The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill

by Greg Mitchell Narrated by John Lee

Overview

A thrilling Cold War narrative of superpower showdowns, media suppression, and two escape tunnels beneath the Berlin Wall.
*
In the summer of 1962, the year after the rise 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. Then two U.S. television networks heard about the secret projects and raced to be first to document them from the inside. NBC and CBS funded two separate tunnels in return for the right to film the escapes, planning spectacular prime-time specials. President John F. Kennedy, however, was wary of anything that might spark a confrontation with the Soviets, having said, “A wall is better than a war,” and even confessing to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, “We don't care about East Berlin.” JFK approved unprecedented maneuvers to quash both documentaries, testing the limits of a free press in an era of escalating nuclear tensions.

As Greg Mitchell's riveting narrative unfolds, we meet extraordinary characters: the legendary cyclist who became East Germany's top target for arrest; the Stasi informer who betrays the “CBS tunnel”; the American student who aided the escapes; an engineer who would later help build the tunnel under the English channel; and the young East Berliner who fled with her baby, then married one of the tunnelers. The Tunnels captures the chilling reach of the Stasi secret police as U.S. networks prepared to “pay for play” but were willing to cave to official pressure, the White House was eager to suppress historic coverage, and ordinary people in dire circumstances became subversive. The Tunnels is breaking history, a propulsive read whose themes still reverberate.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - Nicholas Kulish

Mitchell…could have written a light riff with such strange, satire-ready material, but he has chosen a serious approach. Lengthy forays into transcripts of President Kennedy's deliberations with his advisers provide context but drag in places, as do accounts of the drudgery of long hours in damp underground passageways. But Mitchell quickly wins the reader back with his tense descriptions…The greatest strength of The Tunnels is in the details…

Publishers Weekly

★ 08/15/2016
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. (Oct.)

From the Publisher

"The greatest strength of The Tunnels is in the details... Days after finishing the book I could not escape one of Mitchell’s images—of a hat with a small hole in it landing softly on the Western side of the border while its owner’s dead body fell back into the East, waiting for the guards to hurry it out of sight. For those who see walls as the answer to policy problems, this book serves as a stark reminder that barriers can never cut people off entirely but only succeed in driving them underground.”
—NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

“Engaging… the book vividly describes the harrowing conditions under which strong young men based in West Berlin dug the tunnels… Mitchell’s interviews with the tunnelers, couriers and escapees put a human face on this dramatic experience…These are heart-racing tales, and Mitchell — author of several books on U.S. politics and history — narrates them with emotion and evocative detail... The political and media angles in The Tunnels are indeed intriguing... The intense drama and risks involved for the tunnelers and the escapees offer a compelling context for today’s refu­gee crisis."
—HOPE M. HARRISON, WASHINGTON POST

“Fascinating and deeply researched…Mitchell’s book provides a welcome reminder of the ingenuity and courage that people can display when politics and walls separate them from loved ones and a better life. But it’s also a testament to just how forcefully even ostensibly liberal administrations can suppress the media.”
—CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

"A story with so much inherent drama it sounds far-fetched even for a Hollywood thriller...Mitchell tells a kaleidoscopic cold war story from 1962, recreating a world seemingly on the edge of a third world war. "
—THE GUARDIAN

“Shows the trade-off behind the scenes at one of the most pivotal moments in the standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union… A fascinating and complex picture of the interplay between politics and media in the Cold War era.”
—STEPHANIE KIRCHNER, WASHINGTON POST

"A terrific new book about a heretofore obscure episode regarding the wall in 1962. A must for all the JFK fans."
—CHARLES P. PIERCE, ESQUIRE

“Thrilling and meticulously documented…Mitchell masterfully guides the reader through a labyrinth of details, intertwining the narratives to show how the tunnelers, the NBC crew (led by correspondent Piers Anderton) and the politicians played their parts on the stage of history…A fitting tribute to the brave men and women who did all they could to tear down the Wall."
—DALLAS MORNING NEWS

“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 (starred review)

“The author ably captures the dedication of the men and women trying to get family, friends, and complete strangers to freedom… 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

"This is not just an exciting escape narrative, but also an extraordinarily revealing political thriller, centering on ruthless government attempts to control what the public gets to see. Mitchell presents us with a radically changed perspective on one of the Cold War’s most dramatic episodes. His book is both priceless as history and just about impossible to beat for sheer narrative grip—a rare achievement."
—FREDERICK TAYLOR, author of The Berlin Wall and Dresden

"Eye-opening and an exhilarating read. Not knowing who made it out of the East, and who was arrested, or worse, kept me glued to this book until the last page. The involvement of the Stasi, two American TV networks and America's State Department contribute to the historical perspective of this important work."
—ANTONIO MENDEZ, co-author of Argo

“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

“Mitchell excels at describing the idealistic men and women who built the passageways that brought scores of refugees to safety, revealing the wall's symbolic importance and how it endured throughout the Cold War. He provides interviews with many important players who contribute to the fast-paced narrative.”
—LIBRARY JOURNAL
 
“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

"Enormously dramatic and extremely insightful."  
—JOHN BATCHELOR, ABC RADIO

Library Journal

09/01/2016
Although the Berlin Wall restricted 2.8 million East Germans from seeking a better life in the West in 1961, it didn't stop determined citizens from tunneling their way to freedom. Mitchell (Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady) tells of the Bernauer and Kiefholz tunnels, the people who constructed them, and the attempts by the Kennedy administration to dissuade broadcast companies CBS and NBC from airing documentaries about them in order to prevent national security breaches. CBS succumbed to the government's pleas and threats; NBC did not. The network's 1962 The Tunnels riveted the nation and won three Emmy Awards. Mitchell excels at describing the idealistic men and women who built the passageways that brought scores of refugees to safety, revealing the wall's symbolic importance and how it endured throughout the Cold War. He provides interviews with many important players who contribute to the fast-paced narrative. VERDICT 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. See also Frederick Kempe's Berlin 1961 and W.R. Smyser's Kennedy and the Berlin Wall, which place the wall and tunnels in historical context.—Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA

Kirkus Reviews

2016-08-21
The story of desperate East Germans crossing over, digging under, and crashing through the Berlin Wall.Using interviews, recently declassified State Department files, unreleased film footage, and Stasi archives, Mitchell (Atomic Cover-up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and The Greatest Movie Never Made, 2012, etc.) chronicles the Russian determination to stem the tide of refugees. From the late 1940s to 1961, “some 2.8 million East Germans fled to the West,” 20 percent of them through Berlin. In response to a spike of 19,000 per month in 1961, the Berlin Wall was constructed and reinforced until its fall in 1989. The central figure of Mitchell’s story is Harry Seidel, an East German cycling champion who might easily have gone to the Olympics. But he had something else on his mind. Within weeks of the building of the wall, he led his wife and son and two dozen others to freedom. The other main player is the Stasi and their thousands of spies and moles. After people died trying to leap from buildings across the wall, crash through it, or swim the River Spree, Seidel began his first tunnel. He wasn’t the only one working in the West. The Girrmann group, making fake passports and hiding refugees in cars, also began a dig, not knowing of the true identity of their East German messenger, the Stasi spy Siegfried Uhse. The author ably captures the dedication of the men and women trying to get family, friends, and complete strangers to freedom. The introduction of newsmen arranging to film the digging and paying for the privilege might have caused friction among the diggers, except that what little money was given went to supplies for the tunnels. The successes were few and failures frustrating, especially in the wake of the unknown mole, but workers were determined and started a new tunnel as quickly as one closed. A gripping page-turner that thrills like fiction.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169324587
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	10/18/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

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