Berlin Wall (2)

An interesting perspective that I had never thought of before, was how did the GDR deal with fact that the underground trains crisscrossed Berlin, and even if the Wall prevented passage above ground, there was a network of tunnels ready made to serve the potential escapee.

An entrance to the S-bahn near Brandenburger Tor after the war. Today, the U-bahn is the "underground" network of trains that Americans would call the "subway," and the S-bahn is the "suburban" network of trains that usually runs above ground, although in the inner city (of both Munich and Berlin) they must also travel underground. At the far end of the building on the right is the location of the Starbuck's today.

 As the Wall got stricter and stricter, they had to essentially split the subway systems into two different networks, so that you could not simply take the subway to escape from East Berlin. However, a few of the West Berlin subway lines actually ran underneath East Berlin territory, where in addition there were stations! These stations were closed, of course, and they came to be known as "ghost stations," because the trains would only slow down in these stations, but not stop. In addition, they were manned by East German police, to make sure, presumably, that no East Germans tried to hop on, but also that no West Germans tried to hop off.

Several of the successful (and unsuccessful) escapees used the underground tunnels.

Here is a view of the same station, now an U-bahn station, near Brandenburger Tor, taken on 4 Jan 2015, by yours truly. In fact, there is also an S-bahn station, but that has a separate entrance. Notice the new buildings to the left of the Tor. The large white one is the United States Embassy. The area is much less desolate than in the previous photograph.