Dan Snow's History Hit - Escaping the Berlin Wall

Episode Date: August 13, 2021

There were many attempts to escape over and under the Berlin Wall but Tunnel 29 was highly unusual for tunnelling into East Berlin rather than out to the West. Led by Joachim Rudolph, who had himself escaped to West Berlin in 1961, a group of students and refugees tunnelled into the eastern half of the city in an attempt to rescue friends and relatives. This was an extremely perilous mission with the risk of death ever present from the tunnel collapsing or the Stasi discovering their work. Even more bizarrely the whole endeavour was funded and documented by an American film crew as NBC bidding to win the ratings war back in the USA. To tell this heroic tale Dan is joined by broadcast journalist Helena Merriman. Helen presented and produced Tunnel 29 for the BBC and has written a book, Tunnel 29: The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall, all about this incredible escape.

Some things just take too long. A meeting that could have been an email, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers. Except with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. Hello everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. We've got an extraordinary story on the podcast now of people tunneling under the berlin wall but not tunneling to get out of the eastern block like so many tunneling in to east berlin west berlin is trying to open up a route through which people could escape could reach the

west i'm talking to helena merriman she's done a great bit of journalism for the bbc you may have heard her wonderful podcast tunnel 29 she's now got a book out about it as well. And it all just came from a throwaway comment, as you'll hear, in a website or an exhibition she was checking out about the Berlin Wall. And she liked it as an inspiration to all of us who work in the world of creativity and content and finding new ideas. They are out there. They are out there. And she pulled on this particular piece of string and my goodness what she found is completely extraordinary it was great to have helena on the podcast she's a superb journalist even before her new smash hit podcast now she's got

the book in the series under her belt too she's going places helena is going places like joaquin rudolph did the 22 year old to escape who escaped East Germany in 1961 and then decided that he'd pick up a spade and tunnel back into the place he just escaped from extraordinary actually just the civil engineering project was very dangerous and of course you're tunneling somewhere where you could be shot on site by hostile police state if you want to listen to these podcasts without any ads on the front or the middle or the end i completely understand that i got no problem with that we do those ads because we've got to pay for the burgeoning history hit business which is quite exciting we're launching

gaming site we're obviously making tv shows all the time all that money goes straight back investing into everything we're doing here if that's any small comfort probably isn't anyway so we do the ads for that reason but you can get ad free versions of this podcast if you go to historyhit.tv that's the website historyhit.tv you get the world's best history channel i think i'm biased but there we are so lots of tv shows on there and you also get a thousand podcasts all without ads on frankly a lot of different topics i mean we're racking them up we're racking them up. We're racking them up. So here is the brilliant Helena Merriman talking about tunnelling. And if you like the sound of it, you want to go and check out the back catalogue. It's all at historyhit.tv. Enjoy.

Helena, thanks for coming to the pod. Thank you. It's an honour to be here. Well, listen, like millions of people all over the world, I've been listening to Tunnel 29, the true story of an extraordinary escape beneath the Berlin Wall. Sorry to be boring, but like, how did you come across this story? This is just brilliant. Oh, thank you. So I am a BBC reporter and I've worked all over the world for about 10 years, particularly in the Middle East. And in so many of the countries that I was reporting in, there were walls that were either being built or that had

been there for a number of years, either dividing areas within cities or running along borders. And I came across a statistic that apparently now a third of the world, so around 70 countries now have some kind of wall or barrier. So walls are in fashion. And I then became sort of interested in thinking about the wall of all walls, the Berlin Wall. And while there's a lot of commentary about the politics behind these walls, what I was more interested in is what happens when you suddenly build a wall and divide a city? But how does it change that city? How does it change the feel of it? And I came across a line on a Berlin Wall memorial website,

which talked about this group of students who dug a tunnel under the Berlin Wall, not from East Berlin to West Berlin, from repression to freedom, but from the other way around, from West Berlin to East Berlin. And I was fascinated by that. I was fascinated by the idea of people risking their own lives to do that. But also the TV angle to this story was the other thing that really fascinated me that you had this TV network from the US getting involved making this very controversial decision to fund the tunnel and I decided I wanted to try and tell this story. Talk to me about the wall going up was it as dramatic as you hear was it just sort of one day the barbed wire went up and families were split and people doing the shopping in the wrong part of town like how did that happen?

