16 ms·

East Germany balloon escape

724 points by robertvc 8mo ago

tobyhinloopen 8mo ago
Poor family members though
- honzabe 8mo ago
  I recently read a book of interviews with people who escaped from North Korea, and what shocked me was the discovery that the relatives of those who escaped are often executed (publicly) and that even children are executed in North Korea. We live in a terrible world. I mean... you expect a book from North Korea to contain terrible things, but somehow it was even worse than I expected.
  - qcnguy 8mo ago
    Left wing thought doesn't contain any philosophy of limitations on state power, so under a left wing regime there is no limit to what it might do. No matter how terrible something is, if it can be imagined they will consider implementing it. To avoid that outcome there has to be an understanding of the flawed nature of government, and from that an ideological commitment to a state limited in power and role.
    - deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
    - olelele 8mo ago
      So everyone not a libertarian is dangerous?
      - qcnguy 8mo ago
        Only if they get into power? I mean what's your reading of the last few centuries of history?
    - immibis 8mo ago
      [flagged]
      - qcnguy 8mo ago
        We're talking about North Korea executing children because their family members escaped. Doesn't get more left wing than North Korea. Not a good look to deploy a stock reply without thinking.
        blahaj 8mo ago
        North Korea is an extremely class based society. About as far away from left as it gets.
        immibis 8mo ago
        I'm not sure you understand the situation here. Everything I don't like is left-wing.
        qcnguy 8mo ago
        [flagged]
        immibis 8mo ago
        > Everything I don't like is left-wing.
        tobyhinloopen 8mo ago
        Your sarcasm isn’t obvious enough
DefundPortland 8mo ago
[flagged]
gnatman 8mo ago
The investment, planning, danger, and dogged persistence… incredible story.
fuckyah 8mo ago
[dead]
VelNZ 8mo ago
The Damn Interesting podcast (no affiliation, just a huge fan) had an episode on this topic if you prefer to listen to this story: https://www.damninteresting.com/up-in-the-air/ https://www.damninteresting.com/up-in-the-air/
- Isuckatcode 8mo ago
  You beat me to it :D love the podcast. Too bad they stopped uploading from a while ago. You got any suggestions of podcasts in similar space? Nothing ever could scratch the itch like Damn Interesting
  - gwbas1c 8mo ago
    "Stuff you should know" and "Freakanomics"
- Waterluvian 8mo ago
  I felt so tense and anxious listening to that.
mkmk 8mo ago
The photo of the balloon here really helps put the story into perspective. https://web.archive.org/web/20190408181736/https://www.museum.bayern/sammlung/geschichten/peter-strezlyk-und-guenter-wetzel.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190408181736/https://www.museu...
- qwertox 8mo ago
  The text in the link is nice to read. I did a Google Translate on it which you can read here: https://pastebin.com/SdkKQkC6 https://pastebin.com/SdkKQkC6
- neilv 8mo ago
  > “Are we here in the West??” Only this one question is asked by Peter Strelzyk and Günter Wetzel when they were in the early morning of the 16th. The "Handmaid's Tale" TV series has a great variation on that moment, which chokes me up every single time. (spoilers in video title) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oKZgXvpm0c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oKZgXvpm0c
  - AniseAbyss 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    - dfee 8mo ago
      [flagged]
    - hopelite 8mo ago
      So turn back the clock to when Hildegard von Bingen was only one of many extremely powerful and influential abbesses that were polymaths and prolific artists and writers and educators of women in Europe? I’ve never understood this mentality that people who read and watched handmaids tale, caused some done kind of weird obsession built on a literal fiction story, a made up story… especially since the reality is not only the polar opposite, but in no place on the planet have things ever been better for any people relative to all other places of their time than in the very European societies and cultures that you types are so suicidally fixated on being destructive of. The irony of the handmaids tale types from my experience is that they/you are, in their/your suicidally manic self-harming obsession, advocates for the spread of Islam in the very western countries that have provided all of humanity all of its freedoms and comforts, which would ironically will lead to an actual handmaids tale type scenario you constantly warn of. Have you ever heard of what the Ottoman Empire did? It makes the handmaids tale sound like a wholesome family dynamic.
nrjames 8mo ago
Disney made a movie about this called Night Crossing in the early 1980s. More recently, there's a 2018 German movie about it called Balloon. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082810/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082810/ [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7125774 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7125774
- lukeweston1234 8mo ago
  The 2018 film is a really good movie, I would highly recommend checking it out!
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 8mo ago
    +1 to this! I wonder if some of the horror in it (the constant threat of the Stasi and its implications) translates well to non-German audiences. In case you're wondering about Germany's strict privacy laws - this is part of why they exist.
    - elzbardico 8mo ago
      Probably this is an also big component in the notorious German preference for cash over cards.
      - immibis 8mo ago
        That was caused by interchange fees, and it has disappeared now.
        dgxyz 8mo ago
        It’s still a thing in some areas from direct experience recently. Hell it’s still a thing with former East Germans I know in the UK. And it’s not about interchange fees - it’s about purchase surveillance. My ex partner wouldn’t even allow location services on her phone to put exif data in photos.
jasonwatkinspdx 8mo ago
My elementary school showed the Disney movie about this at least once a year.
- neilv 8mo ago
  That movie was also all over the Disney Channel when I was a kid. Many other movies have related messages. And much of the public library books were a couple generations old, plus there was the Cold War, which meant lots of exposure to anti-fascism messages, and to anti-Soviet-like messages. So, today, people of a certain age, who paid attention in school, have been programmed that the secret police saying, "Your papers, please" and sending people off to concentration camps, are obviously the very bad guys, and America is the good guys who don't do that. People with that upbringing would see certain textbook political maneuvers and tactics coming from a mile away, and be concerned. To counteract that IMHO great programming, you'd need something extreme, like Rupert Murdoch and others pounding large swaths of the electorate with propaganda for decades -- to get them to support some politicians that are stereotypes we were told for decades before are outright evil.
  - TimTheTinker 8mo ago
    I think a lot of that programming and political action was because at the time there was genuine fear of communism taking over in the US and other western nations (like it already had in Eastern Europe).
    - neilv 8mo ago
      Yes, IIUC, that was one of the things that mobilized a lot of IMHO positive education/propaganda. It may not have always been for the most noble of reasons (e.g., a very wealthy person not wanting to be disrupted), but the fascism-is-bad messages are still great messages. For example, "Don't Be a Sucker" (long, but worth a watch sometime for anyone who hasn't seen it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4
      - 8mo ago
stackghost 8mo ago
>The family members included: > Peter Strelzyk, aged 37 > Doris Strelzyk > Frank Strelzyk, aged 15 > Andreas Strelzyk, aged 11 > Günter Wetzel, aged 24 > Petra Wetzel > Peter Wetzel, aged 5 > Andreas Wetzel, aged 2 Was/is it common practice to omit the ages of adult women in Germany?
- honzabe 8mo ago
  > Was/is it common practice to omit the ages of adult women in Germany? A gentleman does not ask a lady's age.
- lukan 8mo ago
  Not as of my knowledge. Coincidence I suppose, or desire by them to keep it private.
thenaturalist 8mo ago
> East Germany immediately increased border security, closed all small airports close to the border, and ordered the planes kept farther inland.[6] Propane gas tanks became registered products, and large quantities of fabric suitable for balloon construction could no longer be purchased. Mail from East Germany to the two escaped families was prohibited.[12] > Erich Strelzyk learned of his brother's escape on the ZDF news and was arrested in his Potsdam apartment three hours after the landing. The arrest of family members was standard procedure to deter others from attempting escape. He was charged with "aiding and abetting escape", as were Strelzyk's sister Maria and her husband, who were sentenced to 2½ years. The three were eventually released with the help of Amnesty International. People - here in Germany as well as abroad - forget too easily what a sinister but also ridiculous state the GDR was. Authoritarians everywhere belong on the dustpile of history.
- martin-t 8mo ago
  Dustpile of history, sure, but gallows first. Bleeding out on the pavement is also acceptable. Way too often, connected ("powerful") people manage to escape proper punishment, sometimes in the name of a "peaceful transition of power".
  - thomassmith65 8mo ago
    A peaceful transition of power is nothing to sneer at. After a revolutionary change, they are rare.
    - martin-t 8mo ago
      1) Not sneering at it but everything has a cost. If authoritarians get the impression that all their past offenses will be forgiven if they hold everyone hostage and negotiate well, then there's no risk for them. And it's disrespectful to the victims. There should be things you don't come back from. For example, if you imprison people for political reasons, the time they spent in prison should be added up, multiplied by a punitive constant (2-3) and given to the offenders. And if that is a just punishment (I believe it it), then not doing that to them is unjust. Simple as that. 2) We should be looking for ways how to have both a peaceful transition and just punishment for the offenders. Look at Unit 731 as an example ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 ). The people most responsible got away for free by skillful negotiation (immunity in exchange for data). Instead, the proposition should have been a) you give us the data and graciously accept your death penalty b) we repeat the experiments on you, nonlethal first. That's harsh and will make many people today recoil (because they've been indoctrinated into a 1-step moral system which seems to correlate with stability but injustice), but it's fair and just. They think those experiments were OK to perform on innocent people, so they are very much OK to perform on them (guilty people) by their own logic.
