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Podcast: Today In History with The Retrospectors
Episode: Building The Berlin Wall
Description: Berliners awoke on 13th August, 1961 to find their city divided in half. East German troops had worked overnight to roll out barbed wire and barricades, turning neighbourhoods into no-go zones. It became known as ‘Barbed Wire Sunday’Â
Before the wall’s construction, East Germans had been bolting westward at the unsustainable rate of nearly 2,000 a day; notably skilled professionals the East couldn’t afford to lose.Â
The Berlin wall stopped the flow of people, but also turned the city into a dystopia, complete with ghost train stations, split families, and a massive fortified structure with a deadly n...