Doomed to Fail - Ep 83 - The path to freedom: The Berlin Wall

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

Today we will tell stories of people escaping East Germany into the West. There are lots of tunnels, jumping out of windows, a terrifying homemade hot air balloon, lots of hang gliders, and even a trapeze artist!Imagine a wall being built in your city over night and tomorrow you can't see your family, get to your job, or go to your doctor, and then that wall stays up for almost 30 years. It's wild, and in the span of history - it just happened. Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

Hi, listeners, the Farrs here. Before we start today's episode, you'll notice that Taylor and I are talking about a previous episode that we're going to release on Monday, February 5th. That topic was a revisit of the Alamo conversation that ultimately segued into a broader conversation about politics and belief systems and everything else. we decided after recording and re-listening to it that if we want to have a nuanced conversation about those topics and we can have that in a more structured way

and it would make a lot more sense to the listener and so we decided that this week we're going to kill that episode we're just going to have Taylor's episode this week and with that being said we're going to go ahead and start the intro and start the Berlin Wall conversation The matter of the people of the state of California versus Ornthall James Simpson Case number B.A.019.

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. And we are back from an exciting episode on Monday,

which I'm sure half of you all totally well, probably 80% of all hated. But we're back regardless. We're trying our best. Look, we're trying to be human, which being human means we have, like, weird moments. And, you know, maybe we just had one. I don't know. I don't know.

I guess we'll learn from you guys. But, yeah, thanks for joining back, Taylor. We're doing the fail. We're going to discuss different topics. It's going to be wild. It's being kooky. It's be crazy. That's my new intro.

So, Taylor, I think today is going to be your episode. I've been sipping on a little glass of wine this whole time. Is that more tequila? Yeah. Like, my problem with tequila, which is so, like, it seems contradictory to everything I learned in high school, but, like, I just find it so easy to drink. It's that weird. So I, the first time I ever got drunk was on tequila, and I vomited. And I didn't drink tequila again for, until I was probably 30, probably till 30.

Yeah, that's fair. to take the taste just reminded me of being sick and i kind of do it but now i think tequila's one of the cleaner things to drink like it just feels very clean and yeah ice and yeah so yeah cool cool cool cool um so i promised that i was going to talk about germany again today because i am hired to talk about america so let's talk about germany and what are their immigration policies is an immigration story, so I'm proudly brought this up. So I was thinking about it because of the Alamo, thinking about borders and border crossings. And let's talk about the Berlin Wall and some of the greatest escapes from East Germany. That is awesome. Do you know I've been to Berlin?

Cool. I have to. I love Berlin. It's one of the coolest cities. And it is so fun. The start contrast between East and West is remarkable. Wild. Yeah. Yeah, it's wild. So let's talk a little bit about that. I did want to, at first, I wanted to talk about Chuck Point Charlie. Have you been to the Checkpoint Charlie Museum? Yep. I wanted to talk about that, but then I found some other stories that I wanted to talk about too. So now it's just about like daring crossings of into West Berlin from East Berlin. Love it. Is, that our day. So here's the dish on the Berlin wall, which I'm sure you've heard of. But it was up from 1961 to 1989. And it also, it also, also, all. always blows my mind when I think about how Berlin is like an island in the middle of East Germany, you know? How so? Like it's, it's not like on a border.

It's in the middle of East Germany, but there's a wall around it, you know? So it's like, yeah, yeah, like Austin, if Austin were, like, if three quarters of Austin belonged somewhere else, you know, that you have to, like, fly into it, like a train into it. It's not like right next to the border between East and West. So it's sort of it's up in the middle of East Germany. And it's great. So it's after World War II. It's 1949. Germany is divided into two countries between the allies.

So remember, the Soviet Union was an ally during World War II. And so they got East Germany, which was the German Democratic Republic, the GDR. And that was controlled by the Soviet Union. West Germany was a federal federal. Republic of Germany, the FRG, controlled by the United States, scraper in France. It's technically an occupation. So they were like cleaning things up, putting people on trial, doing all these after war things. But technically East Germany was going to be a Soviet Union's going to be charged for East Germany.