Yeah the speed of it I mean i think there were a few things that marked the berlin wall out from other walls in history one that it's one of the few walls to be built to keep people in not out but the other two things are the speed with which it goes up and the secrecy so it happens on this one night in the middle of summer and the mastermind behind it walter albrecht makes sure it happens on this day when most ber middle of summer, and the mastermind behind it, Walter Ulbricht, makes sure it happens on this day when most Berliners are out of town because he doesn't want anyone causing trouble. I think it remains one of the most audacious plots government has ever carried out against its own people. So the planning begins months beforehand. So he puts this

plan to build a wall to his Soviet commissars. And at first they say, no, you can't do this. You know, we're trying to persuade the world that communism is better than capitalism. But if you build a wall to lock people in, no one's going to laugh at us. It's obvious people are desperate to leave this sort of communist paradise. But eventually he persuades them because East Germany is essentially falling apart. You have millions of people leaving because they want a better life. And by 1961, something like a fifth of the country have left. Three million people, bus drivers, doctors, nurses, teachers, you have whole towns without a single doctor in because they're all just leaving.

And so Walter Ulbricht, who has helped to create this new country, East Germany, he knows that if this new country, East Germany, he knows that if this carries on, the country is just going to fall apart. So he comes up with this plan. Right, let's just lock them in. Then they can't leave. And so first he has to get the building material. He buys barbed wire, even some of it from Britain,

because he doesn't want people to suspect what's going on in East Germany. He collects it all. And American spies take photographs of building materials all along the border. And at one point in one of the files I discovered, someone said, oh, you know, it looks like building materials for a wall. And they conclude, no, it can't be. No one could be crazy enough to try and build a wall. It must be something else that's going on. So he builds up all this material and he then choreographs this perfect plan. So it's the 12th of August, it's Saturday, it's the day of the annual children's fair, so people are out on the streets eating ice cream,

they're watching fireworks. And then in another part of East Berlin, you have these senior commanders having this incredible buffet. They're eating caviar and smoked salmon, all these kinds of things you don't normally get in the East. At 8pm, they open these sealed envelopes, and that's the first they even hear of what's about to happen. And at the same time, we have tanks rumbling towards Berlin, ready to cut anyone off who might try to escape. And then Walter Ulbricht, he's holding a little garden party at his woodland

retreat, and he's invited all his senior ministers there. And none of them really understand why they're there because he is terrible at small talk. He doesn't really have many friends. He's not the party hosting type. And he then invites them in to the living room and locks the doors and tells them about this plan. That's the first they hear of it. And it's then that the commanders kick into action and you have soldiers driving up in vans along the length of the border, which at that time is a border that people could cross between. And they're unfurling coils of barbed wire, 150 tons of it, concrete posts, they're hammering them into the ground. It starts at one in the morning, they switch off the

street lights so that no one can see what they're doing. And they string up the barbed wire all along the border, sealing off crossing points. They seal off train stations. And so by six in the morning, people wake up and the barbed wire is there. It's that quick. And that's it. I mean, was there special pleading? It's like, hang on, I've just literally come over here for a party. I've got no clothes. Yeah, you're exactly right. That kind of thing happened. People who were caught on one side of the border, that was it. And there are some heart-wrenching photos of children on one side of the border who are now suddenly separated from their parents. And some of the border guards that were stationed along that barbed wire to protect it, some of them were lenient and would allow

them to cross and would help them over. But others didn't. Others said, no, you have to stay. There are stories of women who had newborn babies being looked after in West Berlin hospitals, because they were better than hospitals in East Berlin, who were now suddenly separated from them. You'd have a mother who had just given birth maybe three weeks before, and her newborn baby in the West, who then didn't see each other for the next 30 years. Boyfriends and girlfriends on different sides of the wall, grandparents and their grandchildren. And six in the morning, people wake up and they're stumbling along the barbed wire. They don't understand what it is at first. People thought it was just a temporary structure. And then gradually, as people begin to realise, on the eastern side, they start collecting on