baud9600 8mo ago
In Eastern Europe in 1979, those were big sums of money. What an extraordinary story
- toephu2 8mo ago
  Yeah I'd be curious into how they acquired so much money
  - lukan 8mo ago
    Likely black market deals/work I think. Also just getting a replacement car was not really easy for normal people.
    - nunobrito 8mo ago
      Yes, was noticing the same. It was easy for them to sell the car and get a new one, so this meant a lot of connections and underground "jobs" for the extra revenue. Anyways, fantastic story. First time reading despite living relatively close.
  - ahartmetz 8mo ago
    What I've read about the GDR is that money was rarely the problem. You couldn't spend the money if what you wanted to buy was simply not available (except maybe in "Intershops" where you needed to pay in Western currency, that was in fact very expensive). It really was a different system.
    - wolvoleo 8mo ago
      Yes the movie Night Crossing also shows very well that there was a lot of suspicion, for example they had to buy the fabric from lots of different places and this a slipup actually caused them to be ratted out (not sure if this particular part of the story happened to these people in real life too but it was really a thing)
    - wishfish 8mo ago
      Read a memoir by a KGB agent who arrested a man in Moscow who was passing info to the CIA. Had been doing so for years. The CIA had the typical western attitude towards money so they kept giving him stacks of rubles. Thinking they were being generous. The man (a professor, I think) had nothing to spend it on so he stacked cash up in a closet. Had around 1 million stored when he was caught. He probably would have been better off just burning it as the money was used as evidence in his trial. Had a chance to ask a Russian / Soviet historian how one could spend a million rubles in the late 70s, early 80s. He just shrugged and laughed about it. Almost no way to spend that much. Nothing cost very much and there wasn't much of it.
martin-t 8mo ago
One good metric of quality of life (which includes various freedoms) is how many people emigrate or immigrate. Anybody who defends authoritarians has to explain why so many people want to leave and why the regime wants to keep them in. (With some exceptions such as China which weaponizes emigrants by threatening their families.)
- mothballed 8mo ago
  If that's the case the theocratic monarchy in UAE takes the cake, I think, although maybe there are similar amounts elsewhere. Pretty much all the highest % immigration countries are monarchy that I can think of, since in those country another tax payer is an easy win and immigrants that cause problem can be instantly booted so there is very little downside to taking anybody with $1 or a job who cares to come. Top Countries by Percentage of Immigrants (approximate recent figures): Qatar: Around 77% (or 76.7%). United Arab Emirates (UAE): Around 74-88% (some sources show higher figures for earlier years). Kuwait: Around 69-73%. Bahrain: Around 55%. Singapore not far behind (~40% from memory), a one party state but with voting, sometimes described as essentially an elected recallable monarchy. Also note most of those countries have relatively low emigration rates of native citizens.
  - Terr_ 8mo ago
    I think "immigrants" is the wrong statistic here, since it includes workers with no path to citizenship. (In some cases, they can't leave because their employer stole their passport.) It confuses "this is a good place to resettle" with "here I can arbitrage higher wages in order to send money back home."
    - cs02rm0 8mo ago
      I'm not sure it is wrong. I'd have no path to UAE citizenship, nor do I particularly want one, I'd likely have lower wages. And I'd still like to live there more than most places.
    - qcnguy 8mo ago
      You're still an immigrant even if you can't become a citizen.
nephihaha 8mo ago
I first read about this in Reader's Digest back in the eighties.
- hmng 8mo ago
  I'm not the only one then! :-)
  - nephihaha 8mo ago
    I read about them in RD long before I saw the film, I think. It is an amazing achievement and I doubt most people could have pulled it off. Thinking about it now... You would have to wait until the wind was going in the right direction, and wouldn't change, and also be well away from the border to avoid patrols. They had luck on their side. I think I saw the film in the late eighties/early nineties round about the time the Eastern Bloc was falling apart so it had less impact.
mothballed 8mo ago
I'm amazed most of all they were able to keep it under wraps with 4 children involved. I don't think you could pay my children at that age $1 million to keep their mouth shut even under the same risks.
- drcode 8mo ago
  I think it's such a crazy idea, even if a 5 year old tell a teacher about it or something, who's going to take the story seriously?
  - mandevil 8mo ago
    After they found the remains of the balloon from the first escape attempt, the Stasi put out a reward for information, I think everyone would take the story seriously at that point. It was why they decided they had to go through with the second attempt, because they were convinced the Stasi was going to catch them soon. But they had to buy the materials for that balloon after the Stasi had found the remains of their previous attempt.
    - petre 8mo ago
      > But they had to buy the materials for that balloon after the Stasi had found the remains of their previous attempt The repressive state apparatus was moving too slow. Maybe they hoped there won't be a second attempt after the first one failed, maybe it wasn't promptly reported to the appartchikhs and handled internally by the Stasi to avoid backlash.
  - lukan 8mo ago
    I would assume they did not tell them anything at all, until the time was there. And after the first failed attempt, they were probably shocked enough for real to understand the situation and keep their mouths shut. Children put in serious situations are capable of much more serious behavior, than children who have only known comfort and safety.
- netsharc 8mo ago
  The Wikipedia page references Günter Wetzel's website. Reading https://www.ballonflucht.de/en/missverstaendnis.html https://www.ballonflucht.de/en/missverstaendnis.html , he's written down more information - apparently they came to a disagreement about the story, and on that page there's more detail, from his point of view: for the first attempt they did everything in Wetzel's house (whose oldest kid was 4), because of concerns the Strelzyks' children (who were 10 and 14) could blurt something out. After some disagreements (Strelzyks told some relatives about the balloon, Wetzel thinks the balloon was too small) Wetzel gave Strelzyks all they've built (he was also worried about getting caught with the stuff, especially since now the relatives have heard about it) and decided to follow the concept of a ultralight airplane. That's the reason the first attempt was just the Strelzyks...
coldtea 8mo ago
[flagged]
- wbobeirne 8mo ago
  Although you're probably less inclined to try to escape your country in a hot air balloon if food is so easily and cheaply available that it's made you overweight.
  - lukan 8mo ago
    Basic food was really cheap in eastern germany as well. But cheap food is not everything.
- dullcrisp 8mo ago
  They could each have their own balloon. Your mom would be trapped in East Germany, however.
  - coldtea 8mo ago
    I loled
- _zagj 8mo ago
  > That feat would be impossible for the average US family Funny, except the US, despite being a supposed fascist dystopia, currently has the opposite problem: people trying to enter and stay illegally, hence the wall-building (to keep people out, rather than in) and ramping up of immigration enforcement. How bad must the GDR and its ilk have been (and in some cases, still are) that it's the other way around?
rottencupcakes 8mo ago
Odd how nobody ever builds a balloon to fly towards the communist utopias.
- nephihaha 8mo ago
  One guy did use a plane to land in Red Square. Remember him?
  - echelon_musk 8mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust
  - GaryBluto 8mo ago
    Not to live there though, just as a "symbol of peace".
    - nephihaha 8mo ago
      I'm not sure it worked much as a symbol of peace. He got sent to a Soviet prison/interrogation for a while which I'm sure was a laugh a minute.
  - mopsi 8mo ago
    He was mentally disturbed, which kinda proves the point. After returning to Germany, he stabbed a woman for rejecting his advances. Later, he was convicted of shoplifting, and a few years after that he was convicted again of selling stolen goods. Definitely a "character", even if medically sound enough to stand trial.
    - nephihaha 8mo ago
      I didn't know about the stabbing bit. You'd have to be off your head to land a plane next to the Kremlin. He was lucky he wasn't shot down.
  - wolvoleo 8mo ago
TacticalCoder 8mo ago
Wait... People want to escape from communist countries?
- nephihaha 8mo ago
  Remember the GDR called the Berlin Wall the "Antifascist Protection Barrier"
  - immibis 8mo ago
    I believe the USA-Mexico border wall was called something similar
    - nephihaha 8mo ago
      That wall is to keep people out from another state, not in.
      - 0928374082 8mo ago
        After all, they kept Paul Robeson in by simply pulling his passport, no wall needed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson#:~:text=A%20month%20after,in%20foreign%20countries%22%2e https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson#:~:text=A%20month...
        nephihaha 8mo ago
        I don't need to go to Wikipedia to read about Robeson. Guy became a Stalin fan and crumbled mentally when he realised the USSR was not what it claimed. Great singer though.
        0928374082 8mo ago
        I think part of what they didn't like was that in Old Man River, instead of singing: Git a little drunk An' you lands in jail for Moscow audiences he sang: Show a little grit And you land in jail
hmokiguess 8mo ago
Meanwhile in Brazil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelir_Ant%C3%B4nio_de_Carli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelir_Ant%C3%B4nio_de_Carli
adharmad 8mo ago
