Checkpoint Charlie

This guide to Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin opens with an ordinary drive to the opera on October 22, 1961, when American diplomat Allan Lightner was stopped by an East German guard and refused to show his papers. It follows how that single dispute escalated within days into General Lucius Clay bringing American tanks to this spot, with Soviet tanks answering in kind, ten a side, barrel to barrel on Friedrichstrasse. You'll also hear about the wooden guard hut itself, a replica of the one now sitting in a museum across town.