[Travis McGee]

In 1980, while in the active duty Navy, on orders, I took a train from West Germany through East Germany to West Berlin with my small unit.

Even at the height of the Cold War, with armies and navies facing off on a hair-trigger world-wide, with land and sea-based ICBMs ready to launch, the treaty guaranteeing free transit of anybody and anything (NATO military supplies, whatever), was not hindered.

We were just passengers (in civilian clothes) on a multiple-times-daily regular train running from West Germany to West Berlin across USSR-controlled Warsaw-Pact Communist East Germany.

The RR corridor ran all the way through very serious chain-link barbed-wire fences.

But no Godless Communists, East German or Soviet Russian, every tried to stop that train.

Not since the Berlin Airlift (1948-49), and the subsequent treaties guaranteeing the free access RR corridor.

Say what you want, but the godless atheist Warsaw Pact Communists never cut off the trains running across Communist East Germany to West Berlin.

Now, anybody who thinks Lithuania, "The Mouse that Roared," woke up and decided to pull this on their own....I have this great tunnel in Florida to sell you.

[datura]

You should have hung around later in Berlin - I was stationed there from 82-85 - Infantry.

We had lots of run ins with the Soviets.

I rode both the US and British duty trains to the West, often. Our battalion deployed to the Gap that way, as well as Hohenfels and other garden spots. The Brit train was great - early morning run, excellent breakfast..

[Zhang Fei]

[Even at the height of the Cold War, with armies and navies facing off on a hair-trigger world-wide, with land and sea-based ICBMs ready to launch, the treaty guaranteeing free transit of anybody and anything (NATO military supplies, whatever), was not hindered.]

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It was only rhetorically on hair trigger alert. Everyone from top to bottom understood that starting a nuclear war meant killing their own families and friends. That’s why nothing happened despite repeated opportunities to do so. People like having family and friends around, and no amount of attempted brainwashing will change that. They’ll say all the right things to keep their jobs. But when ordered to do exactly as they’re told, many will balk.

Note that during the confrontation over access to Berlin, the *Russians* cut off road and rail access. Did Kennedy nuke Russia? No - he mounted the Berlin airlift. The Russians don’t need to mount an airlift to resupply Konigsberg, although they could certainly do so - they have access from the sea.

[EEGator]

I stated the US was behind Lithuania’s actions, and was deemed an idiot conspiracy theorist.

[Does so]

The U.S. Navy didn’t allow me (landbased) within eight miles of East Germany’s border.