Artie Mead: ‘Hi everyone, welcome back to The History Buff, and welcome back to The History Buff’s series on the Berlin Wall. This is episode two. The History Buff series on the Berlin Wall is where we chart the history of the infamous barrier that divided a city in the heart of a divided Europe. In the last episode, I explained to you the events leading up to the Berlin Wall, which included the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War. But in this episode, I am joined by a fellow Berlin tour guide and fellow history buff, Quincy. Thank you so much for joining me, Quincy. Do you want to maybe just introduce yourself?’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yeah. So, I am a Berliner on paper in that I was born here in Berlin, but I grew up in Australia. I moved away when I was about 18 months old and spent basically my whole childhood in Australia, where I did my bachelor’s.’
Artie Mead: ‘In what?’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Well, a Bachelor of Arts in Politics and History.’
Artie Mead: ‘Right, okay.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yes.’
Artie Mead: ‘Cool. Okay. So, you’re a trained historian basically, unlike me.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘In theory, yeah. I was then kind of caught up in the stream that everyone takes in Australia to go and do law if you do an Arts degree.’
Artie Mead: ‘Okay.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘And was very close to doing a Law degree before I got cold feet and thought, hang on a minute, I don’t actually think I want to be a lawyer. I need to at least take a bit of a break before I commit to something like that.’
Artie Mead: ‘So, that brought you back to Berlin.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘And that brought me back to Berlin.’
Artie Mead: ‘Right.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Thinking I’d spend a gap year here.’
Artie Mead: ‘Okay.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘And here I am still six years later.’
Artie Mead: ‘Okay, cool.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘And I ended up actually studying here because it’s basically free compared to extortionate in Australia. So, yeah, I did my master’s in History here too. And that’s kind of when I got my start tour guiding, first at the Berlin Wall Memorial, but since then, all over the city really.’
Artie Mead: ‘Amazing. Cool. Okay, well, lovely to have you. Thank you so much for agreeing to join me.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Thanks for having me.’
Artie Mead: ‘No problem at all. It’s an absolute pleasure, and yeah, I’m really excited to get into this series being joined by other tour guides to get their perspectives and their knowledge. Because that’s the thing about being tour guides, we all know the same stuff, but we have our own ways of approaching it and our own bits of knowledge about different things. So, I’m really excited about exploring this topic.’ ‘So, yeah, welcome. So, the end of the war saw the division of Germany and Berlin into four sectors between the Western Allies—the US, Britain, and France—and the Soviet Union.
The mass movement of people over to the West eventually caused the building of the Iron Curtain on the inner German border and all the way down the border between Eastern and Western Europe—a 7,000-kilometre border. Even after this though, there was still a hole in the Iron Curtain, which was West Berlin. Because West Berlin, it was like this island of western land in East Germany, so in this kind of like sea of communism. And it was a hole through which East Germans could flee to the West, even after the Iron Curtain had actually already come down. And by 1961, between 500 and 1,000 East Germans were fleeing every single day through West Berlin. Okay. So, the total number of East Germans having fled is thought to have been just under 3 million. Although actually, there’s different numbers that I see for this.
Quincy Mackay: ‘I’ve always said 2.8. Yeah.’
Artie Mead: ‘2.8 to 3.5. So, I’ve heard 2.8 and then also 3.5. I always say about 3 million because it’s sort of, I guess, in between there. It’s around that ballpark, let’s say. So, yeah, in the millions, millions of East Germans had fled, and most of these people were young, educated people who’d been educated at the GDR’s expense, at East Germany’s expense, who are now taking their very valuable skills to the West. So, yeah, it was a brain drain. So, it was a big problem. And so, this is obviously then what leads us to that fateful night on the 13th of August, 1961. But I guess before we get into that, let us talk about the sort of final events leading up to that fateful night.
Quincy Mackay: ‘Right.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah. So, yeah, I guess really the two main actors we have in this sort of part of the story have got to be the leaders of the Soviet Union and East Germany.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘So, Khrushchev and Ulbricht.’
Artie Mead: ‘So, yeah, Nikita Khrushchev, who’s the leader of the Soviet Union, and Walter Ulbricht, the leader of the GDR. So, basically, what happens, I suppose you could say, is this: the leader Ulbricht, he was quite plucky. He was the leader of this small satellite state. Well, okay. Actually, to be fair, it was actually the satellite state of the Soviet Union that had the highest living standards, and it definitely punched above its weight in terms of the other countries in the Eastern Bloc. But still, he’s meant to be really subservient in the sort of Soviet communist chain of command, but he was pretty plucky. I guess that’s because he knew that it was such a bad problem and that if they didn’t do anything, it was going to lead to the collapse of East Germany. And he basically says to Khrushchev, yeah, if you don’t let me build a wall around West Berlin, East Germany is going to collapse, and that is then going to make communism look really bad. So, if we fall, you fall. I think that’s what he’s trying to say to him.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘More or less. Yeah. I think what’s also interesting in having read, for example, some of the conversations between them is the way that they always use this very roundabout language, and they always use their own sort of talking points, I suppose, in order to sort of present all of this information. And the way that Ulbricht is almost presenting the idea of the Berlin Wall to Khrushchev is similar to the way that he then tries to present it to the broader East German population,
Artie Mead: ‘Or as an anti-fascist protection barrier.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Or as an anti-fascist protection barrier. And he says it’s a measure that’s being necessitated by the West, who are smuggling people out of East Germany, is, I think, the term that he uses: people smuggling. And that it’s this sort of, yeah, this threat that’s being placed.’
Artie Mead: ‘So, he frames it as an ideological struggle, basically.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Exactly. Yeah. And it’s—well, from the sources that we have available to us, it’s not just in the propaganda that they use that kind of language; it’s within their own internal discussions that they’re using this kind of, yeah, very padded language that kind of presents it in a certain way.’
