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Escapes Under the Berlin Wall and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill
by Greg Mitchell
A thrilling Cold War narrative exploring two harrowing attempts to rescue East Germans by tunneling beneath the Berlin Wall, the U.S. television networks who financed and filmed them, and the Kennedy administration's unprecedented attempt to suppress both films.
In the summer of 1962, one year after East German Communists built the Berlin Wall, a group of daring young West Germans came up with a plan. They would risk prison, Stasi torture, even death to liberate friends, lovers, and strangers in East Berlin by digging tunnels under the Wall. Among the tunnelers and escape helpers were a legendary cyclist, an American student from Stanford, and an engineer who would later help build the tunnel under the English Channel.
Then two U.S. television networks, NBC and CBS, heard about the secret projects, and raced to be first to air a spectacular "inside tunnel" special on the human will for freedom. The networks funded two separate tunnels in return for exclusive rights to film the escapes. In response, President John F. Kennedy and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, wary of anything that might raise tensions and force a military confrontation with the Soviets, maneuvered to quash both documentaries.
Unfolding week by week, sometimes hour by hour, Greg Mitchell's riveting narrative deftly cuts back and forth from one extraordinary character to another. There's the tunneler who had already served four years in the East German gulag; the Stasi informer who betrays the "CBS tunnel"; the young East Berliner who escapes with her baby, then marries one of the tunnelers; and broadcast legend Daniel Schorr, who battled unsuccessfully to save his film from White House interference and remained bitter about it to the end of his life. Looming over all is John F. Kennedy, who was ambivalent about -even hostile toward - the escape operations. Kennedy confessed to Dean Rusk: "We don't care about East Berlin."
Based on extensive access to the Stasi archives, long-secret U.S. documents, and new interviews with tunnelers and refugees, The Tunnels provides both rich history and high suspense. Award-winning journalist Mitchell captures the hopes and fears of everyday Berliners; the chilling reach of the Stasi secret police; U.S. networks prepared to "pay for play" yet willing to cave to official pressure; and a White House and State Department eager to suppress historic coverage. The result is "breaking history," a propulsive read whose themes reverberate even today.
"Starred Review. Mitchell delivers a gripping, blow-by-blow account of one grueling dig and dramatic rescue…Mitchell's tense, fascinating account reveals how the U.S. undermined a freedom struggle for the sake of diplomacy." - Publishers Weekly
"A glossary of names and places would have been helpful, but its absence will not deter those interested in post-World War II history from being fascinated by this social chronicle. " - Library Journal
"A gripping page-turner that thrills like fiction." - Kirkus
"The Tunnels is one of the great untold stories of the Cold War. Brilliantly researched and told with great flair, Greg Mitchell's non-fiction narrative reads like the best spy thriller, something Le Carré might have imagined. Easily the best book I've read all year." - Alex Kershaw, author of Avenue of Spies
"Every hour of my year in East Berlin - 1963/64 - the escape tunnels beneath our feet were being dug. This is their story: those who dug them, those who used them and those who betrayed them to the Stasi. Fascinating - and it is all true." - Frederick Forsyth, author of The Odessa File and Day of the Jackal
"Greg Mitchell is the best kind of historian, a true storyteller. The Tunnels is a gripping tale about heroic individuals defying an authoritarian state at a critical moment in the Cold War. A brilliantly told thriller - but all true." - Kai Bird, author of The Good Spy
"When you have read the last page of Greg Mitchell's The Tunnels you will close the book - but not until then." - Alan Furst, author of A Hero of France and Night Soldiers
"Greg Mitchell has written a riveting story focusing on one of the most powerful documentaries ever broadcast on television, NBC's The Tunnel. Those of us who saw it that December night in 1962 have never forgotten the experience. Now Mitchell, an exemplary journalist, goes beyond what the cameras saw, deep into the political dynamics of Cold War Berlin. John Le Carré couldn't have done it better." - Bill Moyers
"The Tunnels uncovers an unexplored underworld of Cold War intrigue. As nuclear tensions grip Berlin, a whole realm of heroes and villains, of plot and counterplot, unfolds beneath the surface of the city. True historical drama." - Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler and The Shakespeare Wars
"A compelling look at a wrenching chapter of the Cold War that chronicles the desperate flights for freedom beneath the streets of post-war Berlin and the costs that politics extracted in lives." - Barry Meier, author of Missing Man
This information about The Tunnels was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Greg Mitchell is the author of nearly a dozen books, including Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady (a New York Times Notable Book); The Campaign of the Century (winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize, hailed by Christopher Hitchens as "enthralling"); and, with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America ("Devastating and persuasive"--Los Angeles Times). He blogs actively about media and politics, has produced several acclaimed film documentaries, and won numerous awards as the editor of Editor & Publisher.
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