Spoiler: You just have to read that if you are interested in younger european history. Before 63 years the communist's decided to build a pretty wall in my town. The official reasons was to "Prevent cheap workers from the western areas invading the glorious east-german economy (...)", also "protect the citizens in the GDR from the aggressions of the West" (...) (...) and show of the urge of the sowjetunion to protect her allies (...) (...) (...) Funny thing is this propaganda-blabla also included to protect brother-countrys like the Ukraine in the case there are marching in bad nazis from the USA. Today we have found out dividing a nation is short after genozid and destruction the worst thing you can do to the people. Even today our silly medias divided "east" and "west" Germany in political reports and analysis for no reason (for short: West germany is rich and arrogant, east germany is poor and ultra-right in their standarts). But back to the point. Maybe you ask yourself how you get people from one formal nation to build a border and shoot against another (like Moskow tried again to archive with badly failed indoctrination in east-Ukraine). There are a few tricks to gain that goal, and they was more or less successfull used from the sowjets. Of course the soldairs of the NVA ("nationale Volksarmee/national people-army") get influenced with a worldview were "the west" sending army's of agents trough the antifashism-protection-wall (the glorified name of the deathzone) which killed poor citizens to gain "informations about economy and military" (there is a common propaganda-book from this age, "Die Nacht der Bewährung") and the border need "protection". The real reasons was of course the huge among of east-german refuges which tried to travel to western area like my grandfather (he was one of the countless farmers which tried to rebuild the farming-economy after the war but got eaten to much shit from the communism ideology like lost his property), others just runned for herl life because the Stasi (shorting "Ministerium für Staatssicherheit" , the follow-organisation of Hitler's famous Gestapo). The GDR was not a "lowpoly dictatorship". The regime killed hundrets of people and damaged the mental healthy of thousands with organisations like the "Jugendhof" (they used hungar to keep teenager in line, in "regulary" prisons they used also sleep-prevention and other methods). It was not enought to be a "good" communist to have peace from the regime, corrpuped officials also let you get arrested because privat reasons. I had a few advantages with my researchings, because there are many formal NVA-soldairs and a few formal "Border-Protector" (army and border-troops was two seperate unit's in GDR) in my social area. Short after the closing of the iron curtain the "border-protectors" had the habbit to indeed shoot if they got alarmed until they found out it hit mostly civil people, womans and in some cases even childrens (and not armored, bleed-thirsty agents). After that they was mostly mental garbage (my father meed one of this guys later in his NVA-Company after this guy got moved from the border with/because his mental troubles). A political official from the SED ("Sozialistische Einheitspartei"/"socialism unity party") tried to talk sense in this stupid shooting-order but got cornered with questions and fleed from the disscusion (common event). I meet another guy from the formal border-troops later which explained how you get teached from your comrads after ariving at the border. There was one important task during alarm and spotting a refuge: Wait a few seconds until he is away and then fire and empty you ammon to the place where the officials can later see his foodprints (if they found out you have not shooten you got eventually a holiday-travel to Bautzen, a formal KZ which was used further from the communists). He had luck because some of his comrads was old friends (normaly the gouverment pretend to team up border-soldairs which know another to make them distrust another more, in some cases they killed another because this). Because "teachment" like this we had in Berlin a case for example with a ferry which escaped to the western costal of the Spree - after get shooted from different machine-gun's with more than 5000 shots (and zero letal hit). It was (in many cases) a bit like the gladiator-fights in Rom, mostly show of for the hardcore-communists. During this time my father had to learn what the sowjet image of "protection" contained, he got after Presidend Reagen's speech the order to build special shelters (Missile-shelter "Ladeburg" in the north of Berlin, one of many) to continue missile-coordinaing and shooting after the totally destruction of the GDR-area from both sides (the crew's for the shelters had the mission to die after two weeks, they even trained to destroy their equipment before that). Before the Ukraine-war i have doupted some of his storys from the russian military which would have no problem with waste huge amongs of own soldairs. I have put stuff he has keeped from his NVA-duty-time in this collage. Why the NVA-troops weared a uniform similar to the Wehrmacht he don't know anymore, but the political official had a answere during training - he just forget the bullshit. I guess a rabbit is fitting for this topic, despite rabbit-holes are not 30 meters deep, are not fethered and have different shelling-surfaces. Why do I write all this stuff? I guess mainly because there is a raising number of people - born after 1989 - which have a naiv picture of the Sowjetunion and the GDR. There are sentences like "In the GDR people was safe" or "more free like today" which give me a lot to think.