Reminds me of George Gamow and his wife's attempts to escape from the Soviet union by kayaking across the Black sea (first attempt) and the Norwegian sea (second attempt) until he was lucky enough to be given permission to visit the Solvay conference and was able to defect using conventional methods (Simply not returning).
russdill 8mo ago
One of favorite escapes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Papago_Escape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Papago_Escape They built boats to sail down the Salt River, to the Colorado River, and to Mexico. Of course the salt river is almost always just a dry river bed. It's shocking to me that no dramatization of this escape exists
- mallomarmeasle 8mo ago
  Interesting story. The lack of dramatization might have something to do with making Nazis sympathetic characters. Hogans Heroes aside.
- hn_throwaway_99 8mo ago
  I don't think the Great Papago Escape was that great - "Over the next few weeks, all of the escapees were eventually recaptured without bloodshed." The thing that makes this balloon escape story is so enthralling is that it actually worked.
  - russdill 8mo ago
    I mean, their escape was quite complex and did actually "work", it's just they didn't get very far beyond that. Any dramatization would clearly need some comedic element
_zagj 8mo ago
The GDR was a showcase state that, much like the DPRK, being on the periphery of the communist block, was propped up by USSR so that direct comparisons with its capitalist neighbor wouldn't be so unflattering. One of the most important forms of assistance the GDR and other satellites received was cheap energy. In the case of the GDR, through the Friendship Pipeline. One only need look at the DPRK to see how vital this assistance was; it was only after the USSR collapsed and Russia turned off the spigot that North Korea started regularly suffering famines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_North_Korean_famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_North_Korean_famine And yet even with the high (in comparison to other communist states) quality of life people in the GDR enjoyed, people still risked life and limb to escape. You could leave Brazil under its various juntas, Chile under Pinochet, Portugal under Salazar, and Spain under Franco, yet the only option for citizens of the GDR and other communist states (in some cases, still today, e.g., Cuba and the DPRK) was escape and defection.
- ricksunny 8mo ago
  West Berlin was also a showcase city.
- justsomehnguy 8mo ago
  > yet the only option for citizens of the GDR and other communist states yawns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s_Soviet_Union_aliyah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s_Soviet_Union_aliyah
  - _zagj 8mo ago
    The Soviet Union had almost no legal emigration prior to the 1970s, and limited, targed emigration quotas after. The US, by contrast, prior to 1965, had strict quotas limiting immigration (based on national origins).
    - justsomehnguy 8mo ago
      You are moving goalposts. There were a lot of things in the USSR but leaving by "escape and defection" was not the only option.
potato3732842 8mo ago
>hey needed just ten minutes to inflate the balloon and an additional three minutes to heat the air. That's faster than most professionals by a substantial margin. I guess when it matters you make it work.
SV_BubbleTime 8mo ago
> Propane gas tanks became registered products Ha. Someone does a thing and the state moves in to regulate. Same as it ever was, apparently. Item registration… not used to prevent crime, just to make it easier to document after it happens.
- justinclift 8mo ago
  > not used to prevent crime Wouldn't "registration" as used in the article mean the purchase details were sent to the authorities, so they could investigate/stop a potential escape attempt?
  - SV_BubbleTime 8mo ago
    Registration always precedes confiscation. Even if the devices were registered, you might be up and away before they figure it out. But if another family flew away, that registration list would be handy door to door.
- layer8 8mo ago
  The registration serves as a deterrent, and therefore does reduce crime. It wouldn’t have been practical to outright prohibit propane gas.
snicky 8mo ago
This reminds of a person I read about on HN years ago - a Russian guy who escaped from the USSR jumping off a cruise liner and swimming a couple of days to Philippines. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Kurilov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Kurilov [1] https://www.amazon.com/Alone-Ocean-Slava-Kurilov-S/dp/9655558967 https://www.amazon.com/Alone-Ocean-Slava-Kurilov-S/dp/965555...
- eastbound 8mo ago
  Well in this theme, there were 800,000 “boat people” (name given to the Vietnamese who escaped communism by boat in 1975-1995).
lazysheepherd 8mo ago
It amazes me that some people will somehow still have the audacity to defend communism...
- chihuahua 8mo ago
  "That wasn't real Communism! It's actually great when done correctly!" /s
- immibis 8mo ago
  Same. Anyone who defends a red coloured party, after red coloured parties did so much damage in the past, is obviously a monster.
appreciatorBus 8mo ago
People will do anything to escape the fruits of marxism. Discoursers today should take note!
exabrial 8mo ago
There was a mcgyver episode about this.
marginalien 8mo ago
This is so impressive. Survival of the fittest at work.
mhh__ 8mo ago
Fascinating. Always enjoyed the near-history one can feel in east germany. Europe is obviously very old e.g. I go to a pub back home that's 500 years old, but you can still sort of feel the concrete setting in some parts of Germany. Although saying that it might be that they haven't changed much since and I don't like the future chosen much elsewhere. Or it's just the light temperature... In places that have kept their old street lighting I find it interesting to find angles that look the same now as they did in 1981 (or '71, etc).
freakynit 8mo ago
Was curious to know the calculations involved. Found them to be pretty simple. Vibe-coded an online calculator for future escapists: https://balloon-lift-calculator.pagey.site https://balloon-lift-calculator.pagey.site
- svara 8mo ago
  Now calculate the necessary rate of fuel burn and fuel requirement for a given trip; tensile and tear strength needed for the balloon material and seams. Tbf they probably didn't do all these calculations, but should have. They risked their lives by getting some of these things wrong.
  - freakynit 8mo ago
    Done. Updated: https://balloon-lift-calculator.pagey.site https://balloon-lift-calculator.pagey.site Thanks..
- mfld 8mo ago
  You can compare them with the original calculations that can be found at https://www.ballonflucht.de/en/ballonrechner.html https://www.ballonflucht.de/en/ballonrechner.html !
  - freakynit 8mo ago
    I did compare with the wikipedia article linked in this HN thread. The results were comparable.
jryle70 8mo ago
A reminder of something much bigger, much longer, and far more tragic. People died, families split, a country divided. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_boat_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_boat_people
- WalterBright 8mo ago
  The barber I patronized for many years was a boat person. Wonderful people.
- refurb 8mo ago
  Yup. I met a guy in the East Bay who escaped Vietnam in 1978. Family sold everything to bribe the government to look the other way. Boat trip lasted a week - people died, mostly the youngest and oldest, their bodies thrown overboard. Thai pirate came and stole anything of value they had left and raped the women. Boats passed by and did nothing. They finally make it to Malaysia and spent almost a year in a refugee camp before coming to the US. Now multiply that story by 2,000,000 with 200,000-400,000 dying along the way. A total of 4-5% of the entire population tried to escape by boat. The lucky ones fled before 1975, some later one. A massive human tragedy that few people know much about.
lutusp 8mo ago
This true story moves us because it resembles much of human history, in which clever but powerless people struggle against morons -- morons who somehow gain control over a modern industrial state, then use that power to punish innocents who dare to assert simple human rights. People in Moscow, in Gaza, in Tehran, in Minneapolis, are all saying, "How can I rise above this? -- where's my balloon?" Too many morons. Too few balloons.
- wtcactus 8mo ago
  > Moscow, in Gaza, in Tehran, in Minneapolis Man, you really went ahead and tried to compare Minneapolis with Teharan. This is got me laughing out loud.
  - diab0lic 8mo ago
    While the difference between the two may still be wide, it is a lot more narrow than it was a year ago. Some people find this concerning.
  - lutusp 8mo ago
    > Man, you really went ahead and tried to compare Minneapolis with Teharan. It would help if you could spell "Tehran". Then notice that in either place you can be killed for annoying authority figures, without due process or recourse. > This is got me laughing out loud. I suspect that by 2028 you won't be laughing quite so loudly -- or at all.
anticommunist 8mo ago
[flagged]
decimalenough 8mo ago
More interesting escapes from the DDR, this time by three brothers, who all fled separately: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethke_brothers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethke_brothers
- yde_java 8mo ago
  > The Berlin Wall fell six months after Egbert's escape. Ironic. Still quite an adventure. Thanks for sharing!
bot_user_7a2b99 8mo ago
[dead]
car 8mo ago
The autobiographical graphic novel "Time Zones" by Sven Diekmann describes an attempted balloon escape from the GDR in 1977, but it was thwarted at the last minute [1]. It is a powerful book, quite chilling as it describes life under the totalitarian puppet government of East Germany. I also often found it eerily reminiscent of our current times. I can highly recommend it, both for the suspenseful narrative and great visual storytelling. A great read for HS/college kids that are into history too. [1] https://store.bookbaby.com/book/time-zones https://store.bookbaby.com/book/time-zones [2] Authors website: https://www.svensiekmann.com/bio https://www.svensiekmann.com/bio
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
elbci 8mo ago
- What capitalists did in 6 months that communists didn't manage in 50 years? - Make communism look good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_nostalgia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_nostalgia
- tirant 8mo ago
