I folks welcome to Dan Snow's history. My dad was a journalist. I've talked to him the other day and he said he remembers the day on which he realized he was getting old.

And that day was the 9th of November 1989. The anniversary, in fact, this month which I will point out to him. The Berlin Wall was coming down. People climbing onto it and he ran out in the streets of a well-young people in Berlin, everyone running around.

He tried to climb onto the wall. There we go, I'll just hold myself and talk and he couldn't. He thought himself, again old.

So this will be a difficult episode for my dad to listen to because on this episode we're going to talk about the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

What's the trouble about the Reiser Berlin Wall? Because I've got two remarkable witnesses who were there for important piece of history.

I've got Sir Robert Corbyn. He talks about the Berlin Wall from the military perspective. He was a young sublten or a young officer when the wall went up in Berlin.

And Bizarre, he was British military commander in Berlin. The night the wall came down. He tells a very, very interesting story about how he might have helped to smooth the Fall of that wall and avoid nasty confrontation.

He's also going to be hearing from Margaret Hussaini. She grew up in the city. She witnessed the events in the 1950s and 60s. She remembers that wall going up. And she gives a sense of what it was like living that traumatized, divided city. She now lives in London.

And there are other events that people knew at the time history was being made. And subsequently we've had no reason to doubt their judgment. A huge, huge moment.

If you want to watch history documentaries, if you're listening to other podcasts, it's all available at History Hit TV. We've got our own Netflix for history. It's a TV channel available online, like Netflix or any other channels you subscribe to.

You just go to history hit.tv history hit.tv and you subscribe 30 days free if you subscribe today. I met a guy the other day in Italy, stopped me in the street. He said, he loves this into the podcast. He came out.

He just said, look, I'm really sorry. I don't subscribe to the channel. I said, that's okay. Man, don't worry about it. But I like the fact that on these introductions, I mentioned it so many times that people have an unconscious urge to apologize when they see me in the flesh for not subscribing.

I'll just call you out there. I think you're about making that final step. Don't be like the young man I met in Italy. Just go and subscribe. Simple as that. Flip open that laptop. Swipe that little phone you'll listen to some go to history at.tv and you'll eventually can begin.

But the meantime folks, here's the Robert call bit and Marguit Husseinie for this fascinating episode. Enjoy.

So Robert, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Tell me about life as a young infantry platoon commander in Berlin when you were deployed there. What are your memories of it?

It was actually one of the first really important task I suppose I was ever given in that particular role. We were in the fourth God's brigade then my battalion then armoured infantry I suppose you could have called us. I was a wreckie at the Constance platoon commander given responsibility for one of the very first trains sent through to Berlin after the building of the war and my orders were very caretaker this train.

Get it through to Berlin. This was a resupply train for the garrison carrying ammunition and fuel and rations and stuff like that. Take this train through to Berlin and make sure that under no circumstances is it or can it be boarded by people who are trying to get to freedom in West Berlin or indeed looted.

This is what you have to do. And so we set off the formalities with the Soviets and cross the frontier at Helmstedt where we took on East German driver.

Sorry can I talk just briefly there when you say under no circumstances I mean you therefore did have permission to start World War III effectively.

It's got a broad remit.

Well you know it's it's a funny thing it was a terrific responsibility I was a lieutenant then with half my wreckie platoon with me in the guards found at the back of this fairly long train where we had our weapons of communications equipment and so on.

And actually we had a hard time once we crossed into East Germany because the East German driver was determined to really give us grief and he kept on stopping and starting and every time we stopped we had to patrol the train of course to stop those things from happening that I just mentioned earlier.

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