As generations have come of age with few or no memories of the existence of the Soviet Union, a common misconception about Berlin has become more common. Because the German capital was divided between the former East and West Germany, it’s easy to assume that it must have lay on the border between the two states. In fact, the whole of Berlin, East and West, was completely surrounded by East Germany, and to drive from West Germany to West Berlin entailed more than 100 miles on the autobahn through Soviet territory. How, exactly, this was done is fully explained in “Destination Berlin,” the 1988 video from the Royal Military Police above.
“You do not need to worry about the trip,” says the northern-accented narrator, an announcement that rather undercuts it own intended message. And few drivers, affiliated with the British military or otherwise, could watch the material that follows without speculating on the host of false moves that could result in an involuntary extended stay on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain.
You must never pull off at a rest stop. If you break down on the highway, you must accept assistance only from Allied drivers. When saluted by any of the Soviet officers inevitably encountered along the journey, “you must, irrespective of your sex, status, or form of dress, return his salute.”
“Should you be spoken to by a Soviet or East German national,” the narrator explains, “you must do the following: remember as much detail about the conversation as you can, as well as the physical description, dress, and rank of the individual. Remain non-committal throughout, and do not agree to anything.” (And remember, “you only attract attention to yourself by speaking in Russian to the Soviet checkpoint personnel, so don’t do it.”) These stern warnings evoke the Cold War era as powerfully as the audiovisual production of “Destination Berlin” itself, even in the minds of those who didn’t live through it. Could anyone watching back in 1988 — anxious about just which documents to present at which guard stations, to say nothing of the potential geopolitical consequences of a fender-bender — have imagined that the Berlin Wall would fall the very next year?
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Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities, the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.
My father was in the US Army 1960–62 stationed in Germany. He was there when the Berlin Wall was being erected, and went through Checkpoint Charlie. A truly amazing time in history.
Was stationed in Germany from mid 88 until mid 90. Made the Helmstedt to Berlin run more than a few times. Checkpoint Alpha and Bravo! Due to our security clearances, we could only go to E. Berlin for 6 hours a day and had to be in full class A uniform. The Russians at Checkpoint Bravo were always friendly and courteous. East Germans on their side of Charlie were arrogant bastards…LOL
What a great piece of history. Thanks for writing this up and posting the video.
In 1988 in West Berlin I met some American tourists who had driven there from West Germany. They were still upset at being fined for turning off the “Transit” autobahn by mistake after misreading the signs.
I read that the East German border guards at the West Germany/ East Germany border crossing would record the time that tourists crossed and telephone the details to the guards at the far end of the Transit route in Berlin. If the tourists had taken too long, they were fined for straying off the Transit route. If they had arrived too quickly, they were fined for speeding!
I hitch hiked to Berlin from Hanover in October 1960. Four ladies in a Volkswagen gave me a lift. They told me they had been born and raised in Berlin and never intended to live anywhere else. We arrived some time after midnight. I spent the night in a Police station. The police provided me with a bed in an open cell after I explained that I did not have enough money for a hotel. At dawn when the officer who took me in went off duty announced that I would shortly see the sun rise over Berlin. He took me to a youth hostel. I spent a week in the city and made quite a few walking visits past Brandenburg Gate into the East zone. The wall went up the following year. There were lots of ruins in the East right up to Brandenburg Gate. West of Brandenburg only Kaiser Wilhelm Kirche was a deliberate ruin. It was left that way as a monument to the bombing.
In summer 1989, I was driving around Western Europe, with the future Olympic track cycling champion, Chris Hoy, (who was only 13 at the time), and his Dad, Dave, attending and racing at international BMX races. We had a few days between races free, so we decided, (I believe slightly on the spur of the moment), to drive to West Berlin for a few days. I have no recollection about how or what kind of visas we got at such short notice, we as far as I recall, it seemed fairly easy. We drove the 100 miles or so across East Germany with no incident. Whilst the video suggests that you couldn’t stop enroute, I have a strong recollection of stopping at a fairly rudimentary service station, just off the autobann, where we got food, (which I seem to recall was fairly basic), as well as being very amused by some of the Trabi cars in the car park, and I took a photo of Chris in front of one. We certainly felt that East Germans as using this service station as a way of gaining as much Western currency as possible.
We arrived in West Berlin by mid afternoon on a beautiful warm summer afternoon, hoping to find some cheap hostel accommodation for a couple of nights. However, when we enquired at the Tourist Information Office, we were advised that, as the German schools had just broken up for the summer holidays, we would not be able to find accommodation, and would, unfortunately drive back to West Germany from whence we had come. We phoned ahead to book a Youth Hostel just over the border in West Germany, but were told that they had a strict curfew at 10pm, and if we didn’t get ther by then, we wouldn’t get in. We therefore had a very quick look around Berlin, which I seem to recall, included looking at the Brandenburg Gate, and the River Spree, I believe behind the Reichstag, where we saw East German border guards patrolling with guns in boats, close by, which had a profound effect on the 22 year old me.
We then quickly got back into the car to start, what felt like a long drive back to the West German border, and our accommodation. However, about half way along the autobann westwards, we saw some temporary reduced speed limit signs, and we, along with a large number of other cars, were signaled off the road into an adjacent layby. We were then parked up, at the side of the layby, and given no information, for what seemed like an age, (perhaps 45 minutes). I eventually got frustrated, particularly because we were starting to panic about not getting back to the border in time for our accommodation, so I got out of the car and walked up to the Police minibus, and knocked on the door, only to find that the East German Police officers were playing cards inside, and didn’t appear best pleased to be interrupted. I tried to explain in a combination of rudimentary German words, signing and English, that we were in a hurry, and needed to get to West Germany as soon as possible. They effectively ‘palmed me off’, indicating that they would come over to our car shortly to sort us out. I went back to the car, and waited for what was probably another half hour, by which stage, I suspect that it was between 8.00 — 8.30pm. A couple of to Policemen eventually came over to the car and told us to pay, what I think was either £100 or 100 US dollars. I initially tried to tell them that we didn’t have that much money, but it became clear that they weren’t budging. We had a conflab and between Dave Hoy and me, we managed to ‘cobble’ together the required amount. We paid the money, and they eventually let us get on our way, however we knew by this time that we stood very little chance of us making our 10pm deadline at the Hostel in West Germany. We drove as fast as we dared, but we also knew that we ran this risk of breaking the speed limit and being pulled over by another group of Police.
Needless to say, by the time we drove the remainder of the East German leg of our journey and got through border control, we were at least half an hour late for the Hostel. We knocked on the door, in the hope that we might be able to seek their sympathy, but there was no response, so we ended up having to sleep in the car in Hostel car park.
Whilst, in many respects our trip to Berlin was a bit of a disaster, it did provide a real insight to the times, and gave me uniques memories, particularly given that events of just a few months later, in autumn 1989, which I have been trying to explore in most recent visit to Berlin, a mere 36 years later.