They're going to be Soviet. Make sense? So in the 50s, the Allies started to head out. The occupation ended. And Germans started to flee to the West in droves because in East Germany, like you were saying, like, you know, it was a very, it was like a Soviet block. The technology was not keeping up. Like, it was a very sad place to live. People wanted to leave. And people started to leave for better freedom, better economic opportunity. And they started to go to the West. And they were like, we have to do something to stop this. We're going to stop this from happening. We're the Soviets were. Yes. They're like, we don't want anyone, we can't have everybody leaving. You know, we need to stop them from leaving. And what? of the places that they could do that, like, very physically was in Berlin because Berlin was just like a weirdly divided city in the middle of East Germany. So crazy. And so they could. So the border between East and West Germany, like all throughout Germany was guarded, you know,

by guards and there was like, you know, fences and barbed wire and guard towers and all those things. But in Berlin specifically, they literally built a wall around, you know, three quarters of Berlin. And that was the West and the rest of it was, was the East. So they started to build the wall on August 13th, 1961. And, wait, when did they take control the territory? Like, how many years between they owned it? A while. So it was 1949 when the war officially was like ended and then that part of it went to the Soviet Union, the rest of it went to the allies or the other allies. So were that 12 years without a wall? yeah 12 years without a wall

and people could like go back and forth you could have like you would have family that lived on the other side of Germany or of Berlin you could just like you know use your passport it's like a different country so you have to like you know go in and whatever but you could it wasn't like forbidden you know so um a man named Walter Ulbricht led the construction of the Berlin wall um on June 15th 1961 so two months before the wall started building, he had a national press conference where he said, no one has the intention to erect a wall. And that was the first time anyone had even heard the word wall. And then he built one two months later, which is hilarious. So the first thing that happened was barbed wire and a lot more

guards than before. And it happened like literally in the middle of the night. Like in the middle of the night, the East German soldiers went and started to build this place. like build these, build these walls. They were first made out just like fences and barbed wire. But it was like you would wake up one morning and you couldn't go see your mom for 30 years. You know, like she lived on the other side of the wall. You couldn't go see her. I read a book in, I have some like stories that are like anecdotal, but about like a city like totally cut in half.

Like maybe one day you can't, you can't go to work. Like you can't see your family. You're just like totally separated from people on the other side of the city. I read a book when I was in high school, in German, I think it's very, I read it, I tried my best, but it's called I'm Kirsten Enda, Derisona in L.A., and it's the, on the short end of the Saudi Street because sometimes some streets were cut in half. Like your neighbor would be in West Berlin and you were in East Berlin. And like your life changed dramatically based on where they put that wall. Eventually they would like demolish buildings and like to actually build the wall and the space between. So it was like wall. an area called the dead zone that you would like have to you could like technically run across if you're trying to run across it and then a fence and then the guard tower so it was like a kind of like a moat dry you know like all around um but they had knocked down buildings to do that that that was um when i was in germany that was the weirdest part about that experience was if you're ever in berlin and you look on the ground every now and then you'll see like these checks on the ground like these bricks and certain And it takes, it took me a while to realize that that was where the Berlin wall was. And when you see, like, how? Like, like, one bisects, like a fire hydrant and then goes into the side of a building.

It's like, I'm like, what the fuck? Like, it's so weird. And there's some people who, like, got out of East Berlin by climbing out their back window. You know? Yeah, because the wall was right there. yeah so they were like they would like the walls like through their house technically you know like the invisible walls like through their house so they would climb up their back window because they couldn't go out there front and then they could like run and be it be in west Berlin but you have to leave everything you have to like leave you know like no one moved to West Berlin they like ran there you know so crazy um JFK sent Lyndon Johnson to try to calm people down I don't know how calming he was he doesn't feel very calming but like Lyndon Johnson came and was like everybody calmed down everything's gonna be fine um some of like key dates just for the Berlin Wall in general

in 1963 Kennedy came so it's two years after the wall is built is when he made his same speech he said If I'm a Berliner which means I am a donut

You would say Is that really? Is that really? Is that true? Ein Berliner is like a pastry but like you say I'm a you say in German you don't say

I'm and you say I am English you know what I mean Look, it's, I don't know. I think so. I think it's true. It's cute. But the point was, like, you know, this is, you can have a wall around a city, you know.

