Das Versprechen1995

Narrator:
[first lines - over images of the raising of the Berlin Wall] In August, 1961, the world was already divided. But no one ever dreamt of this long border reaching it's full height. Moscow had the copyright for the concept and execution. West German firms delivered the barbed wire.

German speaker:
An unjust regime committed a new injustice.

Harry S. Truman:
We want you to know that the pledge we have given to the freedom of West Berlin has been...

Narrator:
The West protested. Threatened. Lamented. The wall grew. All arteries between the two halves of the city were severed. And to the people on both sides, the few hundred meters between East and West became the longest strip of land in the world. So began one of the strangest experiments in history. A people once mad enough to want to rule the world, slowly became two peoples. And soon the Wall kept up the illusion that all that divided the German people was a wall.