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How would you break into the most heavily guarded country on earth?

I'm Helena Merriman and over the past six months I've been investigating the true story of a man who tried it.

His name's Joachim. He's a student just 22 years old and when this story begins back in

1961 he's just escaped to West Berlin from East Germany,

a brutal dictatorship. But now he wants to go back, back into the East, the place he's just escaped,

to help other people get out just like

heeded to do that though he has to get past this

the Berlin Wall miles and miles of concrete slabs and barbed wire.

He could try to climb over the wall, but the searchlights might find him,

and then, like others who tried, he could be killed.

And so you can see why Joakin decides not to go over the wall but under it.

He builds a tunnel spending hours at a time digging underground in a space the size of a coffin.

He finds a route that avoids the city's water pipes, the electric cables, and he lies flat on his

back, pulling out the earth handful by handful. And he does all this for days, weeks until finally

he reaches the death strip into a section of land right next to the wall that's patrolled by

border guards and he knowsrolled by border guards.

And he knows that those border guards are listening for diggers under their feet.

If they hear them, they'll rip the ground open with dynamite.

The odds aren't in his favour, which is why Joachim's not doing this alone.

There's Wolf, the charming fixer, there's Mimo and Gigi, the Italians,

there's Haso, the Brave Revolutionary, and Ellen, the glamorous messenger but can

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