In from 1969 to 1971, the chancellor tried to improve relations, but it ended in an agreement called the Four Power Agreement. So that the allies were able to, like, keep Berlin at all, which I think is just obviously also just, again, crazy because it's in the. the middle of East Germany, just like sits there and is like different, which is wild. In 1987, Ronald Reagan did his famous tear down this wall speech in Berlin, and the wall fell in 1989. It fell on November 9th, 1989. For some reason, David Hasselwold was there. Singing. He was wearing a piano coat, I remember. I just, what? Unbelievable. And I mean, it was, So when I was in Berlin, taking a tour, and they were telling us about 2000. Then I went again like, yeah, yeah, I think that's lost to know in Germany.

No, I drove through to whatever, but I was in Berlin in 2000 and I mean, how fucking fun were that they have been. You get to run across the wall and see people you haven't seen in 30 years, you know, like, you get to like do all these things that you weren't allowed to do. And even like coming from East Berlin to West Berlin, like seeing the technology and the building, you know, being like, oh my God, like that all this stuff is happening over here. And when I was at an abont tour, they said that, like, they just announced it, like, on the news. They were like, by the way, the wall is out open. And everybody was like, what? And then they, like, ran outside, you know, people were just, like, screaming and, like, crying and losing their minds because they wanted to, like, be together. And in 1990, Germany was unified on October 3rd.

So that's when I stopped having it east and a West Germany. So was, sorry, sorry, can you repeat this part? like so was was Berlin like so it was just Berlin no it wasn't just Berlin right no the country's divided in like East Germany

but East Germany is smaller but in the middle of East Germany is Berlin and so Berlin was so it cut across all of Germany and also Berlin the wall yeah the wall was like just in Berlin

there were borders everywhere they have to like like a border crossing with like a fence but like the actual wall was like just in Berlin because they had to divide an actual like living city in half. Yeah. That's crazy. Okay. You know? Like you said, like if like one day they were like, oh, you can't go to like this part of the city,

there's a wall there. You know, you just like. So that's where when I went to checkpoint Charlie, that's one of the fact toys I learned was, I mean, it was literally like your mom. mom is on the other side of this like I forget what it was like 18 foot thick wall like your mom is like right there but you can like and people would try to make their escapes and yeah and it's like I think esteems in a couple movies where it's like you know you wake up and you're like my girlfriend's over there you know and you're like what like I can't go to school

I can't go to my job I can't it's on the other side it reminds of what we just talked about right like humans are always going to try to persevere for what's better for them and to think that like you're like man it is right there like yeah right there like i just have to get over this thing and it's right that's going to be that's going to be crazy to actually think about like i went there yesterday and now i can't go for 30 years like that's crazy yeah did you buy a chunk of uh the wall I did not know. I did see at Eleanor Roosevelt's at Hyde Park in New York

when I went they have a part of the Berlin Wall there like a statue like it's about like unification and people and all those things and they part of it there. But it's beautiful because on the east side you couldn't get near it because it was like guard points, barbed wire, fence, dead zone wall. But on the west side you could touch it. So it has a lot of like the beautiful graffiti

and paint and paintings and all those things because on the west side it was just there the east side was where it was like mostly dangerous. Yeah, I remember seeing it because they had the better artwork. There's a lot of shitty artwork on the Berlin Wall. They have some like really nice artwork

and that section is like hordened off and people can look at it. Yeah, there's parts of it that's like still up and you can see it right? Like you were saying and then on the ground there's that like brass line on the ground right? Yeah. It shows you where it was.

Yeah. So let's talk about Checkpoint Charlie for a little bit. So it's the Cold War. Obviously, the city is divided. And Checkpoint Charlie is the main checkpoint for like diplomats and Americans and, you know, Britain, British and French who are going through. There's a big sign there that says you were leaving the American sector because it's like a little like island of like the diplomacy where you can walk through. It's just called Checkpoint Charlie because Alpha Bravo Charlie. It's the C. It's like the third. Oh, oh, okay. That's why. and a lot of like you a lot of the allied forces couldn't use any other checkpoint they could only use checkpoint Charlie so it's one of the most used it's on the corner of Friedrich strascha Zimmerstrasse and Maurerstraza Maurerstraza just coincidentally means Wall Street and then they built the wall but like because like you know how Wall Street in New York is because that's where the wall used to be wait what wall like there was a wall around New York to like protect them from like invaders in like native people and other people who would like want to come back and

