> “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

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

>Ballonfahrt in die Freiheit

Gotta love the way German sounds to English ears. Always good for a chuckle.

This guy is a hacker hero - do the engineering needed, get the proof of concept built, move fast, break things, start over and go big, then scores a victory over the commies and saves his family.

I keep on thinking it was a lot smaller! Wow!

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

> Propane gas tanks became registered products

I still remember the two gentlemen in their black, faux leather jackets who rang our doorbell and demanded to see our dinghy. (dinghies where registered products too) We showed them our dinghy, they said thank you and left.

Probably someone fled over the Baltic sea to Denmark in a dinghy. So the secret police went from door to door until they found someone who could no longer show it to them...

This was in the late 80s.

The GDR seems to be forgotten/misunderstood by many people. Which is a pity because it serves a warning about mass public surveillance plans that keep rearing their ugly head, even in Germany.

The greatest trick authoritarianism ever pulled [0] was convincing people it was competent, rational, or efficient.

Putting young men into fresh uniforms to march in synchrony looks impressive, but in the background sycophancy rules while expertise is wasted, and people who could be improving harvests and preventing floods are slaving away in the "Office of Subversive Objects" trying to figure out the source of the googly-eye scourge being traitorously installed on Dear Leader's statues.

[0] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/03/20/devil/

Depends on the form of authoritarian. The two of the richest countries on a GDP PPP basis are Lichtenstein and Singapore, also some of the most free economically, yet they could probably be described as benevolent authoritarian systems. Dubai further behind, although some similar points.

It seems authoritarians that know how to use their authority to force the populace to accept (some forms of) freedom can perform better than democracies. To the point the reigning monarch of Lichtenstein is basically a straight up fuedal prince, although one that has a sort of half libertarian/ancap flavor to how he wields power. Yet very few people describe Lichtenstein as a dystopia, it just kind of quietly gets ignored as an example of authoritarian success in both wealth and freedom.

>People - here in Germany as well as abroad - forget too easily what a sinister but also ridiculous state the GDR was

Wait till you hear how sinister its precursor state was

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".

The 2018 film is a really good movie, I would highly recommend checking it out!

I watched Night Crossing in my german class in high school. I remember it being intense.

They have the 2018 movie free to watch on Fandango At Home, which doesn't even require you to login to watch it: https://athome.fandango.com/content/browse/details/Balloon/1...

Great movie yes! The 1980s one, I have not seen the new one.

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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.

From the reports I'd read and the interviews I'd seen, it's not that Venezuela let people go so much as it couldn't stop them. Many people who fled the country state they had to hide their property and children to prevent it from looking like they were not coming back when crossing the border. This might have been an agreement with Columbia, since Columbia doesn't want mass migration into their country. In some cases it was starve, jail, die or flee which is not the same as "let go".

Do they put the persecution and threat on so thick intentionally to encourage them to leave, so that if democracy did return in some way socialist ideology would be all but certain to win? I don't know.

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.

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.

Interesting story. The lack of dramatization might have something to do with making Nazis sympathetic characters. Hogans Heroes aside.

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

I felt so tense and anxious listening to that.

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.

The barber I patronized for many years was a boat person. Wonderful people.

Yeah I'd be curious into how they acquired so much money

You can compare them with the original calculations that can be found at https://www.ballonflucht.de/en/ballonrechner.html !

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.

> The Berlin Wall fell six months after Egbert's escape.

Ironic. Still quite an adventure. Thanks for sharing!

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%.

For me, this is the maxim that governs speaking with someone defending a totalitarian regime.

If the person has no issue that people have to be kept by force INSIDE for the country to function, then we have a fundamental disagreement on what is good and what is bad and any further discussion is a waste of time.

The Wikipedia page references Günter Wetzel's website. Reading 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...

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?

> 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?

The registration serves as a deterrent, and therefore does reduce crime. It wouldn’t have been practical to outright prohibit propane gas.

I'm not the only one then! :-)

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.

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.

Collectivism: Ideas so good, they’re mandatory

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.

Cuba had exit visas up until 2013.

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.

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.

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.

Remember the GDR called the Berlin Wall the "Antifascist Protection Barrier"

A communist country has never existed and never will so we will never know.

Communism is a lovely idea on paper but a complete utopia due to human nature. We are nearly all motherfuckers who if given the chance will try to obtain more power or more wealth than our peers in a group of any size. Thus you can't have all citizens of a given country agree on abandoning private ownership and sharing wealth, work and power in equal terms. Any government that pretended to do that was just faking it and forced their citizens to pretend.

One guy did use a plane to land in Red Square. Remember him?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servi%C3%A7os_A%C3%A9reos_Cruz...

If I were in the US I would certainly leave to a more socialist country. I could not live there. Even before Trump.

However there is a spectrum between it. I don't think either extreme is great, neither American unrestricted capitalism nor full-on communism. A balance of both is needed. I was a lot happier in the 80s when Holland was a lot more socialist. Less things to worry about, a safety net, cheap housing and schooling, still the ability to run your own business if you really wanted to. We had a great combination.

However the VVD neoliberals (who idolize America) have destroyed it over the last decades and there are so many huge problems now because they always went for the quick fix.

With full-on capitalism you get lots of disenfranchised people angry at not having any upward mobility, corporations just dump all over the citizens, and differences in wealth get insanely high. With full-on communism you end up with a surveillance hellscape and inhumane processes. The secret sauce is in between IMO.

West Berlin was also a showcase city.

> yet the only option for citizens of the GDR and other communist states

yawns

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s_Soviet_Union_aliyah

Same. Anyone who defends a red coloured party, after red coloured parties did so much damage in the past, is obviously a monster.

"That wasn't real Communism! It's actually great when done correctly!" /s

It was mainly the USSR's doing. China managed to switch to state capitalism. I guess we'll see how that works out for them.

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.

They could each have their own balloon. Your mom would be trapped in East Germany, however.

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.

> 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?

Not as of my knowledge. Coincidence I suppose, or desire by them to keep it private.

> Was/is it common practice to omit the ages of adult women in Germany?

A gentleman does not ask a lady's age.

> 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.