Berlin Wall

            There were many dramatic and interesting escapes to the west after the Berlin wall went up. Some of the most interesting were the building of a underground tunnel that connected a old bakery from the west to some back yard toilets in the east, capturing a boat and tying the captain up after he got drunk and taking the boat to West Berlin, and hiding in a car with no top and no windshield as the driver does not stop to be inspected and goes rite under the barriers. One of the most interesting escapes came from two families who worked on a hot air balloon in their basement. The men drilled and soldered together gas burners, platforms and a makeshift flamethrower, while the woman stitched a sixty foot wide and seventy five foot high balloon out of curtains, bed sheets and other fabrics. The couples had just enough fuel to get in the air and barely floated over the Wall on Sept. 15, 1979. When Nazi Germany surrendered at the end of WWII, the allied powers signed the Potsdam Agreement, a treaty that determined the borders for Germany and Berlin. Germany was split into four sections, the largest being the Soviets section, which was the Eastern part of Germany. The western section belonged to France, Britain and USA. This all made since because the Soviets were already stationed in the East at the end of the war. But since the capital, Berlin, lay in the Eastern part of Germany, they divided it up the same way, the Soviets in the east and the Americans, French and British in the west. The Americans soon passed the Marshall plan, which pumped loads of money into West Germany and all the other Western countries to raise their economy. While the economy of West Germany began to rise, the one of East Germany began to fall. Many East Germans began to move west, where they could live a much better life. The Soviets had to do something to stop the fleeing of East Germans. In 1952, the East German government closed the border between East and West Germany, but people could still move to West Berlin, as many East Germans did.