Second Volume of the Berlin Tunnel Trilogy
Historical Fiction
To Be Published: September 8, 2020
From Amazon bestsellers list author Roger L. Liles comes the second volume of his Cold War trilogy—THE COLD WAR BEGINS. The setting is war-ravaged Berlin in late 1946. Spies from both sides begin to move with relative ease throughout a Germany occupied by British, French, American and Russian military forces. Kurt Altschuler, our hero, soon becomes one of them.
While working behind enemy lines as an OSS agent in France during World War II, Kurt learns that intelligence collection involves both exhilarating and dangerous encounters with the enemy. He relished every moment he spent as part of the vanguard confronting the Nazis.
That war has been over for 18 months when he is offered a job as a CIA deep-cover agent in the devastated and divided city of Berlin. He jumps at the opportunity, but is concerned that his guise as an Associated Press News Agency reporter will offer little action. He need not worry. Soon, he is working undercover, deep inside of Russian-controlled southeastern Germany. Eventually, KGB agents waylay him and tear his car and luggage apart. His chauffeur is beaten. He is threatened with prison, torture and death.
Enter Erica Hoffmann, a very attractive, aspiring East German archeology student. Any relationship between an undercover CIA agent and an East German woman is strictly forbidden; she might be a KGB or Stasi agent or operative. But he cannot help himself—he has fallen hard for her. Kurt strives assiduously to maintain their tempestuous, star-crossed relationship.
Eventually, Kurt works to counter the efforts of Russian and East German spies, especially a mole who is devastating Western Intelligence assets throughout Europe. He also must work to identify and expose enemy spies who have penetrated the very fabric of the West German government and society. He frequently observes to others that: “the spy business is like knife fighting in a dark closet; you know you’re going to be cut up, you just don’t know how bad.”
Forward
Late
in 1944, troops of the Soviet Union began arriving in territory which had been
part of Germany for thousands of years. Russian generals ordered their men to
“rape every German female from seven years of age to seventy as revenge for
what they did to us.” These troops did just that as they also murdered and
pillaged their way through cities, towns, and villages on their way to their
ultimate target—Berlin. Ahead of the Russians, a huge wave of refugees fled
west. Millions of other residents of the East stayed in their homes, waiting
for the inevitable end of hostilities, dreaming of peace. Little did they
realize that they would soon be living in a communist state.
As the
Cold War between East and West commences, so does our story. The setting is
war-ravaged Berlin in late 1946. From that devastated and divided city, spies
from both sides began to move with relative ease throughout occupied Germany.
America and its allies needed to determine the composition and deployment
locations of the military forces Russia had moved into the very heart of
Western Europe. The Russians worked diligently to deny the Western Powers knowledge
of their intentions and strategies while consolidating their position in their
new vassal state—East Germany. The communist satellites in Eastern Europe
served as a buffer from future invasions and a springboard for communist
expansion into the rest of Europe.
Recently
declassified documents have revealed the true nature and extent of the spy
versus spy conflict that occurred from the mid-1940s through the early-1990s
between the American CIA and British MI6 on one side and the Russian KGB and
GRU (plus eventually the East German Stasi) on the other.
This
work of fiction is based on real people and events, which reveal how Berlin was
at the very center of a huge game with global consequences. My first novel in
this series, The Berlin Tunnel—A Cold War
Thriller, describes spy versus spy interactions in Berlin in 1960 and 1961;
the period before, during and after the closing of the Berlin Wall and the
Berlin Crisis. In this prequel, Kurt Altschuler, who was a supporting character
in the original novel, takes center stage as the main protagonist.
------------
In
the years immediately after World War II, many people living in East Germany
became disaffected with the controlled economy, suspension of personal
liberties, and arbitrary government intrusion into all aspects of life imposed
on them by communist Russia. Each year, between 100,000 and 300,000 East
Germans rejected that system by emigrating to West Germany through a simple
route; they bought a train ticket to East Berlin and took the subway train to West
Berlin. At most, they managed to take one or two suitcases with them—but they
were free. Good, high-paying jobs were readily available for them in the West.
Most
people stayed in East Germany. Some were dedicated communists determined to
make that system work. Others, certainly the majority, decided to live within
this new system because home, family, and other ties made them reluctant to
leave. A few heroes among them determined at some point that they would help
undermine the communists, providing western intelligence agencies a ready cadre
of informants and operatives throughout Berlin and East Germany.
Too little is remembered of the contribution these men and women made to world peace and the ultimate downfall of communism in Europe. Newly released, once highly-classified documents provide limited information about what they did and who they were. Details of their motivations and their successes or failures have been lost in time. Many were arrested by communist counter-spy agencies—the Stasi, KGB, or GRU and summarily executed. The survivors grew old, waiting for the communist domination of Eastern Europe and East Germany to end. This novel is to a great extent their story—they are now very old or have passed from the scene. But they made a very substantial contribution to the formation of a reunited Germany, prosperous united Europe, and the relative peace we all enjoy today.
About the Author
Roger L. Liles decided he had to earn a living after a BA and graduate studies in Modern European History. He went back to school and eventually earned an MS in Engineering from the University of Southern California in 1970.
In the 1960s, he served as an Air Force Signals Intelligence Officer in Turkey and Germany and eventually lived in Europe for a total of eight years. He worked in the military electronics field for forty years—his main function was to translate engineering jargon into understandable English and communicate it to senior decision-makers in the government.
Now retired after working for forty years as a senior engineering manager and consultant with a number of aerospace companies, he spends his days writing. His first novel, which was published in late 2018 was titled The Berlin Tunnel—A Cold War Thriller. His second novel The Cold War Begins was published in late 2020 and is the second volume in his planned The Cold War Trilogy. This trilogy is based on extensive research into Berlin during the spy-versus-spy era which followed World War II and his personal experience while living and working in Europe. He is in the process of writing its third volume of the trilogy which will be titled The Berlin Tunnel—Another Crisis and takes the story into 1962 and the era of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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