the border. Some of them start shouting, protesting. They're pushed back with tear gas by border guards in East Berlin. On the West Berlin side, you have these young guys on motorbikes. They drive up to the border. They start shouting at the border guards on the other side. And West Berlin policemen push them back because they don't want a big border dispute. And then you have people rushing onto trains from East Berlin thinking, OK, if I get on a train, then I can make it to the other side. But when the train gets to the final stop at the border, they're all told to get out. And there's this one little account of an old lady who wanders up to a border guard and says, oh, when does the train to West Berlin leave?

And he laughs and says, that's it. You're all in a mousetrap now. And then all people can do, because they can't even phone people, the few people who have telephones try to phone their relatives to say what's going on. But they can't because Walter Ulbricht has even cut the phone lines. So in the end, all they can do is just wave. And there are these extraordinary photographs of people standing on their cars on their Trabants, waving to people on the other side, as this wall just gets bigger and bigger. At what stage does it become clear that the authorities will use lethal force to stop people crossing? Yeah, it's a good question. So I mean,

the first day, a lot of people escaped the first day, even ironically, some of the people building it, the construction workers realise they're essentially building their own prison. So some of them take their chance when they're not being watched by members of the secret police who are spread amongst the people building the wall to make sure they all carry on doing it. A lot of border guards escape. And there's that incredibly famous picture, which I'm sure you'll know, of Hans Conrad Schumann, who was a border guard, who, like many of the border guards, was brought in from the countryside, specifically by Walter Ulbricht, who thought they were less likely to be soft on East Berliners who might want to escape because they were from out of town.

So he's a shepherd. He's brought in to suddenly guard this border that he doesn't agree with. And he watched as some of these children were trying to be with their parents and jumped the barbed wire but weren't allowed to. And he thought, what am I doing? I cannot stand here and guard this barbed wire barrier that I don't believe in. And so four o'clock in the afternoon, he's wandering along the border. He tests it with his foot. And a photographer on the other side sees him. And photographers in the West were getting a lot of money for photographs of this new barrier

that had appeared. And this photographer watches this border guard pacing up and down the barbed wire. And suddenly he sees him run forward, leap onto the barbed wire, jumping over it. His arms are outstretched as though he's in flight. And the photographer takes the picture. And that becomes possibly the most iconic picture of the time of the Berlin Wall, this border guard leaping to freedom. And that creates headlines all over the world. So those first escapes were pretty crude. People just jumped the barbed wire. But over the coming days, as the wall becomes bigger, when President Kennedy doesn't step in to do anything, the American tanks never come, the British don't do everything, and Volta Ulbricht has the confidence to fortify the wall with concrete blocks. And it's at that point that there are more border guards defending it. Some of the tripwires start coming in. And Volta Albrecht then issues this order that basically the VOPOs, the border guards, can use lethal force to stop

people escaping. And some of the first people start to be killed when they're trying to escape. So this was one of these Cold War moments that we're so familiar with, Cuba, Berlin airlift. It was a potential moment of standoff where had the Allies escalated, it could have been one of those touch points of war. Yeah. And it's really interesting going into the details of the few days after the Barbed Wire appears and President Kennedy in the White House trying to work out what to do. At first, he's caught completely off guard, as everyone was. Most people were on holiday. Harold Macmillan of Britain was out grouse shooting. President Charles de Gaulle of France was off in his holiday retreat.

And President Kennedy, who'd only been in office for about six months, he was out on his cabin cruiser just off Cape Cod. I mean, everyone just bang on brand there, right? Grouse shooting, south of France, Cape Cod cruising, you couldn't make it up. Playing to type. And President Kennedy's on his boat, on his cabin cruiser, the Marlin, and he suddenly gets this message, got to come back, Berlin's divided, got to figure out a solution. And they have no idea what to do, because he'd been dreading something like this happening ever since he'd come to office. And he'd been told, look, Berlin is the flashpoint. If a nuclear war is to begin,

that's where it's going to begin. But his options were terrible because the Soviets had many more soldiers there. So if he started a ground war, he knew that the Americans would lose. But he didn't want to start a nuclear war over Berlin either. So his choice was sort of defeat or total nuclear annihilation. And so when the barrier goes up, he asks his advisors to look through files on Berlin to see if there's any advice or any research on what to do. And someone actually finds a file in one of the White House drawers, which is entitled options for the division of Berlin. And it's empty.