  Communism and socialism have always looked good when compared to the principles of other economic and political doctrines: - No poor people; everyone supported by the State; Everyone works for the common good; shared resources no matter how lucky or unlucky you are… From an intentional and moral perspective, nothing can beat it. However it fails and will always fail because of a couple of important reasons: - it requires the sacrifice of freedom and individuality. - it needs to suppress any other political alternative - it’s finally always implemented by humans (flawed by default) that have their own benefit as a goal. Even with constant examples of countries demonstrating why communism always ends up being a perverse system, many people still romanticize the system. Interestingly usually only people in free capitalist societies.
  - elbci 8mo ago
    Those 50-60-70+% of people in former communist states don't "romanticize", they just remember being better. Utopia - no, but better than capitalism. Without an example of a communist state shielded from constant attacks, sabotage and sanctions from the dominant capitalist we will never know how good it could get. We just know the imperfect as it was, it was still better.
    - honzabe 8mo ago
      > Those 50-60-70+% of people in former communist states don't "romanticize", they just remember being better. Where did you get those numbers? I remember reading about one survey where the number of people with previous regime ‘nostalgia’ was around 50%. That survey had flawed methodology, and the results were probably mostly about nostalgia related to the times when we were young, and our backs did not hurt (obviously, Russian bots in my country keep blabbering about it ad nauseam as if it were actually about the quality of the old regime). Let’s focus on the numbers that matter - the election numbers: in the 2025 elections in my country (Czechia), communists did not even get over the 5% necessary to get to the parliament. So, I guess what people actually remember here is communism not being better.
Squarex 8mo ago
It is interesting how dictatorships for resourceless countries needed to keep the people in like east germany or czechoslovakia. But current dictatorships with natural resources like Venezuela or Iran let dissent go. It makes them more stable sadly.
- fsh 8mo ago
  Since West Germany considered East Germany to be occupied territory, East Germans had automatic citizenship in the west. This made it uniquely easy to emigrate into the much wealthier country.
  - Squarex 8mo ago
    Well apart from the high chance of being killed at the borders.
    - usrusr 8mo ago
      Sure, but they did have a place to go to. Unlike all the other people that risk getting killed at a border
  - usr1106 8mo ago
    That's not fully correct. The West accepted only a single German citizenship. So everyone from East Germany could immediately be issued a "German" passport by the Western authorities. For the East there were 2 citizenships. They had no adjectives, they only talked about "citizen of the German Democratic Republic" and "citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany". The occupation view was not official politics after 1970. The West had recognized the East as a state. But citizens of both states were assumed to have the same citizenship. Edit: recognized as state should maybe recognized as some kind of state. Like the citizenship there were numerous differences compared to other foreign nation states.
- gassius 8mo ago
  As a Venezuelan, I think the difference is not the Natural Resources, or at least is not the main difference. In 2017, the shortages and economic crisis generated by 15 years of communist policies has pushed around 4 million people out, and then, the regime "elected" a Constitutional Assembly which has the power to create a new Constitution and to overrid any previously elected organism (as it was at the time the opossition controled National Assembly). At that point I leaved Venezuela inmediatly with my 2 minor aged kids, because for me it was a NO BRAINER that the first thing they will do was to limit the emigration and the free ciruculation. My train of tought was very simple. As any other Socialist Dictatorship before, this one needs to halt the staggering loss of skilled proffesionals like Medics, Engineers or whatever they deemed of National Security, I mean, you still need Doctors, you still need the Electricity and Water to get into the industries and houses, and specially for Venezuela, you need to keep the Oil flowing off the earth... BOY WAS I WRONG, they never put a formal limit to the emigration and at least another 5 million people leaved Venezuela (so far). It did not matter at all that the already in shambles Public Health system collapsed, they doctors that stayed were private and they attended only the capacity that could pay for the scarse services, the basic services did not matter that much either, as people got use to get them once or twice per week, and even a country wide blackout of 3 weeks was not the end of the regime, and the Oil, well, does not matter either because what was once 3.5 million barrels per day went to be as low as 300.000 bpd. So, what was the difference? well, for all its downfalls, it seems to me that the XX century Communist/Socialist dictatorships were guided by Ideology, they really thought theirs ideas were for the better of their people, so having no Healthcare was a REAL PROBLEM, having no public services was a REAL PROBLEM. Of course, their recipes were doomed as their political ideals, but at least they tried. The Venezuelan Regime has no Ideology (it has some in form of propaganda, but that is different that actions) as the latest news can attest, They couldn't care less about the people and the wellness. They did not use any "Natural Resouces" to keep any level of living conditions, they just let loose the ruins of the economy they had messed so badly to let the most savage neoliberalism to correct the course while they stayed in power to keep leaching two sources of income, whatever oil they could produce and the drugs operations revenue, alongside their cut on any business their allies (AKA "Enchufados) could come up in the "liberalized" economy. All the people that leaved the country (including me) just made them easier to keep control of whatever was left. Ever decreasing political or social opposition, less pressure of the shambles public services and so on and on... The Natural Resources is just a part of their Income, it does not affects the hability to control or to even extract richness from the system.
Mikhail_Edoshin 8mo ago
There were many "escapes", some weren't so romantic. E.g. for some escapees the drive to what they viewed as freedom was so intense that they did not hesitate to kill someone, e.g. a stewardess on a hijacked plane. To see a bigger picture let's juxtapose these escapes with the life of Luke of Simferopol (N. F. Voyno-Yasenetsky). He was a surgeon and a bishop of the Orthodox church. He opposed the anti-church policies of the Soviet government, was sent into an exile into Siberia and nearly died there. Then the war came. So he wrote a letter to Soviet officials asking to be sent to work in a hospital near the front, where his surgical skills would be of much use. At the end he added: "When the war is over I'm ready to go back to exile".
kstenerud 8mo ago
What's scary is that Russia plans to do this again. But not that surprising when you look at Russian history.
- cbdevidal 8mo ago
  Collectivism: Ideas so good, they’re mandatory
  - immibis 8mo ago
    Political buzzword du jour: every dictatorship ever. You know there isn't an ideology called collectivism, right?
Nora23 8mo ago
How long did it take them to plan this escape?
- mkl 8mo ago
  From the second sentence, "over a year and a half of preparations". The third paragraph gives a starting agreement date of 7 March 1978, and the successful flight was 16 September 1979.
reflexe 8mo ago
My favorite east Germany escape stories is the escape is train driver’s Harry Deterling, that just drove the train into wall (which was not fully a wall by then if I understood correctly) https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/chronicle/_year1961/_month12/?month=12&year=1961&opennid=177122&moc=1 https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/chronicle/_year1961/_mon...
tim333 8mo ago
So much havoc caused by having a fascist/communist government in Russia, from partnering with Hitler to start WW2, through this stuff to Ukraine and it seems about half the evil in the world. I hope they fall one day and turn to something normal.
api 8mo ago
Other than North Korea, are there still countries that are literal prisons that you can’t leave? It’s astounding to me that this was a thing. The fact that it’s so rare now is one of the quiet ways we have in fact progressed.
- immibis 8mo ago
  The USA doesn't literally prevent you from leaving, but it uses its unique control of the global banking system to still tax you when you move to another country.
- olelele 8mo ago
  I spoke with the people working at a German resort in Tunisia. I was there for a short stint as sound tech. The only way out of the country is smuggling. You don’t get permission to leave if you’re of working age and can contribute to the economy.
- __turbobrew__ 8mo ago
  Cuba had exit visas up until 2013.
PeterStuer 8mo ago
Hast du etwas Zeit für mich?
throw310822 8mo ago
Since then, the trust of wives in their husbands' weekend projects has dropped considerably.
MarkusWandel 8mo ago
What is just awesome, to a tinkerer, is the great can-do spirit people had then. You couldn't buy it, so you made it yourself. They were going to do a helicopter, but for the lack of a suitable engine. As if the rest was just a solved problem, and may well have been, given the background of one of them. And then to build a working hot air balloon that even looks pretty cool, entirely in clandestine conditions with improvised materials. In a museum in Germany you can even see a homemade twin-engine airplane that was planned for an escape attempt (that didn't happen, maybe just as well) ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_DOWA_81 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_DOWA_81 ). Just incredible technical competence everywhere, that fades when the need is gone, when absolutely everything you could want is just an Amazon order away.
- alt227 8mo ago
  I feel like hard situations force people to adapt. This was not a unique time in history, it continues today in warzones and places like Ukraine. It is only a few comfortable western countires who have such comfort of everything being a click and 1 days delivery away.
vee-kay 8mo ago
I remembered Damn Interesting (fantastic website!) has a nice narrative-story-style article on this "pop up from persecution" story": https://www.damninteresting.com/up-in-the-air/ https://www.damninteresting.com/up-in-the-air/ Also an audio podcast available for the article, that's more thrilling.
youhatetheleft 8mo ago
Fun fact Tatcher and Reagan wanted to avoid German reunification at all costs.

