August 13, 1961 –
The city of Berlin split itself right down the middle on this date.
The Cold War was running pretty hot back then. The Russians were just nasty. They were so evil they convinced East Germany to shut West Germany out. East Germany locked the Brandenburg gate and threw away the key. Then, just to be absolutely safe, they built the Great Wall of Berlin, and assigned evil socialist soldiers to shoot any West Germans who tried to sneak into East Germany.
Oddly enough, no West Germans tried to sneak in.
The soldiers, being evil socialist bastards with guns and therefore needing desperately to shoot at someone, therefore shot at East Germans.
About a year later, for example, on August 17, 1962, 18-year-old Peter Fechter was shot by East German guards as he tried to cross the Berlin Wall into West Germany. He bled to death in public view.
The guards (Rolf Friedrich and Erich Schreiber) who shot him were tracked down and convicted of manslaughter thirty-four years later.
Moral: you might think you can get away with shooting people just because you’re a heavily-armed socialist bastard living in an evil socialist regime propped up by an evil socialist empire – You can run. But you can’t hide. (It may seem like you can, but just wait.)
Eventually John F. Kennedy announced that he was a jelly-filled donut, Ronald Reagan asked Mr. Gorbachev to tear down this wall, Boris Yeltsin rode on a tank, and there didn’t seem to be any real point in having a Wall any more.
So they tore it down.
And so it goes
The Haus of Dcaligari 