There's nothing in there. So they can't work out what to do. And Albrecht is waiting because in a way that first barbed wire was almost an experiment because he thought there was a very good chance that the Americans might send tanks. And Kennedy had an advisor, General Clay, who to West Berliners was a real hero. He was behind the Berlin airlift and he was pushing Kennedy to do something. And he later said that he thought that the Berlin Wall could have been prevented, the later formation of it, if Americans had sent tanks to the border

because these Germans had essentially broken the agreement that they'd made at the end of the Second World War. But they don't. So the wall gets bigger and bigger and stronger and stronger. they don't. So the wall gets bigger and bigger and stronger and stronger. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. We're talking about tunneling under the Berlin Wall. More coming up after this. Could have been an email, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers. Except with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca.

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a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Now, what about daring attempts to cross the wall let's come to yours what period how many years later so this is pretty soon after yeah so those first attempts are pretty crude people just leap over the barbed wire some people just get in vans and smash through there's a story of a couple with their three-year-old baby and they drive up to the border in a dump truck full of gravel and they just smash through. Other people swim through the river spray. But each week it gets harder to escape because there are more border guards, there are more weapons, there are dogs. They soon create a death strip, which is an area of land that runs along the border that's

covered in sand so that you can see the footsteps of anyone. It's tripwires. And each week, each month, it gets harder and harder and harder. So Joachim Rudolph, who was the main character at the heart of Tunnel 29, he himself escapes with a friend by crawling through a field one night with the watchtower in. It's very dangerous, but they managed to make it through. And then in March 1962, so this is six, seven months after the creation of the Berlin Wall, he decides to join a group of friends who were digging a tunnel from west to east Berlin to help get other people out and that's partly because all the attempts that they've used up until that point stopped working. So at first they get thousands of people out using fake passports, so they get fake passports, people who in the East who look

like someone in the West, they have couriers who smuggle them in to East Berlin, and people use those passports to get out. But border guards soon become wise to it. And they're given manuals by the Stasi showing hundreds of different types of nose or hundreds of different types of eyes or face structure so they can tell the difference between someone in a photo and the person standing before them. So by the time it gets to January, February, March of 1962, people are having to get much more inventive. And that's when they come up with an idea of an escape tunnel, because they think that's now one of the only ways you can get people out, possibly safely without anyone being hurt.

As someone who's done a lot of Second World War podcasts about tundling, tundles are pretty difficult to build and maintain, just as importantly. What's the soil like? What challenges do they face? That is a great question because really that's their first question. Where can they dig in Berlin where the soil won't fall in on them? They're very enterprising. They managed to borrow some maps from a friend who works in the West Berlin city administration. And they pour over these maps looking for places where

they're not going to dig into the water table, because that's their main fear, drowning. As I'm sure you've discussed with your Second World War tunneling, that that was one of the big problems. You have water coming in, people drowning, all the tunnels just collapsing because the earth doesn't hold firm. They scope out various sites around the border and they eventually hit on this particular street, Bernauer Straße, because the soil is quite firm there and because they won't dig into any of the city's tram lines. So they decide that's the perfect space. But it's a crazy idea in some ways because this is the street that the wall runs along.

And it's busy. In the West Berlin side, it's packed full of people shopping, going about their business. It's almost like digging under Times Square in New York. It's kind of crazy, but they love it, partly because it is crazy. They think, who would suspect that anyone would dig a tunnel so close to the wall? And that's the other advantage. The starting point isn't too far away from the end point. So they find this factory, which makes cocktail straws, and they decide they'll start digging there. They talk to the owner, who happens to be someone else who's

escaped from East Berlin. And then they find a cellar in the east to dig to, which is around 120 metres away. And how does it go? The first few weeks go well. They go to a cemetery, steal some wheelbarrows and spades. They, one night, go to this cellar. They start hacking in. You know, they've got no idea how to make a tunnel. They watch a few bits of footage on the TV about other tunnels that have failed and get a few ideas about how to dig it.