the seriously that's why it's wall street yeah and you're kind of wall in the in the lower protect like the batteries where you could like the battery park is called the battery because that's where you had like your cannons and then the wall protected the rest of it can you do an episode on this sure that is the battery wow okay all right cool um and so yeah so that that's where Checkpoint Charlie is. So just some fun, some fun crazy stories of people, whether at Checkpoint Charlie or not, you know, jumping over to West Berlin. So on August 15th, 1961, this is two days after the wall started being built. An East German soldier named Conrad Schumann was guarding the fence. Him and his unit arrived at 4.30 in the morning. So he'd been there all day, like all night. They did. didn't really know what to do and they were kids he was 19 you know he's like this kid and his superior officers are like you stand here and you guard this fence against enemies of socialism you know like we don't know what to do like they had guns they don't like should I shoot someone

like what do I do so the it's starting to they have it's just the fence in the barbed wire at this point and he started to be like did you ever see that um what is it called the mitchling web look where they go are we the baddies have you ever seen that one it's like the what It's a sketch show called the Mitchell and Webb look. It's a sketch show is from the UK. It's so funny. There's one where they are Nazi soldiers, like in a dugout. And they're like, hey, did you notice that like our hats have skulls on them?

And they're like, yeah. Like, are we, are we the baddies? It's so funny. But like, this guy starts to be like, I'm on the wrong side. Because people from the West Berlin start yelling at him. You know, I think he's just doing his job standing at this thing. He saw a woman hand flowers over the fence to her mother. because it was her mother's birthday

and she looked at him and she was like mom I'd come over but these guys won't let me you know it's like just the very beginning of this and so around noon a crowd of West Germans tried to move in and they had to like push them back and Conrad starts to get really scared so he sees this

part of the of the barbed wire that he can push down when nobody's looking so he starts to push it lower and lower and someone from the West German side goes to talk to him and he yells get back really loud. And he goes, I'm going to jump. And he whispers it to the guy. So the guy in the West German side goes and gets the West German military van to get him. And Conrad jumped.

And that's the famous picture of the soldier jumping over the barbed wire. Have you seen that picture? No, but about to. Conrad Schumann, S-C-H-U-M-A-N-N, jump in Berlin. It's incredible. Wow. So he, there happened to be photographers because it was such a crazy thing that was happening. They have it on video. There were photographers, but they got him jumping over the wall. They rushed him into a military van, took him away.

He moved to Bavaria. He worked at Audi for 30 years. After the fall of the wall, he tried to go back to East Germany and see his family, but they considered him a traitor and wouldn't talk to him. And he dealt with a lot of depression and mental health issues for the rest of his life. And he died by suicide in 1998. but isn't that picture incredible 56 years old

it's a really it's a really great encapsulation of humanity of I'm on this side and I'm told to do a job and I don't think that's the job I should do so I'm going to trade her to the people going back to our previous conversation like it's all about perspective

and it's all so fucking complicated is he a traitor is he not a traitor is he a good person or a bad like it's just like it's just so there's so much nuance to it but man i can't imagine i can't imagine being like i and said 19 years old yeah there's a there's a picture another one there's him jumping and there's him in the van he's just like a baby he's just like a little he's a kid you know making this decision to leave everything he's ever known in like a split second crazy so that was in that was like two days after so it's still 1961 A lot of people have tried to cross the wall with some more fun stories.

On December 5th, 1961, 27-year-old Harry Dieterling, he was a train engine driver, and he was driving a train, and he was like, this is the last train to freedom. We are crashing through the wall. And he could, like, defer the train, because it went over train tracks, obviously, you know, like there were trains. So he was like, he had on his train, he had 32 people on board, seven of them were part of his family. and he called it again the last train to freedom he said we're going he pressed the gas as hard as he could and crashed through the wall most people were super excited the train conductor so his boss and seven other people had not known about the plans and they ran back to east Germany but everybody else ran into the west and you just ran to the west and you just ran and you were there you know yeah I imagine I mean it's a border right like it's a border and so if you get there you're just there. Like you can't shoot into there because then you're killing a citizen of that side, I assume. So he barreled through the wall, which is exciting.