Artie Mead: ‘Right. And the thing is, so he’s pressuring him to let him build a wall. And the reason why Khrushchev is dragging his feet is because he’s afraid of how the West is going to react. But also, Ulbricht wants Khrushchev to also sign a separate peace treaty with the GDR.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Right. Yeah.’
Artie Mead: ‘Now, people wonder what this means.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘I think ultimately, it’s about recognition and recognition, kind of formalising the borders of Germany as they are at that point.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah. And also, signing over the rights to control the skies, I think, crucially, to the GDR, who I think then would take a lot more of a sort of tougher stance on allowing—
Quincy Mackay: ‘Travel out of West Berlin.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yes, specifically flights because that’s how most East German refugees went to West Germany, is from flying, because obviously if you were to go on the train or in a car down the motorway, you would most likely get stopped by a border official. They’d see that you’re an East German and then probably make up some convenient excuse for you to have to stay in the East.
Quincy Mackay: ‘It’s a riskier way to get out.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah. So, most East German refugees were flown across to the West. So, the idea behind this is Khrushchev, he wants to get control of the skies. And so, he wants to stop flights from being able to leave West Berlin to go to West Germany. Basically, it’s actually also to annul the full power status of Berlin. He says that he wants it to be a free city. So, so, so it’ll actually be neutral. West Berlin will be neutral.
Quincy Mackay: ‘But obviously, I think, right in the middle of—’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah, exactly. So, I think people know in reality that is not what is going to happen. So, yeah.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘And I think for West Germany, they still see the whole situation around Berlin, but I guess as Germany as a whole, as a state of exception, as a kind of temporary situation that’s still a kind of hangover from the end of the war, and that the borders haven’t been finalised yet, the systems haven’t been finalised yet. And by getting an official peace treaty that recognises those borders and recognises the power of the East German government, that’s meant to make that sort of more permanent and final, rather than being this kind of reunification. And West Germany always pushes for eventual unification of the two halves as this sort of thing that’s approaching in the future.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah. And I think also the GDR, East Germany, it always, I think, maybe felt a little bit of an inferiority complex because they weren’t actually recognised as a state by most Western countries until 1973. And I think this actually, you know, made a lot of the leadership in the GDR feel not sort of altogether accepted, I guess, in the international community. So, I guess signing a separate peace treaty with Khrushchev was Ulbricht’s way to kind of do away with having to get the West’s, you know—’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Permission.’
Artie Mead: ‘ Yeah, and the West’s sort of—’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Approval.’
Artie Mead: ‘Approval. Yeah. So, yeah, this kind of fairly diminutive man, about five foot seven—
Quincy Mackay: ‘That’s about 170 cm.’
Artie Mead: ‘With a very high voice from a childhood, I think, infection, he is getting this kind of big bear from Ukraine to kind of agree to his demands. And it’s fair to say that, yeah, he was pretty plucky, pretty insistent. Now, they do actually start planning the Berlin Wall without the green light. And so, Ulbricht actually starts planning the so-called Operation Rose with his security, with the Politburo, which is the highest decision-making body in the Communist Party, the security secretary, a young Erich Honecker, who is obviously a future leader of the GDR. But at that point, he was pretty young. He had actually been before that the leader of the FDJ.
Quincy Mackay: ‘The youth organisation.’
Artie Mead: ‘The youth wing of the GDR, rather. The SED. So the GDR Communist Party. And then he’d become security secretary, and he meticulously plans, obviously, the building of the wall, code name, Operation Rose. And so, yeah, Honecker in doing this, he obviously assumes responsibility for the operation. Now, on the 15th of June—and by the way, I actually couldn’t find exactly when they started planning it, but it definitely was—’
Quincy Mackay: ‘My research said April.’
Artie Mead: ‘April, right. Okay.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘When he set up the team to begin preparations for a potential closure.’
Artie Mead: ‘Right. Okay. So, obviously well before the actual date, they started planning it and even before they got a green light from Moscow. So, on the 15th of June, Ulbricht gives a famous press conference, which I mentioned in the last episode, where he was actually asked by a journalist if he was going to close the border, to which he responded with, I guess you could say, quite an infamous line now.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Absolutely.’
Artie Mead: ‘Which is where he said, [German] which means no one has any intention of building a wall. And I think that was quite a clever ploy on his part because no one mentioned a wall.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Right.’
Artie Mead: ‘They just said, like, a border closure. So, no one said a wall, but he’s now said it. And so, I think him putting it out into the world was meant to have a specific effect.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘And kind of almost bring it into the debate in a way that makes it happen.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yes.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Or makes it more likely to happen.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yes. Well, and I think that’s exactly what was meant to happen because as soon as people then heard of this wall, it caused an uptick in the number of East German refugees crossing into West Berlin.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yeah.’
Artie Mead: ‘And I think this was deliberate. I think actually Ulbricht meant this to happen because I think he wanted to increase the pressure on Khrushchev.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Oh, okay. Interesting.’
Artie Mead: ‘I think, yeah, it was probably a ploy to push Khrushchev into giving him permission to building the wall. And this obviously then came in early August.
Quincy Mackay: ‘I found an interesting interview with Ulbricht’s old interpreter.’
Artie Mead: ‘Did he not speak Russian?’
Quincy Mackay: ‘No, he did not speak Russian. He had an interpreter whose name was Werner Eberlein, and he obviously sat in on conversations between Khrushchev and Ulbricht. And years later, I suppose, he was participating in a documentary and gave interviews about the three-day conference of the Warsaw Pact countries that took place from the 3rd to the 5th of August, 1961, which—’
Artie Mead: ‘I think that’s when they get the final—he gets the final—I think there was layers of green lights.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘There were layers of green lights, but this is the one that the SED Politburo actually presents as having been the situation where the green light was given. There’s no record of Khrushchev signing something saying, “Yes, Ulbricht, you may.”’