But they smash through the screed and the concrete. They all didn't get a few ideas about how to dig it, but they smashed through the screed and the concrete. And the first problem they hit is the fact that the clay is so hard and solid. They realize it's going to take them weeks to do it and they don't quite have enough money. And this is where this TV network comes in, because they then make this extraordinary connection with this dashing reporter called Piers Anderton, who's working in Berlin, who's being tasked by his boss, who's this American TV producer called Reuven Frank, who works for NBC. And Reuven Frank says to him, we need to find a better way of telling people in America what's going on in Berlin. We need to find a way of making this story interesting and moving people. And what's really

interesting about this time, so this is the early 1960s, TV has really just suddenly got going. It's turned from this medium that people weren't very interested in before and no one thought would last because it was so cumbersome. The only way you could film was with wind up cameras with a big turn key and you could only film for a minute and a half before you had to wind the key again. But now suddenly the technology had advanced. 17 million homes had them. And after the Second World War, people in the US were really interested

in what was happening in these cities. You know, they had sons or brothers or husbands coming back from places like Berlin, and now they were interested. They were interested in that story. So Reuven Frank, he's now this hotshot TV producer and he's desperate to win the ratings battle between NBC and CBS. And so he wants to come up with a story that will win the ratings, but also help people understand what's happened in Berlin because he was there the day that barbed wire goes up.

And so his idea is let's try and find people who are plotting an escape and film them as it's happening, every twist and turn. And so he, decades before his time, had seen that if you were to create a drama to follow a news story in real time, and that has all the qualities of a fictional drama, that's how you have the power to move people. I mean, this was essentially the birth of reality TV. So this reporter connects with these students in West Berlin, and they make a deal, one of the most controversial deals in the history of TV news, which is that NBC will pay them $7,500, which will give them money for tools and food and to recruit new diggers. And in return, the diggers will let them

film everything. You say Routy TV, but is it documentary really? He wasn't kind of interfering and changing things and dodgy edits or was he? Well, by the end of it, he does. He has very strict rules at the start about what he will and won't get involved in. But at the end, they find it very hard to keep their feet out of it completely. And so by the end, he's very much like a Love Island producer who wants to have his beautiful sewn up ending. And he suggests various things, nothing that would change the narrative. But he suggests particular scenes for people to go to. There's a party at the end.

I don't know whether I should give it away at this point. But he does have moments where he does step in in a controversial but very modern way. People are obviously going to read your book and binge your podcast, as I've been doing, but just quickly, they succeed, right? They actually tunnel through and do manage to bring people out from the East. Yeah, they do. And it's amazing, partly because the thing they're terrified about is the tunnel collapsing. They're terrified also about the Vopos above their heads, who they know will shoot them if they hear them.

But their main fear is the Stasi, because there are spies absolutely everywhere in West Berlin. And it turns out that one of the diggers is a Stasi spy called Siegfried. He's a gay hairdresser. He's recruited by the Stasi. He's spying on this group of diggers. And the first time they attempt to rescue people, he betrays them. And the Stasi are waiting above ground. And when people from East Berlin come to the tunnel to crawl through

it, they arrest them one by one. They're put in prison, many of them in solitary confinement for months. So it goes horribly, horribly, horribly wrong. But they try again. They're incredibly brave. They try again. And they're beset by leaks, which they managed to fix. And then in September 1962, they try again. And it's this incredible moment where they send this very brave woman in, Ellen. She's the girlfriend of one of the diggers. She has to go in and give everyone the code words in East Berlin so they know the tunnel is ready. everyone the code words in East Berlin so they know the tunnel is ready. And then one by one, they crawl through this tunnel and 29 people escape. NBC filmed the whole thing. And it becomes this extraordinary documentary that even President Kennedy watches and apparently has moved to tears

and the US screen the film all over the world. And it has this huge political impact. And that film's available? Yeah, the film's available. I mean, you can watch the film on YouTube so you can see the film. There's no sound because the tunnel was so tiny. It was almost the size of the coffin. So when they're filming it,

there's no room for a sound recorder. But there's this one moment where they take down a mic. Yeah, I can't get down there, mate. I can't get down there with my mixer. Yeah, exactly. I've worked with a few sound recorders all the time. It's not good working conditions, Dan. You wouldn't like it.

