The Tunnels
The True Story of Tunnel 29 and the Daring Escapes Under the Berlin Wall
-
- $16.99
-
- $16.99
Publisher Description
Read the incredible true story of the daring escapes from East Berlin.
'A story with so much inherent drama.' The Guardian
'One of the great untold stories of the Cold War.' Alex Kershaw, author of Avenue of Spies
_______________
In the summer of 1962, the year after the construction of the Berlin Wall, a group of young West Germans risked prison, Stasi torture and even death to liberate friends, lovers, and strangers in East Berlin by digging tunnels under the Wall.
As Greg Mitchell's riveting narrative unfolds we meet a host of extraordinary characters who demonstrate astonishing courage in the face of adversity: the legendary cyclist who became East Berlin's most wanted man; the tunneller who had already served four years in the East German gulag; the young East Berliner who escapes with her baby, then marries one of the tunnellers; an engineer who would later help build the tunnel under the English Channel; and the Stasi informer who betrays them all.
Capturing the spirit of a divided Berlin and celebrating the subversive power of ordinary people in desperate circumstances, The Tunnels is an exhilarating real-life thriller with themes that reverberate today.
_________________
'A stark reminder that barriers can never cut people off entirely but only succeed in driving them underground.' New York Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Mitchell (Atomic Cover-Up) illuminates a half-forgotten but nasty episode in the annals of Cold War history. In August 1961, infuriated by the exodus of its citizens, Soviet-backed East Germany built a 96-mile-long barrier around West Berlin. In response, Berliners, mostly students and ordinary workers, set to work tunneling underneath. Local American TV journalists loved the idea, paying tunnelers who needed money for supplies and sending cameramen. Warning that the stories would poison Soviet-American relations, the Kennedy administration pressured CBS to drop its planned coverage. NBC persisted, however, and Mitchell delivers a gripping, blow-by-blow account of one grueling dig and dramatic rescue of 29 East Germans, all caught on film. Despite the intense appeals from the Kennedy administration, which soft-pedaled the suppression of free speech in favor of deploring "checkbook journalism," an Emmy Award winning documentary eventually appeared. NBC had gotten lucky. Most of the tunnels failed as a result of ubiquitous East German informers and technical difficulties. More East Germans were caught and imprisoned than escaped, and by 1970 the practice of tunneling died out. Mitchell's tense, fascinating account reveals how the U.S. undermined a freedom struggle for the sake of diplomacy.