Artie Mead: ‘Yes, I think that was on purpose though.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Probably. But there is a record of Ulbricht’s handwritten notes from a conversation between, presumably, him and Khrushchev where they discussed administrative measures, closing the border. And so, Eberlein, the interpreter, years later, gives a kind of interview about this, and he sort of makes this point that the idea of controlling the border was what they were talking about, and that there were discussions about finding ways to make it easier to check the papers of everyone that was going across and reducing the number of border crossing points, but they didn’t actually speak in so much detail about exactly what a border closure would look like.’
Artie Mead: ‘Right.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘And he almost presents it as though it didn’t even cross their minds that they would need to build a wall, which doesn’t really fit in the timeline. This is the 5th of August—we’re already in June.’
Artie Mead: ‘But I think the only people who knew about the wall were the upper echelons of the Politburo.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Sure, but Eberlein is basically saying that when Ulbricht says no one has any intention of building a wall, he’s not lying because at that stage, they hadn’t even thought it through that far.’
Artie Mead: ‘Oh, okay, right.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Right? And that they wanted to control the border in Berlin vaguely, but they didn’t have a specific plan. For me, that doesn’t quite fit because I think there’s records.’
Artie Mead: ‘No.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘A, you already have Ulbricht himself talking about a wall at that press conference, but B, a few days earlier, Khrushchev and Ulbricht had a phone call discussing this, and terms like “wall” used in that phone call. It’s one of those kind of moments where you wonder what kind of presentation of that process is being made.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah. Well, there’s also a story that actually when the Soviet ambassador to the GDR received a green light from Khrushchev, he said that he was giving his permission. I think this is one of the layers of green lights. It was multiple green lights over a couple of days in early August. The Soviet ambassador went to find Ulbricht, who was apparently in a session of the People’s Chamber, which was the parliament of the GDR, and told him that Khrushchev had given his permission to build the wall. And apparently, Ulbricht immediately revealed all the plans in great detail, and so actually, the ambassador was quite taken aback at how much detail there was. I think that shows how much they had been planning it.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Right.’
Artie Mead: ‘So, anyway, the point is, he gets his green light.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘On the 7th of August, there’s a special sitting of the Politburo, and that’s when they decide on the night of the 12th to the 13th—that’s the date—or at least that’s when they officially agree to it.’
Artie Mead: ‘Right.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘And they also call the Volkskammer, the parliament, to sit for the 11th to give its approval for the plans. Because even though the Politburo has basically supreme power, a lot of things still need to be rubber-stamped by the parliament constitution.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yes.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘And so, they basically call the Volkskammer to sit on the 11th. And then, there’s a sitting on the 11th where the minister-president of the Volkskammer announces the new measures against people smugglers and talks about the measures that are going to be taken. It’s all very vague, but it sounds like some kind of border closure that’s going to happen. And on the 12th, there’s an uptick in people arriving at Marienfelde.’
Artie Mead: ‘Okay, right.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yeah.’
Artie Mead: ‘Marienfelde, by the way, being the transit camp for East German refugees in West Berlin.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yes. So, you see people who presumably watched that sitting and saw that as an indicator that there’s going to be increased challenges in getting over. And so, even that step, which obviously has to happen to some degree in public because it’s the parliament, was set up for the 11th as close as possible to the last Friday before.’
Artie Mead: ‘And they obviously picked Sunday because they knew, obviously, people would probably be—you know, Sunday morning.
Quincy Mackay: ‘It’s going to be the quietest.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah, exactly.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘‘And also, in the sitting on the 7th, that’s when the official invitation to the event that we’re about to talk about is made.’
Artie Mead: ‘So the, basically, a garden party in the GDR government guest house in Dönsee, about 80 kilometres north of Berlin. Ulbricht was up there readying everything for the garden party on the 12th of August. And whilst he’s getting everything ready, Erich Honecker drives up to see him. He basically drove up to get the sort of final orders for Operation Rose signed off by Ulbricht in his capacity as the chairman of the National Council of Defence.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘So, he just needed that signature.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yes, and then he returned to East Berlin to the police headquarters, where he would then direct the operations. Ulbricht stayed in Dönsee, where he was then going to host the Council of Ministers. Normally, in a democratic state, the Council of Ministers is the body that would hold supreme executive power. But under the SED constitution, the Communist Party’s right to rule was actually enshrined in the first article of the constitution. So, it was actually the job of the Politburo to make policy, and then it was just the job of the Council of Ministers to enact that policy. So they actually didn’t really have any real power in terms of policymaking. Their job was just to implement the decisions of the Communist Party, essentially. So, the Council of Ministers came to Döllnsee. And I think it was actually, it’s obviously quite a nice setting because it is actually, I’ve seen pictures of it, and I would actually quite like to go. Apparently, I think it’s now a hotel.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Right.’
Artie Mead: ‘And you know, the Council of Ministers arrived. There’s lots of food, food that isn’t usually available to people in the GDR, lots of champagne. But the thing is, I think the ministers find it a bit awkward. They’re kind of like, “Why are we here?”
Quincy Mackay: ‘What are we doing this? What is the purpose of this? Why are we getting all this special treatment?’
Artie Mead: ‘Yes, exactly.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘What does Ulbricht wants?
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah, exactly. They can smell something afoot. And also, I think that what makes them slightly, maybe also a bit nervous is that they can see in the trees surrounding the guest house tanks, like army tanks, and soldiers are in the forest surrounding them. And I think Ulbricht—’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Very coup vibes.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yes, exactly. And he, Ulbricht, says to them, “Oh, it’s just for your security.” So, yeah, basically, the Council of Ministers all get a little bit tipsy, and Ulbricht, who is very kind of sober, he then calls a meeting.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘I love the way this is written in Honecker’s biography by a guy called Norbert Pötzl. Obviously, he writes out these events, and I don’t know where he has the exact wording from, but he says that about 10 p.m., Ulbricht takes them into a little side room, and he says, [German]. Yeah, as in, “we’re just going to have a quick meeting.”
