A place to share history memes!
Rules:
No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, assorted bigotry, etc.
No fascism, atrocity denial or apologia, etc.
Tag NSFW pics as NSFW.
Follow all Piefed.social rules.
Banner courtesy of @setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world
It has not really a lot to do about that, because that obviously didn't bother the people who managed to cross.
Apparently not a lot of people are aware of it, but the border between East and West Germany outside of Berlin was heavily guarded, with a much larger deadman's zone than in Berlin, so much so that it was actually easier to attempt to cross the Berlin Wall instead, as risky as that was.
Another big problem was the psychological trap of connections, family and friendship.
Sure, maybe you can make it out. But what are they going to do to your friends and family when you do? Because they have to at least suspect that your family and friends knew you were going.
Also, many tried to leave the GDR over the wet border, the Baltic sea, a lot of them not successfully.
The "Regional history" section begins with a report by a group of researchers from Greifswald on the deaths of people attempting to escape across the Baltic Sea. After meticulous research for the period from 1961 to 1989, the authors come to the conclusion that in 126 cases it is certain that drowned persons died during an escape attempt, while in 244 cases the circumstances of death could not be clarified with certainty. In addition to this commendable statistical survey, some particularly well-documented individual fates are also presented.
From Geschichtswerkstatt-Rostock.de – Zeitgeschichte Regional (2022) H2, translated using DeepL
German media report on the research project of the University of Greifswald: https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/todesfalle-ostsee-die-vergessenen-ddr-fluechtlinge-100.html
