I'm just glad the reporter, Mr. Kee, wasn't run over by any passing Berlin motorists as he stood in the street boundary between East and West during his opener.

5:33 "much of the new building is exciting and imaginative" *is literally just a box*

I love the way he said “Yet”, as if he was fully expecting West Germany to soon legalise exile to Siberia 😭

1959: Life in postwar Berlin in the year I was born.Absolutely fascinating. It's only in the past 4 or 5 years I have found out about the situation in Berlin since the end of WW2 and have visited the city. Thanks for uploading this video, I find it extremely interesting.... and to think of what has happened there in my lifetime

Archive, Thanks for this very interesting piece on Berlin before the Wall was built. Excellent English spoken by so many inhabitants!

Fascinating contrast with post-wall Berlin. I remember visiting Berlin when I was a US naval officer in the 1980s and the contrast with the Soviet Zone was stark. As an Allied military officer I could cross over to the East, it was a drab, grim affair, a total surveillance state. A Royal Navy travelling buddy speculated that we got a taste of how it must have been living in Nazi Germany.

What a great piece of documentary. Thank you!

I once read a book from 1922 and in a Chapter it talks about Berlin, interesting to understand it pre and post war

It was very interesting to see how all of Berlin functioned before the wall was put up on August 13, 1961. The 1950's must have been a nice decade for all of Berlin.

Remarkably prescient presentation and commentary, and excellent interviews. The passing of time confirms what high-quality journalism this was.

Even in those days as today so many Germans could and can speak English. I always tell people wanting to spend time in the larger cities that you'll have no problem with communication. Germans on the whole are nice people but their directness can be confronting.

Extraordinary economic analytic video

"and heyah I am standing on the main roadway, obstructing the local traffic"

Nineteen forty-eight to nineteen sixty-one was a time of foreboding lull in Berlin: after the breaking of the blockade, but before the building of the Wall. Berliners seemed resigned to the prevailing circumstances, with their life-chances and choices resting largely in the hands of others. The Wall literally made concrete the division that the geopolitical situation dictated. But a generation later, when the geopolitical concrete abruptly fractured, Berliners' own hands determinedly grasped the sudden opportunity to change forever the hitherto fixed reality of their lives as well the lives of their fellow Germans and fellow Europeans.

Just eleven years after the blockade and the airlift, the populace are remarkably unperturbed about the risk to West Berlin. It's also amazing to see a young Robert Kee, his voice was familiar from the beginning, after a few moments, I found myself wondering was this him. Sure enough, it was.

Marvellous documentary. Robert Kee was great.

Ps Kee spent three years in a German POW camp, after his RAF plane hit by flak.

Saw three kids boxing this afternoon, a quite wise judge, two friendly players

the gentleman at 11:11 is cool. his english is excellent. wonder what he did in the war

Good luck to any journalist back then, trying to speak to people in the Uk in German!

Anyone know who the Editor talking at 11:11 was?

1:23 little did they know…

Anyone know the name of the gentleman editor at 11:00?

Do the waitresses at the Kranzler still wear those cute Maids' outfits?! 😮

Aaaahhhh, the good old days.

Imagine the pressure on East Germans at that time - so easy to move to the West, I wonder what kept them in the East.

Wearing a tie at the weekend going to the park.

5:35 "much of the new building is exciting and imaginative" pans up to the most generic building ever

Think very many of the people in this video are 80 plus now.

0:45 This guy is almost overrun by that truck....Even then West Berlin was safer🤣

Amazing that many average Germans at this time had very good English! Could still be said of Germans today but the reverse could not be said of the English!

9:51 ...only in Europe. Suspicions of being a Soviet spy aside, you'd need binoculars to see the table numbers from across the room. 10:25 spying wife calls from other table...busted.

"You cant over here Yet.." True words with todays crackdown on free speech and thought crimes in the west.

Gosh! It's remarkable to be confronted with content from the BBC that was... good! How far the once-great Beeb has fallen! 😢

Spy X Family in real life

5:33 "much of the new building is excisting and imaginative" *is literally just a box*

Sad

I lived in Germany for a year in 1980 , it was an experience , I worked and lived alone age 17 , till I was raped by a Yugoslavian , in so much fear of police with guns , being influenced by so many war films, I couldn’t report it . I met a friends grandparents who didn’t like me and were proud to show me their black iron cross from hitler for having so many children.

The invisible boundary 🤔 So gullible, these 1959 people 😅

Don't you just love the british superiority accent. Today absolutely nothing.

You can see how Germany created a rather dry way of living, things like schlager music, the way the gentleman at 9:10 almost drops his voice when saying Berlin was so good before the war, all from the fear of appearing in any way sympathetic to the Nazis, that shame. One only has to read any of Le Carre's later Smiley books to see that the West/East situation suited both sides, it was self perpetuating.

I guess most of the women, probably 30 years and older that you see in East Berlin ( here, 14 years after the Soviets arrived ) would have been raped by a Soviet soldier. Are there statistics about that ? I remember reading that barely a female 14 years and older ( to even very old age ) escaped being raped by at least on soldier. For all of those pictures in West Berlin, I wonder how many benefitted from acquisition of Jewish people's possessions either free or at a knock down price when the Jews were transported away ...

How did they find so many people who could speak English in Berlin???

I feel like this is kind of propaganda. I’m not great with identifying it honestly but I feel like the people where told the right things to say her

Insight to different times. And teenagers think they have it hard 😂

Did the war memorial really need guarding ?.......

I was particularly struck by the young mother who wanted to leave Communist East Germany because of the political pressure in her children's school and the hostility to religion, (presumably Christianity). That was under Communist dictatorship in East Germany in 1959. How appalling that 64 years later, that young mother could now make exactly the same complaint about schools in Woke,(eg; Marxist) Britain. So who really won the cold war in the end?

More «respactable name» - what, communist names !

sickness

1:44 KARL MARX BUCHHANDLUNG. Obviously a purveyor/dealer in East Berlin of communist literature.

very biased commentary anti german as normal.

It’s like living in London under khan 😂 only the wealthy csn travel into London

The DDR had some really good social policies but their paranoia undid what could have been a Socialist beacon to the world