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah, exactly. And so, by 10 p.m., remember, it was a garden party during the day, so they’ve been—most of them have probably been drinking since mid-afternoon at least.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘And it’s August, so the height of summer; they’re probably absolutely exhausted by that stage.’
Artie Mead: ‘Exactly. So, yeah, it was chosen at a very specific time, and so they’re pulled into the Council of Ministers, and officially, it was to obviously get their backing for the building of the wall, okay? And Ulbricht says to the ministers, “Yep, so we are about to seal the border between East Germany and West Berlin. We just need your signatures.” So, basically, I think he tried to portray it as not a very big deal.
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yeah, here’s the plan. Here’s how we’re gonna close the border.
Artie Mead: ‘And you’re gonna sign it off.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Everyone agrees. Right?’
Artie Mead: ‘Yes, exactly. Everyone, yeah, he says, “Yeah, everyone in agreement, yes?” And I think, to be honest, that was meant to be a rhetorical question.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yes. Right. Because it’s impossible to say no.’
Artie Mead: ‘Exactly. So, basically, yes, it was a sham vote because, yeah, the power, as I said, didn’t really lie with the Council of Ministers in the GDR.
‘But he still needed, he was still… But constitutionally, he still needed that signature. He wanted to make sure he was on sort of stable ground.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yes. Yeah. So, constitutionally, he still needed their signatures. So, well, needed their rubber stamp, essentially.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And also, to have them all there in Döllnsee, it was also for strategic purposes. It was also to make sure that…’
Artie Mead: ‘Far away from the events.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Far away from the events to make sure that none of them could cause any trouble. So, having them all in this sort of fenced-off area by all of these tanks and soldiers in the forest was actually a way to make sure they couldn’t go and cause any trouble, obviously, in Berlin.’
Artie Mead: ‘So then, three hours later, it happens. It begins. So, at 1 a.m., Operation Rose came into action. So, at this time, you have between about 15,000 and 20,000 police, army, and border personnel starting to block off all roads into and out of West Berlin, and they then immediately started tearing up the ground and putting in concrete posts, which they obviously attached barbed wire to.’
Artie Mead: ‘Now, in the days preceding this, tons and tons, miles and miles and miles of barbed wire had been brought into Berlin. And this did actually arouse suspicion. A lot of East Germans had seen it…’
Quincy Mackay: ‘As well as the troops that were being brought in as well. Obviously, all of them from all over, but also, members of, I think, two entire divisions of the Volkspolizei, Volksarmee, were brought in.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah, from all over Thuringia. And they specifically chose people from outside of that.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yes. So, they…’
Artie Mead: ‘Didn’t have any skin in the game.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, in total, obviously, enough barbed wire for 155 kilometres of the border. So, that’s obviously a lot of barbed wire, but they are very speedy. And this, again, just goes to show how meticulously it was planned.’
Artie Mead: ‘The border is secured by 6 a.m., just five hours later. So, by 6 a.m. on the morning of the 13th of August, the entire 155-kilometre border is secure. If you’re an East German, you can now no longer go into West Berlin. If you’re a West Berliner, you can now no longer go into East Berlin. And if you have stayed overnight on one of the sides, then you are stuck. Tough luck. Tough luck.’
Artie Mead: ‘So, I mean, in reality, if you’re a West Berliner, you will be able to eventually get over to some kind of diplomatic mission and then be able to get over. If you’re an East German, you need to make your decision whether you’re going to stay in the West or if you’re going to go because also they would want you to come back, but now the choice is in your hands, so to speak.’
Artie Mead: ‘I think…’
Quincy Mackay: ‘What’s interesting about the exact kind of first closures is there’s records of the West Berlin police and the way they responded to this, and the man who was on duty, a guy called Hermann Beck, the Oberkommissar on the night shift at the West Berlin police headquarters. The very first message that he receives is at 1:54 in the morning from Spandau that an S-Bahn train was turned around.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘It was heading towards, it was heading from the Soviet sector into West Berlin, and it was sent back, and it specifically noted that all of the passengers had to disembark and were given their money for…’
Artie Mead: ‘Their tickets back.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Oh, really? Well, that’s just one of the logistical nightmares to come from the closing of the border because, you know, the S and the U-Bahn, I mean…’
Artie Mead: ‘And through the border.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Well, and also, about 60 per cent of the S-Bahn was in the West, and about 80 per cent of the U-Bahn was in the West, so it created a whole logistical nightmare. And so, yeah, but obviously, these trains would then be blocked from going off into the West if they were coming from the East and then vice versa.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah. And obviously, East Germans who worked in the West were cut off from their jobs. The first reaction of the Western allies is one of obvious displeasure. They registered the displeasure. They say, “Oh, you know this, you know, they have to build a wall to keep their people in,” but there’s, in reality, not a whole lot, very little they can do.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘I think they’re also actually quite relieved. I think it solves the Berlin crisis.’