In May of 1962, there was a tunnel called the Senior Citizen Tunnel. A bunch of people in their 70s and 80s dug a tunnel. And it's unprecedented in that it was a tunnel that had a really tall ceiling. So a lot of the tunnels that people dug, you had to crawl through, which makes sense because that like stays time. but these like 70 and 80 year olds built the tunnel and they got to west berlin and when asked why they built it so so high one of them said we wanted to walk to freedom with our wives comfortably and unbowed which is very brave because their rules are in on august 17th 1962 this is actually sadder this is not has it doesn't have to do with the bar an 18 year old kid named peter fector tried to escape his sister lived in west berlin him and his friend helmut helmut Kulbeck had a plan. So they hid near the wall and they went to run across it. They're like, we're going to run from, you know, from the fence across the death zone and climb the wall and get

out. They did it in the middle of the night and Helmut made it. So Peter's friend Helmut made it across and he was fine. He did it. But Peter was shot in the pelvis right at the foot of the wall. So he made it over the fence across the death zone and then was shot in the pelvis and he laid next to the Berlin wall kind of entangled in barbed wire and bled out for like an hour and no one could help him. The people on the West Berlin were afraid because they were afraid to get shot. So they threw him some bandages. He couldn't reach them. He was just bleeding out. On the East Berlin side, they didn't help him. He screamed for an hour. There were hundreds of people watching this happened. and he died 35 years later in March 1997 two East German guards Rolf Friedrich and Eric Schreiber were tried for Peter's death and they were sentenced to 20-month probation and they said that they were sorry you know also they were children everyone was in this story you know so Peter bled out and died they the West Germans got his body after a couple of hours and took him back to West Germany so now remember the poll so the poll

a certain height. In 1963, a man named Heinz Nexner and his girlfriend and his mother wanted to flee. So he measured the pole. It was 37 and a half inches from the ground, so very low. And so Heinz went to every rental car place he could find until he found the lowest car he could find. He ended up with an Austin Healy Sprite. It's like a little convertible car. He took off the windshield. He deflated the tires a little bit. So it would be even. lower. He drove. He put his girlfriend in the backseat. She lay down in the back seat and his girlfriend's mother in the trunk surrounded by bricks to make a little bit heavier and to protect her from any gunfire. So he drove his checkpoint Charlie was talking to the people. They were like, give me your papers, all the things. And then he just gunned it. And he went, there's a picture of this as well. He went underneath the pole. He had to duck down and went all the way through. And he said, quote, I figured it would take the guards three seconds to draw their weapons. And once they knew what I was doing, I knew Marguerite's mother was protected by the bricks.

I felt I could make it about three inches to spare. And now we can get married. So he just drove really, really fast, as low as possible. This is incredible. I know this car. I'm looking at the pictures. I actually know this car. And nobody today, much less back then, would look at this car.

without a windshield and think that's normal. Like, it is so obviously supposed to have a... Dude, there's a picture of him bending his head down Yeah. Going under the... That's incredible.

Isn't that incredible? And then there's also a picture that they probably pose for later but that shows his girlfriend in the back and the mom in the trunk. Oh, my God. That's unbelievable. Yeah.

I know. In October 22nd, so this year, An American diplomat named Alan Lightner wanted to cross to go to the opera in East Berlin, which is usually okay. But it got like weird and there was a standoff and there were 10 Soviet tanks and 10 U.S. tanks just staring at each other for days, you know, which is like a big standoff. And then eventually had to like call everybody down, but everybody was like going to murder each other. In 1963, a trapeze artist named Horst Klein climbed all the wires because they wouldn't let him be in the circus in East Berlin. He was like, all I know how to do is be in the circus.

They, like, stop circuses or something. And so he, he trapezed over all the wires across it. And he made it. He fell, actually fell off the wires into West Berlin. He broke both of his arms. And usually in, like, a couple articles I read, that was kind of where it ended. But then I found an article in the New York Times from 1964 that said his wife kept writing him letters saying that, I can't live without you.