724 points by robertvc 8mo ago

tobyhinloopen 8mo ago

Poor family members though

honzabe 8mo ago
I recently read a book of interviews with people who escaped from North Korea, and what shocked me was the discovery that the relatives of those who escaped are often executed (publicly) and that even children are executed in North Korea. We live in a terrible world. I mean... you expect a book from North Korea to contain terrible things, but somehow it was even worse than I expected.
- qcnguy 8mo ago
  Left wing thought doesn't contain any philosophy of limitations on state power, so under a left wing regime there is no limit to what it might do. No matter how terrible something is, if it can be imagined they will consider implementing it. To avoid that outcome there has to be an understanding of the flawed nature of government, and from that an ideological commitment to a state limited in power and role.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - olelele 8mo ago
    So everyone not a libertarian is dangerous?
    - qcnguy 8mo ago
      Only if they get into power? I mean what's your reading of the last few centuries of history?
  - immibis 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    - qcnguy 8mo ago
      We're talking about North Korea executing children because their family members escaped. Doesn't get more left wing than North Korea. Not a good look to deploy a stock reply without thinking.
      - blahaj 8mo ago
        North Korea is an extremely class based society. About as far away from left as it gets.
        immibis 8mo ago
        I'm not sure you understand the situation here. Everything I don't like is left-wing.
        qcnguy 8mo ago
        [flagged]
        immibis 8mo ago
        > Everything I don't like is left-wing.
        tobyhinloopen 8mo ago
        Your sarcasm isn’t obvious enough

DefundPortland 8mo ago

[flagged]

gnatman 8mo ago

The investment, planning, danger, and dogged persistence… incredible story.

fuckyah 8mo ago

[dead]

VelNZ 8mo ago

The Damn Interesting podcast (no affiliation, just a huge fan) had an episode on this topic if you prefer to listen to this story: https://www.damninteresting.com/up-in-the-air/ https://www.damninteresting.com/up-in-the-air/

Isuckatcode 8mo ago
You beat me to it :D love the podcast. Too bad they stopped uploading from a while ago. You got any suggestions of podcasts in similar space? Nothing ever could scratch the itch like Damn Interesting
- gwbas1c 8mo ago
  "Stuff you should know" and "Freakanomics"
Waterluvian 8mo ago
I felt so tense and anxious listening to that.

mkmk 8mo ago

The photo of the balloon here really helps put the story into perspective. https://web.archive.org/web/20190408181736/https://www.museum.bayern/sammlung/geschichten/peter-strezlyk-und-guenter-wetzel.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190408181736/https://www.museu...

qwertox 8mo ago
The text in the link is nice to read. I did a Google Translate on it which you can read here: https://pastebin.com/SdkKQkC6 https://pastebin.com/SdkKQkC6
neilv 8mo ago
> “Are we here in the West??” Only this one question is asked by Peter Strelzyk and Günter Wetzel when they were in the early morning of the 16th. The "Handmaid's Tale" TV series has a great variation on that moment, which chokes me up every single time. (spoilers in video title) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oKZgXvpm0c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oKZgXvpm0c
- AniseAbyss 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - dfee 8mo ago
    [flagged]
  - hopelite 8mo ago
    So turn back the clock to when Hildegard von Bingen was only one of many extremely powerful and influential abbesses that were polymaths and prolific artists and writers and educators of women in Europe? I’ve never understood this mentality that people who read and watched handmaids tale, caused some done kind of weird obsession built on a literal fiction story, a made up story… especially since the reality is not only the polar opposite, but in no place on the planet have things ever been better for any people relative to all other places of their time than in the very European societies and cultures that you types are so suicidally fixated on being destructive of. The irony of the handmaids tale types from my experience is that they/you are, in their/your suicidally manic self-harming obsession, advocates for the spread of Islam in the very western countries that have provided all of humanity all of its freedoms and comforts, which would ironically will lead to an actual handmaids tale type scenario you constantly warn of. Have you ever heard of what the Ottoman Empire did? It makes the handmaids tale sound like a wholesome family dynamic.

nrjames 8mo ago

Disney made a movie about this called Night Crossing in the early 1980s. More recently, there's a 2018 German movie about it called Balloon. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082810/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082810/ [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7125774 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7125774

lukeweston1234 8mo ago
The 2018 film is a really good movie, I would highly recommend checking it out!
- tgsovlerkhgsel 8mo ago
  +1 to this! I wonder if some of the horror in it (the constant threat of the Stasi and its implications) translates well to non-German audiences. In case you're wondering about Germany's strict privacy laws - this is part of why they exist.
  - elzbardico 8mo ago
    Probably this is an also big component in the notorious German preference for cash over cards.
    - immibis 8mo ago
      That was caused by interchange fees, and it has disappeared now.
      - dgxyz 8mo ago
        It’s still a thing in some areas from direct experience recently. Hell it’s still a thing with former East Germans I know in the UK. And it’s not about interchange fees - it’s about purchase surveillance. My ex partner wouldn’t even allow location services on her phone to put exif data in photos.

jasonwatkinspdx 8mo ago

My elementary school showed the Disney movie about this at least once a year.

neilv 8mo ago
That movie was also all over the Disney Channel when I was a kid. Many other movies have related messages. And much of the public library books were a couple generations old, plus there was the Cold War, which meant lots of exposure to anti-fascism messages, and to anti-Soviet-like messages. So, today, people of a certain age, who paid attention in school, have been programmed that the secret police saying, "Your papers, please" and sending people off to concentration camps, are obviously the very bad guys, and America is the good guys who don't do that. People with that upbringing would see certain textbook political maneuvers and tactics coming from a mile away, and be concerned. To counteract that IMHO great programming, you'd need something extreme, like Rupert Murdoch and others pounding large swaths of the electorate with propaganda for decades -- to get them to support some politicians that are stereotypes we were told for decades before are outright evil.
- TimTheTinker 8mo ago
  I think a lot of that programming and political action was because at the time there was genuine fear of communism taking over in the US and other western nations (like it already had in Eastern Europe).
  - neilv 8mo ago
    Yes, IIUC, that was one of the things that mobilized a lot of IMHO positive education/propaganda. It may not have always been for the most noble of reasons (e.g., a very wealthy person not wanting to be disrupted), but the fascism-is-bad messages are still great messages. For example, "Don't Be a Sucker" (long, but worth a watch sometime for anyone who hasn't seen it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4
    - 8mo ago

stackghost 8mo ago

>The family members included: > Peter Strelzyk, aged 37 > Doris Strelzyk > Frank Strelzyk, aged 15 > Andreas Strelzyk, aged 11 > Günter Wetzel, aged 24 > Petra Wetzel > Peter Wetzel, aged 5 > Andreas Wetzel, aged 2 Was/is it common practice to omit the ages of adult women in Germany?

honzabe 8mo ago
> Was/is it common practice to omit the ages of adult women in Germany? A gentleman does not ask a lady's age.
lukan 8mo ago
Not as of my knowledge. Coincidence I suppose, or desire by them to keep it private.

thenaturalist 8mo ago

> East Germany immediately increased border security, closed all small airports close to the border, and ordered the planes kept farther inland.[6] Propane gas tanks became registered products, and large quantities of fabric suitable for balloon construction could no longer be purchased. Mail from East Germany to the two escaped families was prohibited.[12] > Erich Strelzyk learned of his brother's escape on the ZDF news and was arrested in his Potsdam apartment three hours after the landing. The arrest of family members was standard procedure to deter others from attempting escape. He was charged with "aiding and abetting escape", as were Strelzyk's sister Maria and her husband, who were sentenced to 2½ years. The three were eventually released with the help of Amnesty International. People - here in Germany as well as abroad - forget too easily what a sinister but also ridiculous state the GDR was. Authoritarians everywhere belong on the dustpile of history.

martin-t 8mo ago
Dustpile of history, sure, but gallows first. Bleeding out on the pavement is also acceptable. Way too often, connected ("powerful") people manage to escape proper punishment, sometimes in the name of a "peaceful transition of power".
- thomassmith65 8mo ago
  A peaceful transition of power is nothing to sneer at. After a revolutionary change, they are rare.
  - martin-t 8mo ago
    1) Not sneering at it but everything has a cost. If authoritarians get the impression that all their past offenses will be forgiven if they hold everyone hostage and negotiate well, then there's no risk for them. And it's disrespectful to the victims. There should be things you don't come back from. For example, if you imprison people for political reasons, the time they spent in prison should be added up, multiplied by a punitive constant (2-3) and given to the offenders. And if that is a just punishment (I believe it it), then not doing that to them is unjust. Simple as that. 2) We should be looking for ways how to have both a peaceful transition and just punishment for the offenders. Look at Unit 731 as an example ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 ). The people most responsible got away for free by skillful negotiation (immunity in exchange for data). Instead, the proposition should have been a) you give us the data and graciously accept your death penalty b) we repeat the experiments on you, nonlethal first. That's harsh and will make many people today recoil (because they've been indoctrinated into a 1-step moral system which seems to correlate with stability but injustice), but it's fair and just. They think those experiments were OK to perform on innocent people, so they are very much OK to perform on them (guilty people) by their own logic.