Artie Mead: ‘I guess so. And also, the kind of initial worry is that this is an attack, and that’s the question that Hermann Beck, the police officer, has to deal with. Does he raise the alarm level? Is this something that’s going to turn into a bigger attack by either the Soviet Union or the GDR on West Berlin? Are they trying to invade or something like that? Or are they just closing the border? And he gets more and more reports that, yes, there are troops, yes, there are border closures, yes, there are lots of border guards being posted all along the border, but they’re all keeping to the centimetre on their side.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yes. Well, actually…’
Artie Mead: ‘Even more than that, the wall was always built at least five to ten metres behind the actual border. They were very, very, very careful not to encroach on any Western land because they didn’t want to give the Western allies any sort of excuse to be able to call them up.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘And the orders that the military have on that night are very specific about exactly how they are supposed to support because there’s basically…’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Basically, border guards and police were doing the work at the border itself overnight, and then about a thousand metres back is where the actual army troops were stationed. They’re kind of the backup, and they have very specific orders to keep all of their munitions in separate boxes, not to load until they have specific orders. The actual use of their weapons was categorically forbidden.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yes, without the, um, permission of Hoffmann, who’s the defence minister. Right. Um, and so there were very specific measures taken to make sure that they didn’t…’
Artie Mead: ‘Alarm, don’t alarm them too much.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yeah, exactly. And yeah, there’s not a whole lot they could do because they’re sticking to their opinion. They’re sticking to their side. The mayor of West Berlin, future West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, was very angry that the Western allies didn’t do anything. So much so that he actually penned a rather—what’s the word?—a rather impertinent letter.’
Artie Mead: ‘Good word.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘To US President John F. Kennedy, where he basically says, “What the hell are you doing? Why are you, why are you just letting the Soviets build this wall?” So, I don’t know, just to kind of imagine… Just imagine this: you receive a letter, you are the US president, and you receive a very impertinent letter from the mayor of, you know, a tiny city—because remember, it’s just West Berlin, so a city of two million people.’
Artie Mead: ‘Although I guess, to be honest, you’ve got to kind of put yourself in Willy Brandt’s shoes, in that, you know, West Berlin is very symbolic. So I think he probably thought that he had a lot more influence than he had.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘And it’s the kind of arena of the Cold War. It’s where all of these tensions are at their closest.’
Artie Mead: ‘It’s actually at their…’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Most, um, so to be honest, actually, I think… Forget what I just said. West Berlin very much had a very special status. But it’s still…’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Quite a, quite a bold move in terms of like the etiquette and the kind of rank for a mayor to write to JFK like that.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah. JFK was really angry. He was like, “What the hell does this mayor think he’s doing, you know?” And because Willy Brandt signed off the letter, “Your friend, Willy Brandt,” or “Your Willy Brandt,” or whatever, JFK was really angry. Although it didn’t really matter because a couple of days later, he did actually send his Vice President…’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Vice President, yeah, to West Berlin to kind of show solidarity. So at the end of the day, it didn’t really matter. But it was still pretty bold on Willy Brandt’s behalf. And also, I think it was because it was in the middle of a general election campaign. It was in the middle of the 1961 election campaign.’
Artie Mead: ‘No. What am I talking about? Yes.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘No, that’s right. Between Willy Brandt and Konrad Adenauer.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yes. And Willy Brandt was on a train somewhere in West Germany.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘To Kiel.’
Artie Mead: ‘To Kiel. There you go. On the campaign trail. And he went back to West Berlin. And he had to be… had to…’
Quincy Mackay: ‘No, he decided to. Woken up and flew back, yeah, to West Berlin to be there the next morning.’
Artie Mead: ‘And I think…’
Artie Mead: ‘JFK cynically, but maybe a little bit… maybe he was right, thought that he was doing all of this stuff, writing him a letter to kind of play to a gallery, which, you know, it’s politics. This kind of stuff happens. Fair enough. But anyway, I think the…’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Other funny thing is that JFK happens to be on his yacht.’
Artie Mead: ‘Right. The night that the Berlin Wall was built. And there’s this great story about when the information first arrives in Washington. There’s the official in the State Department that’s on duty overnight because it’s midnight local time. His name, hilariously, is John Ausland. Ausland means foreign in German.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Works at the State Department naturally. And he receives a telegram from the CIA in Berlin to inform the president. Right. And he goes to the State Department to find the folder for the situation if the border were to be closed. Right. The kind of file. And he finds it to be empty.’
Artie Mead: ‘Oh God.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘And there are no plans.’
Artie Mead: ‘Oh no.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Whatsoever in the State Department. So the only thing he can do is just tell JFK.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah. Um, who supposedly is at first a bit annoyed to only be finding out five hours later.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yeah. Um, at 5:30 in the morning. Um, but he kind of calms down about that and prepares a statement with Dean Rusk, who’s the Secretary of State.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Um, and that’s kind of it.’
Artie Mead: ‘That is kind of it. That’s, that’s all they can really do. And the thing is JFK reflects on it. He says, “A wall is better than a war.” Because at the end of the day, it was unfortunate for those poor East Germans who wanted to leave, who are now trapped in East Germany. But it basically did solve the tension over Berlin between the Western allies and the Soviets.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yeah, I guess so. So, um, so, so ultimately, I think JFK, he obviously felt very bad, but he was like, “This is actually really, to be honest, probably the only real solution.” So, sealing off the border was very, very successful, and the way that it was done so efficiently and so competently definitely secured Honecker’s place as the front-runner to replace Ulbricht.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘He gets a lot of political capital for this, and Ulbricht then spends the next decade kind of preparing Honecker to take over from him. So, yeah, very, very… it was a very, very well-executed operation.’
Artie Mead: ‘Doesn’t end there, though. They then, immediately after the barbed wire had been put up, started building the first version of the wall.’
Artie Mead: ‘So, yeah, I don’t think a lot of people know about this version of the wall, because I think that…’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Always tricky, I find, talking about versions, because it’s, I don’t know, I’ve always imagined, when you talk about versions, you kind of have this image of like…’
Quincy Mackay: ‘They did the barbed wire and then they designed a new version and then they built that entirely and then they let that stand for five years and then the next one came along, like versions of a phone or something like that, as though they were like generations in this sense.’