And so you have to come back. So he went back to East Berlin. He was sent to prison. and she got divorced and got remarried which is like super come on you could just lunch at West Berlin but yeah no

it's bummer so a couple of things that happened that was like what happened in like a weird kind of like normal way is like one guy he saw a bus going like across the checkpoint really slowly so he just like stood next to it

and walked with it and then was there you know like he was like some of it was like opportune like no one's looking i'm just gonna fucking go you know life was so much easier for cell phones and CCTV cameras yeah totally he just like you people just like kind of accidentally walk in be like shit i'm here you know and then like be excited and let go and people west berlin would like help them you know in west germany um in 1964 there was another another famous tunnel um it was called tunnel 57. It was built from a bakery in West Berlin to an outhouse in East Berlin. And it was

145 meters long. It was the longest and the deepest tunnel. 35 West Berliners, including a man named Reinhardt Fuhr, who ended up being an astronaut school. Aren't that many astronauts at school. End up being an astronaut. And many students from the Friah University in West Berlin helped build the tunnel from October 1964, from April to October, 1964. So what happened was the people in East Germany, they would get to this outhouse. And Reinhard, who turned out to be a human astronaut later in life, would tell them where to go and tell them to get in the tunnel and get them to do there. Unfortunately, one of the people that was in the group was a Stasi agent. And so they were only able to get 35 people through.

They thought they would be able to save, like, 120 people. but it ended up being less than that. There was a young man who was an East, an East German soldier named Egon Schultz. He was 21. He was killed by friendly fire during the, when they finally caught them doing it. But he was held as a hero in East Germany for a long time.

And also just a baby. Yeah, like these guys are so young. I know. They don't know what they're doing. So there are, a couple other things there's a family oh on july 28th 1965 a guy named he was an engineer and with him and his family he had figured out how to he tied like essentially a rope to a hammer

and threw the hammer over the wall and these zip lined out of East Germany that's pretty smart yeah so him and his family he had his his son and his wife go first and then he went because a lot of this time like you're bringing your whole family with you you know like you want everybody to leave um people like didn't really know like it was almost like I don't believe this is happening so he just like got through like he used a bicycle wheel axle to you to on the zip line and just like went um so they made it I can't imagine risking my life is one thing but it's like I'm gonna risk my wife and my two kids it's like 300% yeah crazy and like this

So another story is in 1979, there was a hot air balloon. It wasn't in Berlin, but it was like across the border. And there's a couple of movies that are about this one that are made in like the 80s. But in the town of Hosnack, which is in East Germany, there were two men, one named Peter Strelznick and Gunter Vetzel. So Gunter Vetzel is still alive. He was born in 1955. Peter Strasich was born in 1942. He died in 2017.

But they saw a TV show about hot air balloons, and they were like, huh, interesting. And that's, this is cool. And the first thing they did is they thought that they would build it out of cotton. And so they had to drive really far because there's also like, this is the, in these places like Soviet East Germany, like your neighbors tell on you. You can't do anything suspicious, you know? So you can't just buy a ton of cotton, like a ton of fabric. People will be like, what are you doing? A ton of helium.

Yeah. So they drove to another city and they bought, they said they were in a camping club and they were building tents. So they bought all this cotton. And the gondola that they used is so fucking terrifying. It is sheet metal and then holes on the four sides of the square. And then there's like a rope around it every five inches. It's like four ropes.

I'm good. It's like very, very, very, very unsafe. And it's like filled with gas, you know. Oh, my gosh. I know. So they tried the first time with the cotton. It didn't work. The cotton burned.

And it wasn't like, it was too porous. So they tried again. They got, they settled on synthetic taffeta. They used a flamethrower and propane tanks to make it work, which is like bananas. And so fucking scary. So on July 3rd, 1979, the Strelznick family tried to escape. It was 1.30 in the morning. They get onto the balloon.

they go up into the clouds you know they're moving into west germany they end up landing 130 meters from the border but they're still on the east side they're not sure where they are but they find a piece of litter that's like from a bakery on east germany so they know they're in east germany still and they spend nine hours like slowly leaving they abandon the balloon spend nine hours slowly leaving and they get home they call in sick to work and they're like oh we're sick you know like they would have been found out like they would have known so they had to like return all these things happened. So that was their second balloon.

