Cool Moments in History: The Great Escapes of East Berlin

fiveboringgames (65)in #history • 7 years ago

A few of my favourite escape stories from the cold war.

A Windy Ride

http://justacarguy.blogspot.ie/2015/07/heinz-meixner-defects-from-east-germany.html

When Austrian Heinz Meixner was working in East Berlin, he fell in love, but heartbreakingly they could not get permission, to marry, and emigrate to Austria. No problem thought Heinz, he went out and rented a red Austin Healey Sprite convertible (just like the one pictured above) and removed the windscreen. He then squeezed his would be wife behind the seats, and soon to be mother in law, into the boot/trunk.

Plan A was to drive through Checkpoint Charlie using his valid passport and visa. Unfortunately the missing windscreen was suspicious enough to the guard that he decided to search the rest of the car. So why did he remove the windscreen? He needed to for Plan B.

Plan B was simple yet beautiful, he floored it! Without the windscreen the car just barely fit under the barrier and the family drove to freedom.

The Leap of Faith

http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/

Likely a picture you have seen before, of Conrad Schumann, at the age of just 19 Conrad was an East German soldier guarding the construction of the 'Berlin Wall' that had only begun three days previous on the 13th of August 1961. So at this point all that stood between him and a life in the West was a two foot high, coil of barbed wire. An obstacle, that as the picture shows, he did not let stop him. One of the reasons for the fame of this moment is the fact that we have video footage of it, and here it is.

The Tunnel of the Unbowed

http://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/fluchten/180926/der-senioren-tunnel-gelungene-tunnelflucht-von-glienicke-nordbahn-nach-berlin-frohnau-5-mai-1962

In May 1962, a tunnel that has become known as Der Seniorentunnel or 'The Senior's Tunnel' was dug by a group of senior citizens at least one of which was in his 80's. The tunnel which led from a chicken coop was 160 feet long and 6 feet high. When asked why they had made it so unnecessarily tall, one of them said