Artie Mead: ‘But I think it’s more…’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Of a continuous iteration,’
Artie Mead: ‘Right? It’s this kind of ad hoc process.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yes.’
Artie Mead: ‘Continually developing.’
Artie Mead: ‘And particularly in the early stages, it’s more about what does the exact street that we’re trying to close look like? And how do we seal off this specific section? What makes the most sense?’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Because the way the border runs through the centre of the city really varies.’
Artie Mead: ‘Quite a lot. And obviously, closing, you know, closing the border and building the wall around the suburbs was pretty easy. But obviously, yeah, in the centre of the city, that was actually pretty hard because you had lots of obstacles in the way.’
Artie Mead: ‘My understanding…’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Also about the outer border was that it was actually, um, primarily a fence to begin with. And actually, you only really see walls on the inner border between West Berlin and East Berlin. I think it’s only between West Berlin and East Germany.’
Artie Mead: ‘1970s, I think.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yeah. That was kind of fence work…’
Artie Mead: ‘For…’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Most…’
Artie Mead: ‘Of…’
Quincy Mackay: ‘It.’
Artie Mead: ‘So very labour-intensive building that first wall. But for argument’s sake, let’s just say the first version of the wall.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘I mean, there is the first thing where they used these, these, I guess they’re like breeze blocks or something like that. Fairly big bricks, about 1.5 metres high. So they were built, yeah, so you could easily look over it. And then they had these kind of Y-shaped metal staples, then used with the barbed wire.’
Artie Mead: ‘The concrete block…’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Is 1.5 metres high. And then, yeah, they had the barbed wire on top. And then, that was built by about 60,000 builders, and it was completed in two days. So, the whole wall was completed by the 15th of August. So, I mean, they knew that they would have to do it quickly; otherwise, people would take advantage of the kind of chaos surrounding it. They knew that they had to get it completed as soon as possible.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘There’s also, I mean, like I said, there are these points where it varies. One of the, supposedly one of the very last—I only found this out the other day—one of the very last parts of that original wall from the first days is actually just next to the East Side Gallery at the very northern end of it, near the Ostbahnhof, where it would then turn left to go across the river again.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘There’s—you wouldn’t even know it was there, the wall—but there’s basically some red brick wall to about halfway up, which was an existing wall of a factory or something. And then there are these bigger blocks on the top, which take it up to actually quite a high height. It’s probably about three metres high there. And set in the concrete at the top are glass bottles, broken glass bottles, which were like the kind of makeshift version of the barbed wire.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah. Well, definitely in the first couple of years, it was definitely more makeshift. Totally. And you had that instance also with border houses.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yeah. So, houses where you would have, you know, some of the house open out onto the East. Maybe the front door opens out onto the East.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Generally, streets, if a street was a border between East and West, the official border was generally drawn on maps to run along the house facade because these are all based on the old suburb borders of Berlin, the divisions between the different districts. And just for kind of, I don’t know, surveyors’ purposes, they always put the border on the house facade rather than down the middle of the road.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Right. Not always, but often. And so that meant that you often—the building would be in the East—often had a situation where the entire building was in the East. But the moment you stepped out on the footpath, you were in the West.’
Artie Mead: ‘So, but then that meant that the people living there were in the East.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yes. They were residents of East Berlin. But the moment they stepped outside their front door, they were in West Berlin.’
Artie Mead: ‘Right. And so, they kind of had at first a very easy way out just through their front door. And then the initial plans foresaw sealing off those doors, either nailing them shut or bricking them up. But then you have the problem where people start using their windows.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yes, exactly. Because these people are still living there. And yes, there are now entrances that lead out to the rear. So they go out through the courtyard into the back of the house, but obviously, you can still jump out the window. And this happens a lot at Bernauer Strasse, where the Berlin Wall Memorial is today. You have dozens of families that basically, very spontaneously, decide they’re going to jump out of the window and get over into the West.’
Artie Mead: ‘And eventually, these houses were then evacuated by the East German authorities, hollowed out. Obviously, the windows were bricked up, hollowed out, and then actually used as part of the wall. The idea was, I think, to help, obviously, keep costs down, obviously, when it was still quite sort of makeshift. They even put barbed wire across the roofs to make sure.’
Artie Mead: ‘Okay, right. The whole structure of it, yeah. But then, eventually, in the last version of the wall that we’re going to come to, that was all blown up and taken away, and it was just the wall the whole way around. But yeah, for now, it’s still quite a lot of makeshift, different kinds of materials.’
Artie Mead: ‘And yeah, so then, the next year, I guess you could say really the second version, includes the creation of an inner border wall, so known as the Hinterland. So, it was built approximately 100 metres further into East German territory, but it depended on where you were. The length of this strip of land actually depended on where it was.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘There was an officially prescribed 100-metre exclusion zone, which is kind of the basis for that. So, I guess the Politburo decided to create a rule that no one was allowed within 100 metres of the border.’
Artie Mead: ‘Oh, okay. Although in the West, it was obviously not enforced.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘No control over what people did on the Western side, but they intended that no one should get within…’
Artie Mead: ‘Oh, because technically, if you went right up to the wall on the Western side, you were in East Germany.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Right. And also, in their internal propaganda, the wall was there to protect East Germans against West Germans. So, in their sort of way of presenting all of this, it was actually all directed at…’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah, remember they said this is an anti-fascist protection barrier to keep capitalism and fascism out.’
Artie Mead: ‘So, when you have this inner border wall built, houses between the wall and fences were razed to the ground. Inhabitants were relocated, obviously, like they had been before with border houses. And this strip of land, a lot of people call it “no man’s land,” but I think the more accurate term, well, what it was officially called, was the Death Strip.’
Artie Mead: ‘Now, the Death Strip was covered with raked sand or gravel to detect footprints, facilitate the detection of trespassers, and monitor guard diligence as well. It offered no cover and provided clear fields of fire for wall guards. Now, it didn’t just stay like that. They actually kept adding things as the years went by.’