baud9600 8mo ago

In Eastern Europe in 1979, those were big sums of money. What an extraordinary story

toephu2 8mo ago
Yeah I'd be curious into how they acquired so much money
- lukan 8mo ago
  Likely black market deals/work I think. Also just getting a replacement car was not really easy for normal people.
  - nunobrito 8mo ago
    Yes, was noticing the same. It was easy for them to sell the car and get a new one, so this meant a lot of connections and underground "jobs" for the extra revenue. Anyways, fantastic story. First time reading despite living relatively close.
- ahartmetz 8mo ago
  What I've read about the GDR is that money was rarely the problem. You couldn't spend the money if what you wanted to buy was simply not available (except maybe in "Intershops" where you needed to pay in Western currency, that was in fact very expensive). It really was a different system.
  - wolvoleo 8mo ago
    Yes the movie Night Crossing also shows very well that there was a lot of suspicion, for example they had to buy the fabric from lots of different places and this a slipup actually caused them to be ratted out (not sure if this particular part of the story happened to these people in real life too but it was really a thing)
  - wishfish 8mo ago
    Read a memoir by a KGB agent who arrested a man in Moscow who was passing info to the CIA. Had been doing so for years. The CIA had the typical western attitude towards money so they kept giving him stacks of rubles. Thinking they were being generous. The man (a professor, I think) had nothing to spend it on so he stacked cash up in a closet. Had around 1 million stored when he was caught. He probably would have been better off just burning it as the money was used as evidence in his trial. Had a chance to ask a Russian / Soviet historian how one could spend a million rubles in the late 70s, early 80s. He just shrugged and laughed about it. Almost no way to spend that much. Nothing cost very much and there wasn't much of it.

martin-t 8mo ago

One good metric of quality of life (which includes various freedoms) is how many people emigrate or immigrate. Anybody who defends authoritarians has to explain why so many people want to leave and why the regime wants to keep them in. (With some exceptions such as China which weaponizes emigrants by threatening their families.)

mothballed 8mo ago
If that's the case the theocratic monarchy in UAE takes the cake, I think, although maybe there are similar amounts elsewhere. Pretty much all the highest % immigration countries are monarchy that I can think of, since in those country another tax payer is an easy win and immigrants that cause problem can be instantly booted so there is very little downside to taking anybody with $1 or a job who cares to come. Top Countries by Percentage of Immigrants (approximate recent figures): Qatar: Around 77% (or 76.7%). United Arab Emirates (UAE): Around 74-88% (some sources show higher figures for earlier years). Kuwait: Around 69-73%. Bahrain: Around 55%. Singapore not far behind (~40% from memory), a one party state but with voting, sometimes described as essentially an elected recallable monarchy. Also note most of those countries have relatively low emigration rates of native citizens.
- Terr_ 8mo ago
  I think "immigrants" is the wrong statistic here, since it includes workers with no path to citizenship. (In some cases, they can't leave because their employer stole their passport.) It confuses "this is a good place to resettle" with "here I can arbitrage higher wages in order to send money back home."
  - cs02rm0 8mo ago
    I'm not sure it is wrong. I'd have no path to UAE citizenship, nor do I particularly want one, I'd likely have lower wages. And I'd still like to live there more than most places.
  - qcnguy 8mo ago
    You're still an immigrant even if you can't become a citizen.

nephihaha 8mo ago

I first read about this in Reader's Digest back in the eighties.

hmng 8mo ago
I'm not the only one then! :-)
- nephihaha 8mo ago
  I read about them in RD long before I saw the film, I think. It is an amazing achievement and I doubt most people could have pulled it off. Thinking about it now... You would have to wait until the wind was going in the right direction, and wouldn't change, and also be well away from the border to avoid patrols. They had luck on their side. I think I saw the film in the late eighties/early nineties round about the time the Eastern Bloc was falling apart so it had less impact.

mothballed 8mo ago

I'm amazed most of all they were able to keep it under wraps with 4 children involved. I don't think you could pay my children at that age $1 million to keep their mouth shut even under the same risks.

drcode 8mo ago
I think it's such a crazy idea, even if a 5 year old tell a teacher about it or something, who's going to take the story seriously?
- mandevil 8mo ago
  After they found the remains of the balloon from the first escape attempt, the Stasi put out a reward for information, I think everyone would take the story seriously at that point. It was why they decided they had to go through with the second attempt, because they were convinced the Stasi was going to catch them soon. But they had to buy the materials for that balloon after the Stasi had found the remains of their previous attempt.
  - petre 8mo ago
    > But they had to buy the materials for that balloon after the Stasi had found the remains of their previous attempt The repressive state apparatus was moving too slow. Maybe they hoped there won't be a second attempt after the first one failed, maybe it wasn't promptly reported to the appartchikhs and handled internally by the Stasi to avoid backlash.
- lukan 8mo ago
  I would assume they did not tell them anything at all, until the time was there. And after the first failed attempt, they were probably shocked enough for real to understand the situation and keep their mouths shut. Children put in serious situations are capable of much more serious behavior, than children who have only known comfort and safety.
netsharc 8mo ago
The Wikipedia page references Günter Wetzel's website. Reading https://www.ballonflucht.de/en/missverstaendnis.html https://www.ballonflucht.de/en/missverstaendnis.html , he's written down more information - apparently they came to a disagreement about the story, and on that page there's more detail, from his point of view: for the first attempt they did everything in Wetzel's house (whose oldest kid was 4), because of concerns the Strelzyks' children (who were 10 and 14) could blurt something out. After some disagreements (Strelzyks told some relatives about the balloon, Wetzel thinks the balloon was too small) Wetzel gave Strelzyks all they've built (he was also worried about getting caught with the stuff, especially since now the relatives have heard about it) and decided to follow the concept of a ultralight airplane. That's the reason the first attempt was just the Strelzyks...

coldtea 8mo ago

[flagged]

wbobeirne 8mo ago
Although you're probably less inclined to try to escape your country in a hot air balloon if food is so easily and cheaply available that it's made you overweight.
- lukan 8mo ago
  Basic food was really cheap in eastern germany as well. But cheap food is not everything.
dullcrisp 8mo ago
They could each have their own balloon. Your mom would be trapped in East Germany, however.
- coldtea 8mo ago
  I loled
_zagj 8mo ago
> That feat would be impossible for the average US family Funny, except the US, despite being a supposed fascist dystopia, currently has the opposite problem: people trying to enter and stay illegally, hence the wall-building (to keep people out, rather than in) and ramping up of immigration enforcement. How bad must the GDR and its ilk have been (and in some cases, still are) that it's the other way around?

rottencupcakes 8mo ago

Odd how nobody ever builds a balloon to fly towards the communist utopias.

nephihaha 8mo ago
One guy did use a plane to land in Red Square. Remember him?
- echelon_musk 8mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust
- GaryBluto 8mo ago
  Not to live there though, just as a "symbol of peace".
  - nephihaha 8mo ago
    I'm not sure it worked much as a symbol of peace. He got sent to a Soviet prison/interrogation for a while which I'm sure was a laugh a minute.
- mopsi 8mo ago
  He was mentally disturbed, which kinda proves the point. After returning to Germany, he stabbed a woman for rejecting his advances. Later, he was convicted of shoplifting, and a few years after that he was convicted again of selling stolen goods. Definitely a "character", even if medically sound enough to stand trial.
  - nephihaha 8mo ago
    I didn't know about the stabbing bit. You'd have to be off your head to land a plane next to the Kremlin. He was lucky he wasn't shot down.
- wolvoleo 8mo ago

TacticalCoder 8mo ago

Wait... People want to escape from communist countries?

nephihaha 8mo ago
Remember the GDR called the Berlin Wall the "Antifascist Protection Barrier"
- immibis 8mo ago
  I believe the USA-Mexico border wall was called something similar
  - nephihaha 8mo ago
    That wall is to keep people out from another state, not in.
    - 0928374082 8mo ago
      After all, they kept Paul Robeson in by simply pulling his passport, no wall needed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson#:~:text=A%20month%20after,in%20foreign%20countries%22%2e https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson#:~:text=A%20month...
      - nephihaha 8mo ago
        I don't need to go to Wikipedia to read about Robeson. Guy became a Stalin fan and crumbled mentally when he realised the USSR was not what it claimed. Great singer though.
        0928374082 8mo ago
        I think part of what they didn't like was that in Old Man River, instead of singing: Git a little drunk An' you lands in jail for Moscow audiences he sang: Show a little grit And you land in jail

hmokiguess 8mo ago

Meanwhile in Brazil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelir_Ant%C3%B4nio_de_Carli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelir_Ant%C3%B4nio_de_Carli

adharmad 8mo ago

Reminds me of George Gamow and his wife's attempts to escape from the Soviet union by kayaking across the Black sea (first attempt) and the Norwegian sea (second attempt) until he was lucky enough to be given permission to visit the Solvay conference and was able to defect using conventional methods (Simply not returning).

