What life at the Cold War frontier in divided Germany was really like. Part two in a series of three videos commemorating the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin wall.

 

 

For 28 years, a nearly insurmountable barrier kept people from fleeing East Germany. But the dramatic night of November 9, 1989 saw the fall of the wall that divided Germany. Today, it is difficult to imagine what was bitter reality just over two decades ago.
  
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For the first time, a realistic computer animation reveals the vast security system of Germany's inner border and the Berlin Wall, both of which are recreated virtually in graphic detail.
 
The HDTV computer animation maps out portions of the former borders in Berlin and between West and East Germany in an effort to show what a divided Germany was really like.
 
Today, remnants of the Wall and of the no-man's land that separated East from West are too few and far between for their meaning to be passed on to future generations.
 
Historians and television makers worked together in this Deutsche Welle project to create a detailed reconstruction of the no-man's land from the early 1980s, including new views of the border area.
   
Text and video: DW-TV. Deutsche Welle 2009 - www.dw-world.de
 
With support from the Berlin Wall Foundation and the Hötensleben Border Memorial.