Indeed, walkie-talkie was prohibited in GDR. If there’s any mobile phone back then, it’s useless because no network available in GDR.

Right! After watching this, why would anyone drive? Too much to remember.

Because for the allies, and specifically the British, it was one of two rather complicated ways. The other, being the British Military Train, also known as ‘The Berliner’

Agree. I’m actually surprised that for those military wanting to take a car they didn’t just attach a car trailer to the regular military train and you travel in the passenger carriage. Or they didn’t have a weekly car carrier on the road and the owners followed in a military bus with RmP just to make sure nothing happened.

Remember this was the Cold War. This was complicated for a reason’

Train would be easier than a bus.

Andy McIoone has done some really excellent videos on this subject👍

imagine if they do this on the M6 up to Scotland in 10 years😅

Maybe they don't want you doing financial transactions there or interacting with Soviet buisness.

You'd be certain to come to the attention of the Stasi and Volkspolizei. From the moment you departed Helmstedt they had you under observation.

I still would have gone lol

​@@humor1095 you'd probably be in hot water from the UK military if you did so.

Brits were afraid of Stasi lol.

The allies did not recognise the DDR, only Soviet occupation. Likewise, I don't think(but I'm not sure) the Soviets recognised Federal Republic of Germany, only allied occupation. Thus, when interacting in all of Germany was only AlliesSoviets, or AlliesWest or SovietsEast.

The four occupying nations had special rights in the whole of Germany then, as you know, Germany lost the 2nd world war. E.G. changes to the basic law of the federal republic required the consent of the occupying powers, therefore their movements within Germany superseded the sovereign rights of both countries, and is regarded as movements between the four power’s occupation zones, therefore the equal interaction side is the Soviet Union in the video’s case. Although the west had recognized the existence of the German Democratic Republic at the time when the video was produced, they didn’t recognize its powers in East Berlin, where the Republic had declared it as its capital, after the Soviet Union had unilaterally ended its occupation in East Berlin, while the western powers regard that any changes of the status of Berlin required the consent of each side. Therefore, as military personnel, representing the western nations any interaction with officials in the Democratic Republic would be regarded as a recognition of equal status of two countries instead of a winning power against a losing nation when the west enters the territory of the democratic republic and recognizing the status of East Berlin as the rightful capital of the democratic republic,

@@MrSuper0306 Thank you for the info!

@@pettahify I have the same understanding... There is another video, done by a former British Soldier, retracing the parts of this video, in modern times, showing how things have changed (I mean, what building are still there, and what is gone). He explained, as you said, that the US/British/French didn't recognize the DDR (GDR) authorities, only the Soviet (because we didn't recognize the government of the DDR/GDR).

The sound is typical of a video that came from a VHS tape. You can hear the hissing noise of the head gliding on the magnetic tape. It is possible to filter that out in post, but meh, why bother, it adds to the authenticity. I joined the Navy in 1997, and we still had training videos on 35mm film that required a projector. 😂

Mutual recognition of military personnel to each other I guess

Spies and intelligence officers are more likely to speak the language. Meaning you might be one of those and draw more scrutiny.

Likely the Soviet personnel would end up having reasonable suspicion of you being intelligence and thus have possible cause to detain you.

They'd probably take you for a spy, detain you, and interrogate you. Most Westerners of that period would only bother learning Russian if they were diplomatic or intelligence personnel, and often there was overlap between official embassy/consulate staff and intelligence officers. And if you had no official diplomatic paperwork, well, then you're likely an illegal spy (as opposed to known, official spies with diplomatic cover).

What the other guy said, or they'd think you're trying to defect/offer intel to them

Ha! Yeah, I know I probably would have messed it up, and either ended up in jail, or shot.

@@joshuabray37 I did not understand what an East German policeman wanted as I entered the DDR from Czechoslovakia. He took me to an English truck driver who explained what piece of paper I needed which I had in my glove compartment. It must have been very boring for those border guards.

@@jean6872 That sounds stressful. It’s amazing now, going from Czech Republic to Germany, it’s just like going to another state in the US (I’ve done that many times from Germany to Poland, Germany to Czech Republic).

@@joshuabray37 I saw with my own eyes some foundations of ethnic-German towns on the Czech side of the border with Saxony. After WWII, both Czechoslovakia and the DDR were nominally anti-fascist Soviet controlled states but the ant-German Czech nationalism trumped everything else. There was a massive repatriation of ethnic-Germans to the DDR from the Sudetenland when whole villages were bulldozed, along with forced ethnic-German transports from annexed German territory in western Poland and East Prussia which was taken over by the Soviets.

@@jean6872 it was a different world back then. I’m 46 (from The US), but remember seeing all this on the news when I was a kid (I was one of few kids that watched the news every night). It must have been fascinating to see if first hand, like you did… I’ve been to Eastern Europe many times as an adult (Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary). I love that part of the world. Seeing it now, it just seems strange, watching these old videos and hearing the stories, knowing it was not that long ago. I started visiting Eastern Europe in 1994, and you could still see a lot of remnants from the Soviets (particularly in Latvia).