russdill 8mo ago

One of favorite escapes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Papago_Escape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Papago_Escape They built boats to sail down the Salt River, to the Colorado River, and to Mexico. Of course the salt river is almost always just a dry river bed. It's shocking to me that no dramatization of this escape exists

mallomarmeasle 8mo ago
Interesting story. The lack of dramatization might have something to do with making Nazis sympathetic characters. Hogans Heroes aside.
hn_throwaway_99 8mo ago
I don't think the Great Papago Escape was that great - "Over the next few weeks, all of the escapees were eventually recaptured without bloodshed." The thing that makes this balloon escape story is so enthralling is that it actually worked.
- russdill 8mo ago
  I mean, their escape was quite complex and did actually "work", it's just they didn't get very far beyond that. Any dramatization would clearly need some comedic element

_zagj 8mo ago

The GDR was a showcase state that, much like the DPRK, being on the periphery of the communist block, was propped up by USSR so that direct comparisons with its capitalist neighbor wouldn't be so unflattering. One of the most important forms of assistance the GDR and other satellites received was cheap energy. In the case of the GDR, through the Friendship Pipeline. One only need look at the DPRK to see how vital this assistance was; it was only after the USSR collapsed and Russia turned off the spigot that North Korea started regularly suffering famines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_North_Korean_famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_North_Korean_famine And yet even with the high (in comparison to other communist states) quality of life people in the GDR enjoyed, people still risked life and limb to escape. You could leave Brazil under its various juntas, Chile under Pinochet, Portugal under Salazar, and Spain under Franco, yet the only option for citizens of the GDR and other communist states (in some cases, still today, e.g., Cuba and the DPRK) was escape and defection.

ricksunny 8mo ago
West Berlin was also a showcase city.
justsomehnguy 8mo ago
> yet the only option for citizens of the GDR and other communist states yawns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s_Soviet_Union_aliyah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s_Soviet_Union_aliyah
- _zagj 8mo ago
  The Soviet Union had almost no legal emigration prior to the 1970s, and limited, targed emigration quotas after. The US, by contrast, prior to 1965, had strict quotas limiting immigration (based on national origins).
  - justsomehnguy 8mo ago
    You are moving goalposts. There were a lot of things in the USSR but leaving by "escape and defection" was not the only option.

potato3732842 8mo ago

>hey needed just ten minutes to inflate the balloon and an additional three minutes to heat the air. That's faster than most professionals by a substantial margin. I guess when it matters you make it work.

SV_BubbleTime 8mo ago

> Propane gas tanks became registered products Ha. Someone does a thing and the state moves in to regulate. Same as it ever was, apparently. Item registration… not used to prevent crime, just to make it easier to document after it happens.

justinclift 8mo ago
> not used to prevent crime Wouldn't "registration" as used in the article mean the purchase details were sent to the authorities, so they could investigate/stop a potential escape attempt?
- SV_BubbleTime 8mo ago
  Registration always precedes confiscation. Even if the devices were registered, you might be up and away before they figure it out. But if another family flew away, that registration list would be handy door to door.
layer8 8mo ago
The registration serves as a deterrent, and therefore does reduce crime. It wouldn’t have been practical to outright prohibit propane gas.

snicky 8mo ago

This reminds of a person I read about on HN years ago - a Russian guy who escaped from the USSR jumping off a cruise liner and swimming a couple of days to Philippines. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Kurilov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Kurilov [1] https://www.amazon.com/Alone-Ocean-Slava-Kurilov-S/dp/9655558967 https://www.amazon.com/Alone-Ocean-Slava-Kurilov-S/dp/965555...

eastbound 8mo ago
Well in this theme, there were 800,000 “boat people” (name given to the Vietnamese who escaped communism by boat in 1975-1995).

lazysheepherd 8mo ago

It amazes me that some people will somehow still have the audacity to defend communism...

chihuahua 8mo ago
"That wasn't real Communism! It's actually great when done correctly!" /s
immibis 8mo ago
Same. Anyone who defends a red coloured party, after red coloured parties did so much damage in the past, is obviously a monster.

appreciatorBus 8mo ago

People will do anything to escape the fruits of marxism. Discoursers today should take note!

exabrial 8mo ago

There was a mcgyver episode about this.

marginalien 8mo ago

This is so impressive. Survival of the fittest at work.

mhh__ 8mo ago

Fascinating. Always enjoyed the near-history one can feel in east germany. Europe is obviously very old e.g. I go to a pub back home that's 500 years old, but you can still sort of feel the concrete setting in some parts of Germany. Although saying that it might be that they haven't changed much since and I don't like the future chosen much elsewhere. Or it's just the light temperature... In places that have kept their old street lighting I find it interesting to find angles that look the same now as they did in 1981 (or '71, etc).

freakynit 8mo ago

Was curious to know the calculations involved. Found them to be pretty simple. Vibe-coded an online calculator for future escapists: https://balloon-lift-calculator.pagey.site https://balloon-lift-calculator.pagey.site

svara 8mo ago
Now calculate the necessary rate of fuel burn and fuel requirement for a given trip; tensile and tear strength needed for the balloon material and seams. Tbf they probably didn't do all these calculations, but should have. They risked their lives by getting some of these things wrong.
- freakynit 8mo ago
  Done. Updated: https://balloon-lift-calculator.pagey.site https://balloon-lift-calculator.pagey.site Thanks..
mfld 8mo ago
You can compare them with the original calculations that can be found at https://www.ballonflucht.de/en/ballonrechner.html https://www.ballonflucht.de/en/ballonrechner.html !
- freakynit 8mo ago
  I did compare with the wikipedia article linked in this HN thread. The results were comparable.

jryle70 8mo ago

A reminder of something much bigger, much longer, and far more tragic. People died, families split, a country divided. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_boat_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_boat_people

WalterBright 8mo ago
The barber I patronized for many years was a boat person. Wonderful people.
refurb 8mo ago
Yup. I met a guy in the East Bay who escaped Vietnam in 1978. Family sold everything to bribe the government to look the other way. Boat trip lasted a week - people died, mostly the youngest and oldest, their bodies thrown overboard. Thai pirate came and stole anything of value they had left and raped the women. Boats passed by and did nothing. They finally make it to Malaysia and spent almost a year in a refugee camp before coming to the US. Now multiply that story by 2,000,000 with 200,000-400,000 dying along the way. A total of 4-5% of the entire population tried to escape by boat. The lucky ones fled before 1975, some later one. A massive human tragedy that few people know much about.

lutusp 8mo ago

This true story moves us because it resembles much of human history, in which clever but powerless people struggle against morons -- morons who somehow gain control over a modern industrial state, then use that power to punish innocents who dare to assert simple human rights. People in Moscow, in Gaza, in Tehran, in Minneapolis, are all saying, "How can I rise above this? -- where's my balloon?" Too many morons. Too few balloons.

wtcactus 8mo ago
> Moscow, in Gaza, in Tehran, in Minneapolis Man, you really went ahead and tried to compare Minneapolis with Teharan. This is got me laughing out loud.
- diab0lic 8mo ago
  While the difference between the two may still be wide, it is a lot more narrow than it was a year ago. Some people find this concerning.
- lutusp 8mo ago
  > Man, you really went ahead and tried to compare Minneapolis with Teharan. It would help if you could spell "Tehran". Then notice that in either place you can be killed for annoying authority figures, without due process or recourse. > This is got me laughing out loud. I suspect that by 2028 you won't be laughing quite so loudly -- or at all.

anticommunist 8mo ago

[flagged]

decimalenough 8mo ago

More interesting escapes from the DDR, this time by three brothers, who all fled separately: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethke_brothers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethke_brothers

yde_java 8mo ago
> The Berlin Wall fell six months after Egbert's escape. Ironic. Still quite an adventure. Thanks for sharing!

bot_user_7a2b99 8mo ago

[dead]

car 8mo ago

The autobiographical graphic novel "Time Zones" by Sven Diekmann describes an attempted balloon escape from the GDR in 1977, but it was thwarted at the last minute [1]. It is a powerful book, quite chilling as it describes life under the totalitarian puppet government of East Germany. I also often found it eerily reminiscent of our current times. I can highly recommend it, both for the suspenseful narrative and great visual storytelling. A great read for HS/college kids that are into history too. [1] https://store.bookbaby.com/book/time-zones https://store.bookbaby.com/book/time-zones [2] Authors website: https://www.svensiekmann.com/bio https://www.svensiekmann.com/bio

