Commentary Between 1961, when the Berlin Wall was built, and 1989 when it came down, many daring escapes were made across the wall to freedom. By some accounts, around 5,000 people managed the feat, risking their lives in some audacious way like crawling through tunnels, using fake passports, flying in hot air balloons, walking tightropes, or busting through the wall in tanks, hoping not to be shot by border guards. Many thousands of people made the attempt and a couple of hundred are thought to have died in the attempt. These individuals were willing to risk their lives to be free. Yet they did not bother to escape from East Berlin before the wall was built. For a dozen years, East and West Berlin almost seemed like they were still one city and travelling into West Berlin to defect was one of the easiest ways to escape East Germany. Hundreds …