But there's an amazing moment where you hear their recordings where they do take down a microphone and you can hear people walking on the street just above them you can hear the clip clip clip of a woman's high heels

and the tram is running along the street they were that close to the surface Unbelievable The thing that's been really exciting about writing the book

and people will be able to see it if they buy it, was the Stasi files that any journalist's dream to get hold of that kind of minute by minute information on the recruitment of Siegfried Usser, the operation, the escape. And the great thing about having it in a book as opposed to a podcast is that you can then reprint those files. So I've got some of the handwritten letters that Sieg Frieduser wrote when he became an informant. It just really brings that to life. So many of those files were very revelatory on the Stasi and how they work and their practices and their tactics that are still used by secret police forces all over the world today. How many BAFTAs, Oscars, Pulitzers and Emmys are those Stasi files going to produce? If you're a creative person, listen to this,

get yourself over there and start milking those Stasi files. Exactly. I mean, just on this one spy, Zee producer, there were over 2,000 of them. And so his recruitment, when he was first interrogated, he was caught trying to smuggle cigarettes into East Berlin. And I've got a 15-page report from that first interrogation and recruitment. And it's fascinating. It's fascinating seeing how they work, that not only do they ask questions about his hobbies, his job, how much he earns, his mother, his father, where he was born,

which was all part of their policy of just knowing as much as possible. They ask incredibly intrusive, intimate questions about his sexuality. So the minute they find out that he's gay, they know that that's their way in. That's their way to blackmail him into becoming an informant. They ask him about the men that he likes, his favourite sexual positions, how he finds people. I mean, almost shaming questions, so that you see him and you read in this report how he crumbles in the face of it. You see the stars, you strip him down till he feels sort of degraded and shamed. And then they build him up again and say, well, join forces with us, we'll make you feel strong again.

And it's that psychological relationship between Siegfried and his handler that runs the course of the book that I found possibly most fascinating to really get into in the book. Wow, that is intense. Thank you very much, Helena, for coming on this podcast. Thank you. How can people get hold of this book? It's out now. And it's called? It's called Tunnel 29, and there are some fantastic waterstones window displays with photographs. Were there tunnels number one to 28? No, this was called 29 because 29 people escaped. That's how many of them get their name.

There was the Senior Citizens Tunnel, which was dug by a group of men in their 80s. And what I love about that tunnel was they made it particularly tall because they wanted their wives to leave East Berlin with dignity and not have to crawl. There was the Baker's Tunnel, which was dug from a bakery. So they're all given different names, either numbers or names that refer to the people who escaped.

Well, thanks so much and congratulations on such a brilliant podcast book. Thank you. And soon to be TV series made by the producers of Chernobyl. That's being written right now. And yeah, hopefully we'll come out in the next couple of years or so. That's mega. Oh my God, so cool. Okay, well,'ll come out in the next couple of years or so. That's mega. Oh my God, so cool.

Okay, well, congratulations. Thank you. Thanks for coming to the pub. Thanks so much for having me, Dan. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country,

all were gone and finished. Thanks, folks. You've been a wonderful episode. Congratulations. Well done, you. i hope you're not fast asleep if you did fancy supporting everything we do here history hit we'd love it if you would go and wherever you get these pods give a little rating five stars or it's equivalent a review would be great thank you very much indeed that really does make a huge difference it's one of the funny things the algorithm loves to take into account. So please, however, don't do that.

It can seem like a small thing, but actually it's kind of a big deal for us. So I really appreciate it. See you next time. Some things just take too long. A meeting that could have been an email, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers. Except with Fizz.

Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca.