Weirdest Attempts to Cross the Berlin Wall (1961-1989) 

“Democracy is not perfect but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in.”-John F, Kennedy.

This defenitly needs a second part. On the December 5th 1961 the wall was broken by a whole train. The engeneer was Harry Deterling who crossed the border between Spandau and Oranienburg together with 25 people. And you only told the story of only two of the three Bethke brothers. Ingo and Holger Bethke. But there was a third brother: Claus Bethke. In 1989 Ingo and Holger Bethke returned to the GDR in ultralight aircraft disguised as soviet airforce. They picked up thier brother Claus and his wife Marianne and landed in West-Berlin just in front of the Reichstag. Maybe the most badass escape in the history of the Berlin Wall.

During the construction of the Berlin Wall, an East German border guard named Conrad Schumann was hesitant to cross over the barbed wires while guarding. Some of the West Berliners saw him acting nervously, knowing he wanted to jump. They shouted for him to, “come over!” After much deliberation, he jumped & dropped his PPSH SMG. During his time in West Germany, Schumann feared that the Stasi would try to assassinate him, but this never happened. After the fall of the Berlin Wall Schumann said, "Only since 9 November 1989 [the date of the fall] have I felt truly free." Even so, he continued to feel more at home in Bavaria than in his birthplace, citing old frictions with his former colleagues, and was even hesitant to visit his parents and siblings in Saxony. When he returned to East Germany after the reunification to visit his relatives, he was rejected by them. They saw him as a traitor who abandoned his family. On 20 June 1998, suffering from depression, he committed suicide, hanging himself in his orchard near the town of Kipfenberg in Upper Bavaria. His body was found by his wife a few hours later.

“Torn down that wall like the Koola Aid man! Oh yeah!” Mikhail Gorbachev

Other attempts did NOT include a giant slingshot, a motorized pogo stick, a super powerful trampoline, or 99 red [helium] balloons.

That walk animation was so cartoonish, it’s amazing 😂 3:00

The fact that these people weren’t soldiers, but students, circus actors, and family members is fucking insane. It’s so fascinating to see how human ingenuity is ramped up ten-fold whenever there’s a desperate need for freedom. You see it in clever prison escapes all the time. It’s amazing!

There was an escape attempt that was done by a couple who had a very low ride car. They made sure that they was low as the borders guards road barriers were and drove as fast as they could through and made it through it without even a scratch. Then there was a guy that made his own scuba equipment and made it across that eventually became something of a novelty aquatic toy as a result.

"Capitalism builds walls to keep people from coming in. Communism builds walls to keep people from running away."

As someone who lives in Germany (Saxony) I'm shocked when People say that we live in a dictatorship and that they want the wall back People don't wanna learn from the past

Born in 1981.. I have a vague memory of small chunks of concrete in little presentation boxes being sold at Walmart as "peice of Berlin wall" as suoviners. This was when Walmart was just a department store. No groceries no "Super store". This was in middle Alabama of all places.

I’d love to see Count Dankula do a video on the craziest escapes from East Berlin.

There was another famous attempt that went well in 1964. There was a doctor who managed to smuggle 9 people to West Germany with his BMW Isetta bubble car, he almost got found out by border guard's dog. There's a video of it on BMW's official channel titled The Small Escape

Lets all take a moment to say thanks for amazing content delivered in amazing tone

I love your videos and i have been watching your videos for years

Greetings from Germany. It's very exciting how they mix real history and myths together. From the beginning, the so-called border troops had orders to stop any border breakthrough by all means, which also included the use of firearms. The only thing they weren't officially allowed to do was shoot at minors, but this still happened often. It is also absolute nonsense that one out of six GDR citizens worked for the StaSi, because not everyone actually provided information as an IM (unofficial employee). The three brothers who escape in the last story are really exciting, but they had very good mountaineering equipment, but what is even more exciting is that the third was helped to escape with the help of an ultralight aircraft. Incidentally, most of them did not flee to Berlin but to the direct inner-German border or via other Eastern Bloc countries. The collapse of the GDR had little to do with the Polish Solidarity protests, but rather with the fact that the leading communists had run the country and the infrastructure so badly and that people could only buy the bare necessities with their money. Back then, people hardly demonstrated for the freedom to travel; it was about being able to buy cars, furniture or technology in the store, for example, without having to wait months or years for it. In this context, unfortunately, a lot of things are generally misrepresented abroad.

My greatgrand father was a carpenter, and he was allowed to cross the border to retun funiture to his customers in west berlin. He used this oppurtunity to smuggle all his funiture and family across the border.

Wasn't just in Berlin either. Saw a few attempts along the Grenz in Fulda back in the day.

