'Prost', Billy, though we pronounce it as if it was spelled 'Proost' that is with a very long sounding ooo...

Greg, many myths from both sides in the Cold War surround that event.

One of 'our' myths I have mentioned above: 40 soldiers have not been executed but we still have a memorial for them.

The main myth from the other side (besides lying about the number of executions) was that it was an imperialist backed counter-revolution. It wasn't. The West has been as much surprised as the East. A spontaneous demonstration against lower wages in which at a later time some political slogans mixed like 'free elections' and, worse, "the goatee must go" (Goatee= Ulbricht).

Some innocent persons from West-Berlin who just happened to be at that time in East Berlin went to jail for many years, for the regime needed some visible counter-revolutionaries. Anyone makes a good presentable counter-revolutionary with the appropriate amount of pressure.

The event of June 17 1953 have been used, of course, by the West, but they have not been triggered from the West.

Speaking about British people, a famous non-folkie, Winston Churchill, is said to have done all he could to prevent any Western help for the uprising. He considered a united Germany to be more against British interests at that time than some dozen dead workers in a communist state.

That was the start of an unspoken agreement: Do within your empire whatever you want and let us do in our whatever we want. We'll condemn your actions in the harshest words possible but we won't act.

Wolfgang