WEBVTT

00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:13.520
The year is 1961; Construction of the Berlin wall,

00:00:13.520 --> 00:00:16.760
one of the most spectacular turning points in the exhibition

00:00:16.760 --> 00:00:19.880
with the so-called tank confrontation

00:00:19.880 --> 00:00:24.560
in October 1961, where American Soviet tanks

00:00:24.560 --> 00:00:27.280
faced each other at Checkpoint Charlie.

00:00:27.280 --> 00:00:29.480
Chancellor Adenauer already feared

00:00:29.480 --> 00:00:34.280
the outbreak of nuclear war in the event of another confrontation.

00:00:34.280 --> 00:00:39.760
How did contemporaries prepare for this feared outbreak?

00:00:39.760 --> 00:00:41.880
The government had a bunker

00:00:41.880 --> 00:00:44.000
built in a former railroad tunnel,

00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:47.000
20 kilometers south of Bonn.

00:00:48.080 --> 00:00:52.040
This is furniture from the so-called presidential suite,

00:00:52.040 --> 00:00:54.680
a sofa and a stand lamp.

00:00:54.680 --> 00:00:57.800
This bunker was built to provide refuge more than 1000 people

00:00:57.800 --> 00:00:59.800
who would have administered the country

00:00:59.800 --> 00:01:02.520
in a nuclear emergency.

00:01:02.520 --> 00:01:04.640
But there were also other things

00:01:04.640 --> 00:01:07.840
in order to prepare the population for nuclear war,

00:01:07.840 --> 00:01:10.680
the Federal Ministry of Food prepared

00:01:10.680 --> 00:01:15.000
an action called “Aktion Eichhörnchen”,

00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:17.920
where they prepared the population

00:01:17.920 --> 00:01:20.360
to accumulate emergency supplies.

00:01:20.360 --> 00:01:22.600
There were also educational films about

00:01:22.600 --> 00:01:25.400
building private bunkers or

00:01:25.400 --> 00:01:29.880
even a preparation to issue brochures

00:01:29.880 --> 00:01:32.960
and in these brochures was then exactly specified

00:01:32.960 --> 00:01:36.760
for how long a stockpile had to be created

00:01:36.760 --> 00:01:41.840
to survive two weeks in the greatly feared nuclear war.

00:01:41.840 --> 00:01:43.960
The fear of nuclear war was

00:01:43.960 --> 00:01:47.120
in the Federal Republic of Germany and also in the GDR

00:01:47.120 --> 00:01:49.880
one of the determining things in the daily politics

00:01:49.880 --> 00:01:51.840
and the respective governments tried to

00:01:51.840 --> 00:01:53.560
prepare the population for it.