My dad was an officer in the US Army, he actually flew in and out of West Berlin a few times.

i respect your videos and you i learning history from you very easy

You were my childhood! Keep up the great videos!

4:50 the guy's arm is flashing

please do a video on these (this is a copy and paste list for a few channels) units and tactics/evaluation of loadouts of troops (from different jobs (and other branches) like the 82 snd 101 airborne units or infantry tank units, (or when tanks were assigned a infantry unit like i think earlier war Russia then all tanks were formed into there own units wich meant the infantry no longer knew the true strength of there own tanks but alowed tank units to fight more efficiently) the tank doctrine of countries evaluation of tank veiw ports evaluation of tanks/armored vehicles of different countries evaluation of aircraft types of different countries, different between navil and army/air force fighters logistics units of the axes and allied powers in ww2 ww1 estern front tactics Russian Civil war tactics and strategies navil ship cross sections (all the rooms and how it all works) evaluation of types of ships or evaluation of navil warfare (or just dedectsded videos on ww1 and ww2 navil doctrine as theres stuff out there on other times of history) air craft carrier strike group formations exsamples (from different countries) ancient persan ships, ancient veneti ships (gauls that fought ceaser) ships used by genoa and the vernesain republic the vernesain republic government all sailing ships, (i know theres many on yt but some contradict each other and i think theres more left out) ancient macenean greek and trojan troops 2b9 vasilyok morter tactics used so far in the Ukraine war, better for squads to be 2 teams of 5 or 3 teams of 3, and probably the easiest, better to keep troops well feed or starved like an animal how dose age effect comsnders eg napoleon got older so took less risks, ancient urban warfare ww2 tactics in Asia, tactics in the Chinese age of warlords, (and Chinese civil war) tactics in the ruso jap war cold war navil tactics, Korean war tactics, strange tactics or unque battles from the American war of independence and America civil how were 17th centry sailing ships build types of bombs lunched by drones comands given on sailing ships (like ease the sheets and get ready to chine, or slack n beases, basically things you hear movie capitns say) why did the nazis never return (or a video on best occupations) why did the Japanese empire fall, dont just say "America" like things like how there army and navy argued alot alot more on the Polynesians and māori, but please learn pronounceations if you do this

Didn't even mention all the escape attempts featuring the Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus, the most notable being Heinz Holzapfel and his family in 1965. Especially because at the time it was the House of Ministries.

I’ve patrolled the wall, from the West. We weren’t allowed to directly assist an escape, but we could create “a distraction”. The day that dammmm wall fell felt like we had won.

Imagine people being so happy in your regime you have to build walls to protect them to run away.

Shoot me out of the cannon, Otto! -A circus performer in a cannon

@simplehistory I love your Channel been following since 013. Hope one day you will cover Biafran war which had a death toll of 2-4 million women and children. Hope you cover that some day

You should do who are the Cossack

Cline was a bold man squirreled his way over the wall😥! Fell and broke both arms but made it to the other side👏!

Do you guys know how hard it us to skimmy along a rope let alone a steel one? It takes incredible strengh and is a hated obstacle in every basic Training of any army

Armored car guy they let his mom live..she probably had to disown him

I’ve always been interested in the Berlin wall. This is some good stuff

*What a great stories and words.*

Two other grate escape stories: In 1979 two families escaped via a hot air balloon. In 1971 a doctor swam about 40km through the Baltic Sea. His provisions for the trip consisted of chocolate, pain killers and methamphetamine.

nice video

I’m so glad i saw this video early

Reminder that the biggest escape was from West to East in 1988 - ref LA Times ‘West Berlin police Friday chased nearly 200 squatters from a disputed parcel of land near the Berlin Wall after a monthlong struggle that pitted environmentalists against city developers. When the removal order came, the squatters found an unusual escape route--over the Berlin Wall into the city’s Communist side’

Thank God for David Hasselhoff and his keyboard scarf. The wall may still be standing today if weren't for him.

you should make a video about the secret stasi prison, Hohenschönhausen

2:54 the dude from west Germany: is that body for me?

Nice video but I expected from you to talk about first person passed the wall a East German soldier and it was one of the symbol photographs of Berlin Wall

Maybe a very specific topic, but can you make a video about Christman Genepa Tinga? I guess people would really like to hear about his history!

And what’s crazy is there were simple tunnels running through the border the entire time. Remember they had a sewer system which ran throughout Germany and ran through the borders/wall

Wow what history

Desperation causes people to do crazy things.

My grand grandma escaped, and she is still alive today

I've seen several pieces of the Berlin Wall.

When I saw this video title I knew for A FACT that someone was going to make a tunnel under the wall, and I was right!

