They Built A Hot Air Balloon In Secret And Flew Their Families Over The Berlin Wall At Night

Cold War 1979 | East Germany Escape | Iron Curtain | Hot Air Balloon | Berlin Wall | Strelzyk Wetzel | Cold War Escape | East Germany Cold War On the night of September 15th, 1979, two families drove to a forest clearing in East Germany with a homemade hot air balloon hidden in their cars. Eight people. Four children. One balloon that had never been tested at full load. They had 18 months of secret construction behind them. Two failed attempts. The Stasi closing in on their address. They left their houses that night with minutes to spare — one family locked the front door from inside and climbed out a window. At 2:26 in the morning, the balloon lifted off. Twenty-eight minutes later, they landed in a field in Bavaria. A police car approached in the dark. Peter Strelzyk walked toward it and asked the officer one question. Are we in the West? This is the story of the most audacious escape across the Iron Curtain in Cold War history — two working-class families from a small city in East Germany who decided that the wall, the wire, the watchtowers, and the fifty thousand armed guards were not enough to keep them from their children's future. Built from firsthand accounts, Stasi declassified files, and the Wall Museum Berlin archive. — CHAPTERS — 0:00 — The Night of the Balloon 2:00 — What East Germany Actually Was 5:00 — The Decision at the Picnic 13:00 — Building the Impossible 21:00 — The First Attempt 30:00 — The Stasi Closes In 38:00 — The Final Flight 44:00 — Are We in the West? 48:00 — Next Week — SOURCES — Wall Museum Berlin — Balloon Escape archive Günter Wetzel personal account — ballonflucht.de Night Crossing — Disney 1982 Balloon — German film 2018 Stasi declassified files — BStU archive Subscribe to OKO: War Declassified — new episode every week:    / @okowardeclassified   #ColdWar #EastGermany #BerlinWall #IronCurtain #ColdWarEscape #HotAirBalloon #StrelzykWetzel #ColdWarHistory #Declassified #EastGermanyEscape