How Two Families Fled Communist Oppression In East Germany In A Homemade Hot Air Balloon

id="article-body" class="row" section="article-body"> Günter Wetzel and Mod APK Peter Strelzyk built a hot air balloon from scratch to escape from East Germany with their families in 1979.  Courtesy of Günter Wetzel It was a crisp Saturday in September 1979, and a breeze was blowing strong and steady from the north. That's what would help Günter Wetzel and game cheats his colleague Peter Strelzyk escape East Germany with their families in the middle of the night -- thanks to a hot air balloon they'd built from scratch using only a magazine article as a guide.

"The thought of leaving had been festering in my mind for years, but it was clear that it was very, very dangerous to go via a land route," said Wetzel, now 65 years old. "When I saw pictures of these balloons, I knew it was a possibility." Wetzel talked to CNET through a German interpreter shortly after the 40th anniversary of his flight and ahead of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9. The flight was one of the most daring and ingenious escapes ever made from East Germany.

There was no certainty of success, and failure would have meant imprisonment or even death. For Wetzel and many others, the desire for freedom outweighed the risks. "If we hadn't been so optimistic, we probably couldn't have done it," he said.  Wetzel and Strelzyk have told different accounts of their escape, with each man claiming credit for the idea. They stopped talking shortly after arriving in the West and never reconciled before Strelzyk's death in March 2017. What follows is Wetzel's account of their flight to West Germany.  A divided Germany After World War II, Germany was divided between East and West.

The West, with the help of the US and Britain, flourished and modernized. The East, under the influence of the Soviet Union, struggled. About 3.6 million East Germans, 20% of the population, fled between 1945 and 1961.    East Germany, known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR) or Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), didn't want the rest of its citizens to leave for the richer West, so in August 1961 it built barriers to keep its people in.

The official GDR line: It wanted to keep "decadent, immoral westerners out." See also Sneaking to freedom from East Berlin to West in a modified BMW Isetta I drove a hot pink communist-built Trabant around Berlin Ex-Stasi boss green with envy over NSA's domestic spy powers The Berlin Wall's 96-mile-long, 12-foot-tall concrete barrier is well known, but simple barbed wire fences divided other parts of the country.

Trying to climb over the barriers would set off machine guns, mines and other horrors. Soldiers patrolled a no-man's land along the border.  About 150,000 people attempted escape during the 28 years that the East German barrier existed. An estimated 40,000 succeeded. While some East Germans flew planes to safety, no one had ever attempted escape by balloon. Life in East Germany Life in Westzel's home of Pössneck, which today has a population of about 12,000 people, was typical for most of East Germany.

The Czech Republic is about an hour's drive east, mobile apps (www.canastaff.com) and it's bordered on the west by Bavaria, part of West Germany. The Socialist Unity Party of Germany (also known as the East German Communist Party) held tight control over peoples' lives, professions and futures. Opposing political views were squashed, and the dictatorship prevented free elections and mobile apps freedom of movement. The Ministry for State Security, ios commonly called the Stasi, forced neighbors to spy on each other and compiled extensive files on citizens.

Food, supplies and housing shortages were part of daily life. Wetzel lived in a single-family home that he renovated in his spare time. He drove a truck delivering furniture and construction materials. In the eyes of the government, Wetzel had black marks against him: XAPK His father had fled to the West, and Wetzel had refused to join the Communist Party. Because of that, the GDR denied Wetzel's request to study physics after high school. Instead, he studied forestry, bricklaying and truck driving.