As a German/Polish American, the Demolition of the Berlin Wall is always a fascinating part of its history to me since it started in the year I was born. So I never witnessed or even heard what it was like with the Berlin Wall, but it fascinates me nonetheless.

Very interesting

There are many more interesting escapes over the border. From sown airbaloons to wind surfing. There is an entire museum dedicated to it in Berlin

When i heard the story of the Bethke brothers. Damn they really humiliated Mielke & Honecker... Hubert Hohlbein i know his tunnelling work as well. He helped his own mother escape...

There used to be a little museum at Checkpoint Charlie. It had several examples of escape methods, including a hang glider and a car with the fuel tank drained and hatch cut into so a person could hide there. Sad that people have to live in such places where escape is the only viable option. I remember walking along the western side of the Berlin wall eyeing the East German guards with machine guns aimed down at their own country.

Imagine having to build a wall just to keep people from leaving.

The good ol' Trabi at 7:00. 🙂

Did you know that from 0:41 to 1:00 they were just playing at construction site? But still a great video.

My Grandma escaped through the Wall with the Passport of a Belgian Woman that looked very similar to her which had been smuggled in by my Grandpa when he visited her

imagine someone escaped the last day and then they wake up to no wall

This is exactly what is happening on the US southern border but instead of meeting people who have traveled for months with kindness and help we do our best to ship them back to the awful situations they are trying to escape.

I like how important figure drawn much more in detail than the last time.

I love the sks animations

Hedwig and the angry inch 😂

Was life in East Germany extremely severe? Or was it strict but compared to other regimes not oppressive?

calling the GDR a independent nation is a very far stretch to be honest.

Deutschland Trilogy is the best.

"A East German people wanted to escape East Germany so they will be reunited with their family" -A wise man

There is a good size chunk of the wall where I live in missouri. It's pretty neat that the shipped a chunk that's like 8foot wide by 10 foot tall all the way over here

The tunnels people built are kinda cool though I remember watching a movie about it in German class

I feel like I need to point out the soil was not clay it was more of sandy type of soil,due to the ice age and the glaciers that flared the land. Additionally Berlin was built on a swamp that also where it got its Slavic name from. Due to this the subway system in Berlin was also not as deep because to was harder to go any deeper.

This is kinda like the story of the guy who collapsed behind the North and South Korean border and got to safety by a South Korean guard

They have a museum in Berlin full of relics from escape attempts. My personal favorite is the hot air balloon. 🧐

tightrope guy pulled a sam fisher 💀

There's a massive chunk of the wall at the Dayton Air Force museum.

thankfully Engels is still alive today. Sadly they are getting old at 81 years old. At least his escape succedded and now hes got a family.

What about the BMW from that old comercial?

Believe it or not: Eleven months before the wall fell, there was an episode of David Seville and The Chipmunks, where they performed at the wall and destroyed it.

For the record, October 3rd 1990 was not when it was demolished. It’s when East Germany legally and officially reunited with West Germany to become Germany. The wall was demolished slowly between June and November of 1990. And the so called Fall of the Berlin Wall is a much more fascinating story than represented here.

Hey simple history, can we have one day a video on the organization of the Maginot Line ?

Fun fact, the first woman chancelor of Germany was there in West Berlin when East officially gave the green light to go to the west side.

I have a chunk of the Berlin Wall.

To own a piece of the wall is 20 bucks if anyone was curious lol

Make a video about the Underground Railroad.

there was also the armoured school bus, the glider...

That one time a shopping cart size BMW smuggled a person successfully across the border

My family just took a vacation in the Hungarian People's Republic during the summer of 1970 and never returned to the GDR. From there we made it to West Germany.

My grandparents telling me how they go to school:

Fun fact my college actually has a piece of the Berlin wall on the campus 😁😁

NBC sponsoring a tunnel….why am I only half-surprised?

day 14 of asking for a video about the wagalla massacre in Kenya

Can you do about Malaysia Vs Indonesia confrontation in 1963 history

I broke down weeping How can mankind allow such government, in belief that they themselves need to be Authoritative over the will of the individual who has freedom, granted by Holy God Almighty, to enact a free will either to holiness or to sin? How can such wickedness exist amongst us? That we desire to close off that freedom?

Simple history for simple people.

Simple History, you forgot the story of the family that crossed the Berlin Wall via hot air balloon!

And some people really want socialism again…

You forgot to mention the escape by balloon and surf board.

My dad had a stone from the Berlin Wall from 1989

Voting in for MACV-SOG and Jim Corbett the Maneater hunter

starts @2:12

Concerning the first case : "W" west berlin guard. "L" mother"