Bill Harvey is the type of character rarely found in fiction—he is that much larger than life—but in Mr. Vogel’s sure hands he becomes plausible and oddly compelling ... This alone might have made for an interesting book, but Mr. Vogel has cleverly combined this story with the life of the man who betrayed this secret to the Russians: the SIS officer, KGB agent and yoga enthusiast George Blake. Although there are other books on Blake, Mr. Vogel’s handling of his tale is original and rewarding ... Meticulously researched and full of vivid detail, Betrayal in Berlin is especially good on the conundrum faced by Blake’s KGB handlers about when and how to reveal the existence of the Anglo-American tunnel.
...[a] well-researched and readable account ... Blake’s story has been told before, as has the [Berlin] tunnel’s, but Steve Vogel pulls them together accessibly and comprehensibly, along with the wider political context and entertaining detail about personalities of the period (Khrushchev blundering into Lady Eden’s room at Chequers, for example). He also answers the key question: why did the KGB allow the tunnel to operate for so long before ‘discovering’ and closing it? ... Vogel convincingly refutes any suggestion that the tunnel was manipulated by the Russians to provide disinformation. The Cold War is a huge story, of which this was a small part; but it was crucial in its time and this is a very good account of it.
In marvelous widescreen style, cross-cutting from Berlin to Washington to London, author Vogel gives us a virtually month-by-month account of the tunnel’s excavation and operation. His scrupulously detailed account never fails to keep the reader engaged, most notably in the inter-governmental runup to the mission and, later, in the oil-and-water interplay among the officials responsible for its construction and operation ... Vogel describes goings-on across the border in East Berlin in similarly gripping detail, thanks to subsequent memoirs from many of the principals on the other side ... a hefty read indeed. The book’s sheer length and detail may put off some readers, but for those intrigued by the clandestine probes and countermeasures at the flashpoints of Cold War contention, it will captivate and inform ... both a thrilling account and, sadly at times, an unconsciously comic one. Decoded in the earnest spirit of its warring principals, it’s an object lesson in tunnel vision writ large.
In this riveting and vivid account of the episode, Vogel demonstrates convincingly that a lot of valuable information was in fact obtained from the tunnel, largely because the KGB wanted to protect Blake from exposure and so decided to maintain the fiction that the Soviets were oblivious to the intrusion. At the heart of the book is Blake’s own remarkable story, which Vogel tells with some sympathy, if not approval. It reads like a Hollywood screenplay: a young Dutchman escapes the Nazis; joins the United Kingdom’s Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6; is captured by North Korean forces during the Korean War; and decides, while in captivity, to become a Soviet agent.
Vogel’s account has its merits: it’s deeply researched...doggedly comprehensive (albeit at times the narrative is more exhausting than exhaustive as Vogel keeps spinning out the tale); and he consistently strives to put some flesh on the bones of his large cast of characters ... At its most successful, the narrative is spun like a double helix—the life of George Blake, the double agent who disclosed the elaborately covert plan...to his Soviet spymasters before the first shovel had even been struck into the ground, is nicely intertwined with the earnestly detailed account of the tunneling mission ... Yet, by the book’s end, I couldn’t help but wonder what Betrayal in Berlin added to the already large library on the tunnel and the curious life of George Blake.
...[a] captivating story ... David Stafford's Spies Beneath Berlin presents a similar story ... This captivating study will thrill World War II buffs as well as mystery readers of all ages.
Mr. Vogel provides an interesting account of the many challenges that the U.S.-U.K. team faced while building the tunnel under the Soviets ... a well-researched and fascinating look back at the Cold War.
Combing through declassified documents and intelligence archives and drawing on interviews with Blake, Vogel delivers a swiftly moving, richly detailed, and sometimes improbable narrative, surpassing an earlier study of the tunnel affair, David Stafford’s Spies Beneath Berlin. As well paced as a le Carré novel, with deep insight into the tangled world of Cold War espionage.