Artie Mead: ‘There was one escape that actually took place in 1963, I believe, where this guy rammed an armoured vehicle through the wall. Because of that one escape, they then spent millions putting in anti-vehicle obstacles, like those railroads welded together.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Spanish horse, Spanish riders, I think they’re sometimes called.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah. And so, yeah, that was the creation of the inner border wall. And I guess the idea behind that was just to make it just a little bit harder.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Right. And also to obscure the border itself a little bit as well.’
Artie Mead: ‘Because even if you are on the eastern side, near the actual inner border wall, if a policeman saw you around there, he would tell you to piss off.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘You’re still in that 100-metre zone, and unless you live…’
Artie Mead: ‘You had to have an ID, I think.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yeah, so the people that lived within that zone had a special carry ID, and supposedly it was also quite difficult for them to have visitors over, stuff like that. And you just get all this situation where, yeah, anyone…’
Artie Mead: ‘All this rigmarole.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Anyone going in or out of that zone needed to prove why they were there, exactly.’
Artie Mead: ‘So, then in 1975, they improved the outer border wall because, by then, the first wall was getting pretty rudimentary. Yeah. So, they then put proper concrete slabs and, crucially, the tubing on top.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘This is kind of where they start using their construction techniques that they use for housing as well. By the early seventies, they were trying to figure out how to deal with the housing crisis, which was contributing to the general economic challenges in the GDR. At first, their approach to housing was to just try and repair as much of the stuff that was damaged in the war to make it liveable.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yes, exactly.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘By the seventies, they’d kind of exhausted that as a method. So, they had to start building Plattenbau. Yeah. They had this official programme called the Wohnungsbau Programm, which was officially enacted in October 1973 but planned basically from 1970. They said they wanted to build 3 million houses by 1990.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘The only way to do this was with massive serialisation and standardisation of building because materials were very scarce, and their access to concrete and labour was very limited. So, building stuff with bricks and so on wasn’t really viable on that scale. The only way they could build 3 million new apartments was to basically standardise this and make these really mass-produced Plattenbau buildings, where they used prefabricated concrete blocks and stacked them up very high. Their goal was 3 million by 1990.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘They claimed to have reached that goal, but researchers put the number closer to two million.’
Artie Mead: ‘So, border… Yeah, Honecker, by the way, took over in 1971.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Correct. Jumping ahead a little bit here, but he had this ceremony where he handed over the three-millionth apartment to a family.’
Artie Mead: ‘Oh, okay. Right.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘I think researchers put the actual number at closer to two million, but I think it was still better than the German or British governments today.’
Artie Mead: ‘Right. Absolutely.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘And in many ways, it’s one of the biggest successes, because it’s one of the most visible traces of the GDR that you can still see in Berlin today. If you spend any time in the eastern part of the city, there are these Plattenbau buildings absolutely everywhere.’
Artie Mead: ‘They’re not necessarily nice to look at, but people have homes, and I think some of them are quite nice.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘They, they, they have their moments, but basically, this was this kind of mass-produced building method. And I think they started to apply similar approaches to building the wall as well. And so, that’s why they used these concrete, basically sheets, which are identical to the sort of sheet you would use in the building of a Plattenbau.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘And they, they just slid them in between two metal tracks. So, the metal track was put every three or four metres, and then you slid these sheets in between. It was used both as the border wall and the hinterland wall, I think, sort of throughout the late 60s…’
Artie Mead: ‘And early 70s. Then over the course of the next 10 years, you had, yeah, various kinds of improvements in the sort of Death Strip. They added tripwires, searchlights, big signal fences, watchtowers—yeah, watchtowers—which were every 300 metres. And so, it became pretty comprehensive. And to be honest, by about 1965, people stopped going through the Death Strip because it was just too hard. It was just too well-guarded.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘And that’s the way they justified all of this. It’s a safety measure. By spending all of this money, they are making the border safer for their citizens.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah, exactly. They don’t have to shoot at them as much.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yeah, exactly. And immediately afterwards, you actually didn’t have—it wasn’t until, I think, October 1961—that soldiers got the order to shoot to kill from Erich Honecker. And he actually got put on trial for that after the GDR collapsed. He had liver cancer, very advanced liver cancer, and he went on to die in Chile.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘A lot of people like to think that there were landmines in Berlin. There were no landmines in Berlin. There were landmines on the inner German border between East and West Germany, but there were no landmines in Berlin.’
Artie Mead: ‘The reason for that is because you had a lot of West Berlin flats that were literally on the Death Strip and could look over it and had views of it. And you can imagine if a West Berliner is just at home one evening, chilling with a glass of wine, looking over the Death Strip—his beautiful view of the desert—and he sees an East German running across the Death Strip, and that person gets blown up by a landmine.’
Artie Mead: ‘Maybe the leg of that poor East German lands on the West Berliner’s balcony. That’s not very good PR for the GDR, is it? So, there were no landmines.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Too uncomfortable.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah. So, no landmines in Berlin, but on the inner German border. Yeah. But what you did have were beds of spikes.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘What do they call it?’
Artie Mead: ‘So, then you had the building of, in 1975, I guess you could say, the most well-known…’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yeah, the most iconic, infamous version.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah. Which was known as Grenzmauer 75.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yeah, Grenzmauer 75. So, border wall 75. This was, obviously, the final and most sophisticated version. Building started in 1975 and was completed around 1980.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘By this version—like we said earlier—everything in the way of the wall was completely destroyed. By this version, it was the wall the entire way around the whole 155-kilometre border.’
Artie Mead: ‘Okay.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘And that’s why a lot of people sort of say, “Well, why couldn’t people just go around the wall?” It’s like, right, you need to show them a map.’
