I would like to dedicate this book to Donna Huffman, and Kathryn Martineau.

After the end of World War II, Germany was divided. The Allies controlled the West Side, and the Soviet Union controlled the Eastern Side. In the years from 1949 to 1961, about 2.5 million East Germans fled from East to West Germany. This included high numbers of skilled workers, professionals, and intellectuals.

In 1960 alone, about 160,000 refugees had escaped from East Germany. This brought the total to over three million who had fled to West Germany. Many people were fleeing to West Germany to escape Communism, a society in which all property is publicly owned. They wanted better lives in the West.

On August 13, 1961, police officers strung barbed wire along the border of East Berlin. This was to keep East German citizens from fleeing to West Germany. This was done in the dead of night in top secret. Residents had no idea until they saw it in the morning.

The Berlin Wall’s purpose was to keep East Germans from leaving. The wall was about 12 feet high and 96 miles long. A back wall, a minefield, a jeep road, guard dogs, watchtowers, and searchlights were added. This made the wall very difficult to cross.

The wall through Berlin was actually two separate parallel cement barriers. A no man's land was put in between. This section of the border had many rabbits. They were often fed by tourists from the observation platforms on the West.

Heinz Meixner drives a rented sports car underneath a barrier at Checkpoint Charlie.

Meixner escaped with his fiancee and future mother-in-law, who was hiding in the trunk. 

Bricks lined the trunk of the car to protect his future mother-in-law from bullets in case soldiers fired. This is one of the most daring escape attempts because it was so close to the soldiers.

12 senior citizens dug a 32-meter long tunnel from East Berlin into West Berlin. The entrance was hidden beneath a chicken coop. The escape tunnel had high ceilings. One digger said, “We wanted to walk to freedom with our wives, comfortably and unbowed.”