The background of this Nena’s one-hit-wonder is quite unique: we are in Cold War years, during a Rolling Stones concert in June 1982 in West Berlin, Nena’s guitarist Carlo Karges was looking at balloons being released in the arena. As he watched them move toward the horizon, he noticed them shifting and changing shapes. To him, they looked like strange spacecrafts (referred to in the German lyrics as a “UFO”). He wondered off and thought of what might happen if these balloons had flown over the Berlin Wall to the Soviet sector.
Hence a story was born: 99 balloons flying over the sky are mistaken for UFOs, causing a General to send pilots to investigate. Finding nothing but children’s balloons, the pilots decide to put on a show and shoot them down. The display of force worries the nations along the borders, and the war ministers on each side bang the ‘drums of conflict’ to grab power for themselves. In the end, a 99-year war results from the harmless flight of balloons, causing devastation on all sides, and no winner. At the end, the singer walks through the devastated ruins, and lets loose a balloon, watching it fly away.
The story might sound ridiculous to some, but it was one of the few songs in the ’80s to make a point about the brinkmanship and paranoia/hysteria surrounding the issue of Cold War, especially in Germany. The balloons represent the dreams of the German people, also those who were lost after World War II. At the end of the song, the singer finds a balloon, representing a dream, and lets it go. This is meant to reinforce the message that German people actually did have dreams.
https://youtu.be/La4Dcd1aUcE