But then they're like, shit, they found the balloon. They know that someone's trying to escape via a balloon. So they had to really quickly make a third balloon. And so their third balloon flight was on September 15th, 1979. Both of their families were on the balloon. Again, this like terrifying piece of metal in the air at 2 a.m. So it was Peter and his wife. They were 37.

their son Frank was 15. Their son Andreas was 11. Gunter and his wife were 24. Their son Peter was five and their daughter, or the son Andreas was two. So like you're holding a freaking baby on this turbine thing up in the air. It's just so scary. The first thing that

happened, they went wrong. They cut the lines at different times. So the balloon tilted and then part of it caught on fire. But they had a fire extinguisher, so they put it out. So the balloon had holes in it and kept catching on fire in certain ways. They had really gun it with the fire. They did do the flame thrower. as high as it could possibly go and they could keep going keep going they were spotted by both

the east and west german forces but like no one really knew what to do and they ended up landing 10 kilometers from the border well into west germany um peter uh guunter wetzel broke his leg other than that everybody was fine and um the families their families in east germany were arrested because they were like you must have known eventually they were let they were let out by amnesty international so eventually they were let out. But they landed in Bavaria and they stayed. After 1990, the Stralzaks went back to their old home, to their original home in East Germany,

but the Wetzel stayed in Bavaria and they lived there for the rest of their lives and they're... Incredible. Yeah. And then a couple other ones. Two more, just quick fun stories. So in the 1980s, a woman named Utah Fleck, she was a woman from Checkpoint, Charlie.

She tried to escape her children. She didn't live in Berlin. She lived outside of Berlin. in East Germany. She had sole custody of her daughters. And so she was going to go through Romania and have some fake passports made. This was a nice and 82. And a Romanian official was suspicious of her and they were taken away at the airport. She was in the largest of your kids. She was in prison for four years and she got released in a deal with the allies. But her daughters were given back to their father who told them the mother was an enemy of the state. You know,

he was very much like your mom is bad for wanting to leave. So Utah, stood outside of Checkpoint Charlie for six months in 1984 with a big sign that said, give me back my children. And she stood there every day to protest to get her girls back. And in August of 1988, her daughters were granted visas because they had been secretly trying to connect with her this whole time anyway. And she, they moved to Bavaria and they live there now. In 2009, she was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Approach of Germany by the German

president, Horace Kroler. So, you know, she's definitely lauded as someone who was very brave for all things that she tried to do, especially how much she worked to get her kids back. And one of the last ones, in 1989 in August, there's a few months before the wall fell. Two dudes.

Wait, I thought the wall fell on 88. I thought it fell November 89. Yeah, November 89. Okay, sorry. All of a second. Um, okay.

But a couple months before it fell. Yeah, it fell November 9th, 1989. But one of the last ones. So a lot of people, you know, got out via, like, hang gliding, the hang glided over the wall. But in this time, these two brothers named Ingo and Holger, Bethka, had two light aircraft, which were, like, motorized hang gliders. And they flew over the Berlin wall into East Berlin. One of them stayed in the air and kind of, like, circled the area. the other one landed and they grabbed their brother because they had a brother who was left in East Germany and they grabbed the brother, got him back and went back to West Germany, landed their hang glider planes, abandoned them, jumped in a car and drove away. It took 20 minutes, which is very exciting for them. They were able to just like flyering at their brother. Over time, 5,000 people escaped over the wall. Some of them just ran. Some of them, you know, jumped out of buildings, dug tunnels for hang gliders, just, you know,

pushed the gas on their car as fast as possible and went, I don't know if you remember, but like when I went to checkpoint Charlie, there was a car you had to find the person. Do you remember that? There was like an old fashion car and it said find the person hidden in here. Yeah. And we looked everywhere and it was a person. It was a mannequin, obviously, but they were in the seat.

Like inside of the seat itself, like the cushioning had to been taken away and they were like in there like all riled up. well, it rolled up in there. A lot of people got to that way. Yeah. But that was a fun thing. So, yeah, my, I just end with you don't take your family across a border unless it's dangerous to continue to live, live in the place that you were in before, you know?