Artie Mead: ‘But honey, this is why—because it went around the whole island.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yes, it’s an island.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah, it was built from 45,000 separate sections of reinforced concrete, each 3.6 metres high, steel-reinforced, and about 1.2 metres wide.’
Artie Mead: ‘The total cost of this version of the wall, this very comprehensive version, was about 16,155,000 marks. Also, concrete provisions were added to prevent escapees from driving through the barricades. And at strategic points, the wall was actually made weaker to allow East German and Soviet armoured vehicles to break through in the event of a war.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘I didn’t know that.’
Artie Mead: ‘Basically, with every version of the wall, they improved it, made it harder to get across, to get over. And obviously, in this case, the version built between 1975 and 1980, they put in that smooth piping to line the top of the wall to make it more difficult to scale.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yeah, it’s kind of interesting because a lot of people don’t realise that the GDR was also planning another wall.’
Artie Mead: ‘So, this was Mauer 2000.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yeah, still looking towards the future because, obviously, they didn’t envision they were going to collapse by the end of the 80s, beginning of the 90s. And so, they did actually make plans for a so-called Mauer 2000, which was going to have various lasers and high-tech technology to make it that much harder for people to get across.’
Artie Mead: ‘But, obviously, these plans never got realised because the GDR collapsed.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘And I wonder how realised they ever were. For me, it feels like it was more of a kind of buzzword they used. So, it was this big presentation that they made for the 40th anniversary of the founding of the GDR on 7 October 1989.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘They were thinking about the kind of border-crossing system as well. It was this super-bureaucratic process where people crossing the border would be handed off from one bureaucrat to the next.’
Artie Mead: ‘And it was this kind of long chain of bureaucracy as you go through the process of getting your visa and then having it issued.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Sounds like Germany today, yeah—not much has changed.’
Artie Mead: ‘And so, in 1989, they were talking about making this high-tech, and they set up the first tests with computers to go through that process because they were concerned about it being abused and misused. It was designed to be as difficult as possible and as long-winded as possible.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Sounds also like Germany today.’
Artie Mead: ‘But it also meant it was susceptible to subversion. And so, there were these kinds of plans to digitise all of this all the way back in 1989. Still having a conversation about realising anything like that in Berlin today.’
Artie Mead: ‘Well, I guess maybe it’ll be interesting to finish up by saying how the wall is seen by tourists, and I guess how it’s become such a sort of tourist attraction.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Right, yeah. Because obviously, you know, we as tour guides, it’s like obviously a big part of our work because, yeah, I mean, I would say that it’s probably, along with the Nazi era, the thing that attracts people most to Berlin—that history, the Berlin Wall, the Cold War.’
Artie Mead: ‘It’s really, I think, along with the Nazis, the thing that attracts most people, wouldn’t…’
Quincy Mackay: ‘You say? Absolutely. And that’s the kind of slightly twisted thing about it. We really are making our money off this quite dark history, and it is this quite uncomfortable thing. And I think the way that the wall has kind of become such a symbol for division, but just the Cold War in general, means that obviously it’s going to be this attraction in that sense.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘People want to see the sort of physical version of the Cold War, but it’s interesting how it’s still there. I’ve always found it sort of interesting that the version of the wall that everyone knows only stood for 10 to 15 years, right? And it was kind of only seen by West Berliners because it was the outer wall.’
Artie Mead: ‘My mum actually has a fantastic picture, which I will put on the YouTube video, that she got from a platform looking out onto the East.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Right, yeah, one of the viewing platforms that were set up on the West, right?’
Artie Mead: ‘Okay, yeah. When people come to Berlin and want to see the Berlin Wall, a lot of the time they’re like, “Oh, can you tell me how to get to the East Side Gallery?” which is a part of the wall. It has been, I think, kept up since the fall of the wall. I mean, yeah, it’s got some interesting murals on it, but it’s about… it’s the world’s longest open-air art gallery.’
Artie Mead: ‘There aren’t many original parts still left. That’s an original part, the part at Checkpoint Charlie.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘It’s original.’
Artie Mead: ‘It’s original. And then the memorial.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘And then the memorial.’
Artie Mead: ‘And then there are a few other ones, I think, as well, but they’re not very well-known. And I think they’re in parts of Berlin that are quite difficult to get to.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Yeah, on the outer border.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah, exactly.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘A few bits that are sitting around on the border, for example, at Potsdamer Platz, were just put back there.’
Artie Mead: ‘But if you guys are wandering around Berlin, just keep a lookout because there are these two rows of cobblestones which run throughout the city, and they just run randomly around the city, and they denote where the wall used to stand—where the outer border wall used to stand.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘And the trick with them is there are also metal plaques that run along there, and it just says Berliner Mauer, 1961 to 1989.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah, and if you can read the text the right way around, you’re standing on the Western side.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Because, obviously, you know, West is better.’
Artie Mead: ‘Right.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Makes sense. If the text is upside down, you must be in the East. By the way, I was totally joking about that. I really don’t think the West is better. I think both have strengths and weaknesses.’
Artie Mead: ‘Okay, so I was joking.’
Artie Mead: ‘Okay, guys. Well, thank you so much for joining us in this episode.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Thank you so much for coming on.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah, that was a very interesting conversation about the plan of building the wall, the actual building of the wall, and its various iterations.’
Artie Mead: ‘So yeah, do join the History Buffs Berlin Wall Series next week when we’re going to talk about escapes, escape attempts, and the unfortunate deaths at the wall.’
Artie Mead: ‘I will be joined for that with another fellow tour guide. Do please join me.’
Artie Mead: ‘But yeah, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode and, yeah, otherwise, see you next week.’
Quincy Mackay: ‘Thank you very much for joining us, guys.’
Artie Mead: ‘Bye.’