then it eventually becomes a spontaneous and historic end of the Berlin Wall. I mean, they literally and started ripping the Wall down with their hands. Then as the celebrations are going on, the heavy machinery starts to come out. Bulldozers, cranes. They start to really demolish the wall. And, you know, they were doing it drunk. You know, there were drunk Germans on bulldozers trying to get through that wall. And all these East Germans eventually get through the checkpoints, climb the walls, celebrate with the West Germans. And this really marks the end of this division in Berlin. It was a powerful symbol of freedom and the end of that Cold War division, specifically in Germany. That happens in November of 89. The official law, German reunification of the east and the West. That's October 3, 1990. They had to have all these talks. You know, East German officials had to get what they want. West German officials had to get what they want. But then eventually, October 3, 1990, Berlin becomes the German capital once again. So no wall. Again, little pieces of it still there today. But there is no separation between East Berlin and West Berlin anymore. Soviet Union actually withdraws its troops, ends its occupation of East Germany. Allies move out. It kind of just becomes like a regular German city now. And it became a fully sovereign under one government with control over its whole territory. Berlin becomes a unified city. They clear the former walls, border, as I said, leave a little pieces for history, kind of like an outdoor museum. And Germany and Berlin. Now, I know I've never been there, but I've heard Berlin is a very fun city. It's all about culture. I hear it's kind of like the West Village in Germany and German. The thing is about Germans is they are very serious, but when they get freaky, they get real freaky. So you're gonna see a lot of guys in leather straps with leather whips, with dog helmets on, running around, biting your ankles, wanting to have sex. So in the end, we have the same story. Berlin Wall, capitalism versus Communism, Allies versus the Russians. Good guys versus the bad guys. The good guys will always win. I want to shout out the confused East German official for saying the wrong thing. Accidentally, he pulled the Steve Harvey and you read out the wrong information. But it led to getting that wall torn down and giving Berlin back the freedom it deserved. And just congratulations to the USA for yet another victory. We won that Cold War, and we will win the next one. And the Germans tried to pop off. You saw what happened. The Russians tried to pop off. You saw what happened. Chinese, you listening? You about to see what happened. So that was the story of the Berlin Wall. And remember, yesterday was.