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

elbci 8mo ago

- What capitalists did in 6 months that communists didn't manage in 50 years? - Make communism look good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_nostalgia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_nostalgia

tirant 8mo ago
Communism and socialism have always looked good when compared to the principles of other economic and political doctrines: - No poor people; everyone supported by the State; Everyone works for the common good; shared resources no matter how lucky or unlucky you are… From an intentional and moral perspective, nothing can beat it. However it fails and will always fail because of a couple of important reasons: - it requires the sacrifice of freedom and individuality. - it needs to suppress any other political alternative - it’s finally always implemented by humans (flawed by default) that have their own benefit as a goal. Even with constant examples of countries demonstrating why communism always ends up being a perverse system, many people still romanticize the system. Interestingly usually only people in free capitalist societies.
- elbci 8mo ago
  Those 50-60-70+% of people in former communist states don't "romanticize", they just remember being better. Utopia - no, but better than capitalism. Without an example of a communist state shielded from constant attacks, sabotage and sanctions from the dominant capitalist we will never know how good it could get. We just know the imperfect as it was, it was still better.
  - honzabe 8mo ago
    > Those 50-60-70+% of people in former communist states don't "romanticize", they just remember being better. Where did you get those numbers? I remember reading about one survey where the number of people with previous regime ‘nostalgia’ was around 50%. That survey had flawed methodology, and the results were probably mostly about nostalgia related to the times when we were young, and our backs did not hurt (obviously, Russian bots in my country keep blabbering about it ad nauseam as if it were actually about the quality of the old regime). Let’s focus on the numbers that matter - the election numbers: in the 2025 elections in my country (Czechia), communists did not even get over the 5% necessary to get to the parliament. So, I guess what people actually remember here is communism not being better.

Squarex 8mo ago

It is interesting how dictatorships for resourceless countries needed to keep the people in like east germany or czechoslovakia. But current dictatorships with natural resources like Venezuela or Iran let dissent go. It makes them more stable sadly.

fsh 8mo ago
Since West Germany considered East Germany to be occupied territory, East Germans had automatic citizenship in the west. This made it uniquely easy to emigrate into the much wealthier country.
- Squarex 8mo ago
  Well apart from the high chance of being killed at the borders.
  - usrusr 8mo ago
    Sure, but they did have a place to go to. Unlike all the other people that risk getting killed at a border
- usr1106 8mo ago
  That's not fully correct. The West accepted only a single German citizenship. So everyone from East Germany could immediately be issued a "German" passport by the Western authorities. For the East there were 2 citizenships. They had no adjectives, they only talked about "citizen of the German Democratic Republic" and "citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany". The occupation view was not official politics after 1970. The West had recognized the East as a state. But citizens of both states were assumed to have the same citizenship. Edit: recognized as state should maybe recognized as some kind of state. Like the citizenship there were numerous differences compared to other foreign nation states.
gassius 8mo ago
As a Venezuelan, I think the difference is not the Natural Resources, or at least is not the main difference. In 2017, the shortages and economic crisis generated by 15 years of communist policies has pushed around 4 million people out, and then, the regime "elected" a Constitutional Assembly which has the power to create a new Constitution and to overrid any previously elected organism (as it was at the time the opossition controled National Assembly). At that point I leaved Venezuela inmediatly with my 2 minor aged kids, because for me it was a NO BRAINER that the first thing they will do was to limit the emigration and the free ciruculation. My train of tought was very simple. As any other Socialist Dictatorship before, this one needs to halt the staggering loss of skilled proffesionals like Medics, Engineers or whatever they deemed of National Security, I mean, you still need Doctors, you still need the Electricity and Water to get into the industries and houses, and specially for Venezuela, you need to keep the Oil flowing off the earth... BOY WAS I WRONG, they never put a formal limit to the emigration and at least another 5 million people leaved Venezuela (so far). It did not matter at all that the already in shambles Public Health system collapsed, they doctors that stayed were private and they attended only the capacity that could pay for the scarse services, the basic services did not matter that much either, as people got use to get them once or twice per week, and even a country wide blackout of 3 weeks was not the end of the regime, and the Oil, well, does not matter either because what was once 3.5 million barrels per day went to be as low as 300.000 bpd. So, what was the difference? well, for all its downfalls, it seems to me that the XX century Communist/Socialist dictatorships were guided by Ideology, they really thought theirs ideas were for the better of their people, so having no Healthcare was a REAL PROBLEM, having no public services was a REAL PROBLEM. Of course, their recipes were doomed as their political ideals, but at least they tried. The Venezuelan Regime has no Ideology (it has some in form of propaganda, but that is different that actions) as the latest news can attest, They couldn't care less about the people and the wellness. They did not use any "Natural Resouces" to keep any level of living conditions, they just let loose the ruins of the economy they had messed so badly to let the most savage neoliberalism to correct the course while they stayed in power to keep leaching two sources of income, whatever oil they could produce and the drugs operations revenue, alongside their cut on any business their allies (AKA "Enchufados) could come up in the "liberalized" economy. All the people that leaved the country (including me) just made them easier to keep control of whatever was left. Ever decreasing political or social opposition, less pressure of the shambles public services and so on and on... The Natural Resources is just a part of their Income, it does not affects the hability to control or to even extract richness from the system.

Mikhail_Edoshin 8mo ago

There were many "escapes", some weren't so romantic. E.g. for some escapees the drive to what they viewed as freedom was so intense that they did not hesitate to kill someone, e.g. a stewardess on a hijacked plane. To see a bigger picture let's juxtapose these escapes with the life of Luke of Simferopol (N. F. Voyno-Yasenetsky). He was a surgeon and a bishop of the Orthodox church. He opposed the anti-church policies of the Soviet government, was sent into an exile into Siberia and nearly died there. Then the war came. So he wrote a letter to Soviet officials asking to be sent to work in a hospital near the front, where his surgical skills would be of much use. At the end he added: "When the war is over I'm ready to go back to exile".

kstenerud 8mo ago

What's scary is that Russia plans to do this again. But not that surprising when you look at Russian history.

cbdevidal 8mo ago
Collectivism: Ideas so good, they’re mandatory
- immibis 8mo ago
  Political buzzword du jour: every dictatorship ever. You know there isn't an ideology called collectivism, right?

Nora23 8mo ago

How long did it take them to plan this escape?

mkl 8mo ago
From the second sentence, "over a year and a half of preparations". The third paragraph gives a starting agreement date of 7 March 1978, and the successful flight was 16 September 1979.

reflexe 8mo ago

My favorite east Germany escape stories is the escape is train driver’s Harry Deterling, that just drove the train into wall (which was not fully a wall by then if I understood correctly) https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/chronicle/_year1961/_month12/?month=12&year=1961&opennid=177122&moc=1 https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/chronicle/_year1961/_mon...

tim333 8mo ago

So much havoc caused by having a fascist/communist government in Russia, from partnering with Hitler to start WW2, through this stuff to Ukraine and it seems about half the evil in the world. I hope they fall one day and turn to something normal.

api 8mo ago

Other than North Korea, are there still countries that are literal prisons that you can’t leave? It’s astounding to me that this was a thing. The fact that it’s so rare now is one of the quiet ways we have in fact progressed.

immibis 8mo ago
The USA doesn't literally prevent you from leaving, but it uses its unique control of the global banking system to still tax you when you move to another country.
olelele 8mo ago
I spoke with the people working at a German resort in Tunisia. I was there for a short stint as sound tech. The only way out of the country is smuggling. You don’t get permission to leave if you’re of working age and can contribute to the economy.
__turbobrew__ 8mo ago
Cuba had exit visas up until 2013.

PeterStuer 8mo ago

Hast du etwas Zeit für mich?

throw310822 8mo ago

Since then, the trust of wives in their husbands' weekend projects has dropped considerably.

MarkusWandel 8mo ago

What is just awesome, to a tinkerer, is the great can-do spirit people had then. You couldn't buy it, so you made it yourself. They were going to do a helicopter, but for the lack of a suitable engine. As if the rest was just a solved problem, and may well have been, given the background of one of them. And then to build a working hot air balloon that even looks pretty cool, entirely in clandestine conditions with improvised materials. In a museum in Germany you can even see a homemade twin-engine airplane that was planned for an escape attempt (that didn't happen, maybe just as well) ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_DOWA_81 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_DOWA_81 ). Just incredible technical competence everywhere, that fades when the need is gone, when absolutely everything you could want is just an Amazon order away.

alt227 8mo ago
I feel like hard situations force people to adapt. This was not a unique time in history, it continues today in warzones and places like Ukraine. It is only a few comfortable western countires who have such comfort of everything being a click and 1 days delivery away.

vee-kay 8mo ago

I remembered Damn Interesting (fantastic website!) has a nice narrative-story-style article on this "pop up from persecution" story": https://www.damninteresting.com/up-in-the-air/ https://www.damninteresting.com/up-in-the-air/ Also an audio podcast available for the article, that's more thrilling.

youhatetheleft 8mo ago

Fun fact Tatcher and Reagan wanted to avoid German reunification at all costs.