So a lot of people did try to leave. I also know this like man that I used to work for who was like a delight in like of the weirdest way, just like a really weird guy. And he was, he, no. but he was from East Germany and he was like a tank commander in the German army because you have to do you have conscription you have to do either um either like uh work at like a nonprofit or work at or do the army after like 18 but he remembered having like his first like Coca-Cola you know things like he was the kid when the wall fell but he remembered like seeing the things that were happening West Germany being like whoa you know so it's not like that far away like it feels far away but like he He's our age, and he lived in East Germany, and the wall fell when he was like five. No, it's wild. The fact that it happened when I was alive, I would have been four years old or five years old at that time.

It's crazy. It's crazy. Like, it's so, it is a, it actually is like kind of a good follow to our last episode of like, almost universally people are going to want to do what is in their family's best interest yeah the difference of like how you get there or what you think that is um i can't imagine where you are yeah yeah i can't imagine doing what those people did like i feel like i feel like you be one of the ones i'm like i'd rather just live a life of just abject sadness and poverty than

try to run the gauntlet to get out of this country. And you look at the people of North Korea who like make it out into South Korea and you're like I don't have that. Like I, that's bravely. It's real scary. Yeah.

Yeah. Or to your point before of like people crossing the rear brand and you know, trying to cross it. I mean, that's, that's its own bravery. So. Yeah. You just want everyone wants it's best for their family

yeah you know yeah it's better how you achieve it I guess cool also I have sorry I was thinking I was thinking about

how when I started my podcast I started on that daily podcast about Millay being elected to the president of Argentina and some of those people who are coming up from Texas are walking from Argentina

because how many miles how many miles is it from that's like a human experience that I just like cannot imagine you know it's unreal let's see how long that is let's do

Buenos Aires, to, um, so if you were to walk that, uh, it can't, it won't give you a time. That's how hard it is. Yeah, it won't give you time. It is 14 hours, 10 minutes driving. It won't give you miles, but let's do some rough math. No, that's probably plane. Okay, so it's probably like 7,000 miles. If you do average 500 miles per hour for a plane, 14 hours,

looking at about 7,000 miles. If somebody walking to get across from... How many miles have I walked in my life? Is it 7,000? I don't know. Yeah, it's a... And you don't do that for fun. No, it's a shocking test on the what people will do for a better life to their family.

Yeah. So, and so is the Berlin Wall. And it was in our lifetime. It's crazy. Yeah. Crazy. No, thank you for sharing that, Taylor. I know we've had a few interesting subjects so far this week,

and hopefully we'll continue. And if you all want to hear other interesting topics that come to mind or, I don't know, maybe we just change this into a podcast by immigration. I don't know. Let's not do that. No, I need to, I'm going to find another fucking volcano to talk about. Because no one of the teens about volcanoes. That is that.

It'll be false. Um, yeah, thanks for us. No, this was good. I'm, I'm, it's good. It's challenging and it's good. I'm like a, I'm a real person who's thinking stuff out. And I like that about myself. Yeah. Yeah. We're just people trying to do the best we can. And that's what everybody is trying to do. Like, that's the thing that unifies us. That's why we're not bad or whatever is like, because we're all just trying to do the best we can do with the knowledge we have, with the history we have and the family. we have and that's okay yeah happy anniversary happy anniversary taylor um please write to us at duneafelpod at gmail.com find us on the socials and tell us what you think otherwise we'll join you again next week thank you and one more thing i i'm behind on putting things on youtube and i know that but i'm catching up right now so i will get us up to date on youtube i promise um i did just post our Chris Watts episode and someone commented that they think that his girlfriend

had something to do with it. But I feel like no. But I don't know. I feel like no. That poor woman. That's poor woman, right? I feel so that poor. We follow Amber Frey on Instagram and like she's fine. You know? She's totally fine.

But like it's very strong of her to even like exist on social media. It's definitely that was her fault, you know? Are you by Amber Frye or the other one? Well, I'm saying, I'm talking about Amber Frye, but we follow her on Instagram, and like, I'm very, I am impressed that she doesn't just hide it in the world because, like, she didn't do anything wrong. She thought she was dating someone, you know, whatever. But then the seminar on YouTube was like that Chris Watts was a girlfriend had something to do with the murder of his family. And I'm like, I feel like none of the evidence says that. And also, like, leave that performance alone.

Leave her alone. Like, how horrible. She had to change her whole life. Like, come on. Yeah. But anyways, thank you, Taylor. We'll go ahead and cut things off, and it is cut off as.