Ein Spaziergang durch Berlin - SamsonFest 2018 podcast now out

Deighton Dossier readers, after nearly three months of hard editing, stitching together, curating and adding of music, the Spybrary SamsonFest 2018 podcast is now available here on Spybrary.

Over one hour and eight minutes of conversation from six spybrarians wandering around freely across East and West Berlin - this time, with no Wall in theway - in the footsteps of Bernard Samson, and using Berlin Game as a jumping off point for convesations about Len Deighton's other works, and thenceforth into spy fiction and spy fiction culture in general.

All helped by lots of lovely German libations, freely poured and drunk.

While it talks more widely than Berlin Game, we were careful to keep it spoiler free, so if you haven't read beyond this book - and why not? - it's safe for you to listen.

Hope you enjoy it.

Going "drüben"

Drüben, which in German means "over there", is frequently used by Werner Volkmann and Bernard Samson in the Game, Set and Match books as a cover for going behind the Iron Curtain into East Berlin, bailiwick of one Erich Stinnes, KGB Colonel.

This last weekend, the Deighton Dossier - with Shane Whaley from Spybrary and some other spybrarians - went "drüben", even though the Wall is now, to most Berliners, a hazy memory. Our objective was to visit a few of the places that feature in Berlin Game, the opening novel of the Game, Set and Match ennealogy, to help listeners gain insight into why these books are landmarks in spy fiction, why Bernard Samson is the most unconventional and conflicted of spies, and why Berlin makes such a great location for spy fiction (and for podcasts).

So, we went to Checkpoint Charlie (venue for the marvellous opening scene in Chapter One which tells us so much about Bernard and Werner's relationship), Friedrichstrasse S-Bahn (Bernard's frequent route "drüben", Tante Lisl's house in Charlottenburg (at least, the one portrayed in the mini-series from 1988), and Normannenstrasse. Along the way we read passages from the books, talked about the characterisations, mixed in some general spy fiction chatter, all of which should lead to a great edition of the Spybrary podcast.

Wir treffen uns an der Mauer ...

So, it's on.

The joint Spybrary - Deighton Dossier Berlin 'tref' or 'Samson-Fest' will take place in Berlin on 4 August, when we record an 'outside broadcast' edition of the podcast devoted to the Samson ennealogy.

Join us, if you can.

More information on Spybrary's website.

Berlin Pension plan ...

These images were sent to the Dossier by a German visitor, Peter Hegenbarth, a resident of Kissinger Strasse in Berlin, who wrote me the email from an office just above where Checkpoint Charlie used to be. They are of the grand nineteenth century house on Bleibtreustrasse, number 49, in the Charlottenberg district.

Eagle-eye readers who've seen the bootleg copies of the never-repeated Granada TV Game, Set and Match series from 1988 may recognise it as the location of Pension Hennig, the German family hotel in which Bernard Samson grew up, and in which he stayed when on a mission "drüben" ("over there") in East Berlin.

Peter writes:

"I came from the Palmer movies to read the books behind them. So then, I took a great interest in the other of Deighton’s books which were made into movies. Hence, to the 'Game Set & Match' TVseries that I found on YouTube. And after that, I found my way to Dossier dossier and its page on the series."

The hotel featured in the opening titles of the TV series and in the books, it is to his old childhood room, underneath the roof - with no bathroom - that Bernard Samson often retreated after a mission. A great example of a Prussian family townhouse that was converted into a pension.

New shots of Samson's Berlin ....

Up on the main Deighton Dossier website I've added a new gallery page showing more of the locations in Berlin which feature heavily in the books and in the Thames TV adaptation.

I've reproduced three of the shots below. Berlin really is one of the key characters in the nine-volume series; though the city has changed dramatically from the time the books were written, the key locations which anchor the narrative are still visible:

The Soviet Army HQ at Karlshorst, source of the leaked intercept which is at the heart of the deception in the Game, Set and Match series of novels

The Müggelheimerdamm, where Werner exfiltrates agent Dr Walter von Munte

Location of the hostage transfer of Werner Volkmann and Erich Stinnes at the end of London Match

Another brick in The Wall ...

Can life be played out on a board?

I remember The Game of Life as a child. That was fun. Monopoly can introduce children to the tough world of capitalism, maybe. But can you re-create the global tensions and ruthlessly violent and distrustful world of Cold-War era espionage on a board with a dice and a few counters?

The good people at Birmingham Games thought so.

The Wall is a board game from 1986, created to "commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall".

All around the side of the box are printed the names of men who will be forever linked with the Cold War: men like Philby, Blunt and Maclean on the British side, and Sharansky, Karpov and Daniloff on the Russian side.

None have anything to do with this game, despite its aim of being a recreation in stiff board of the heroism, duplicity and cover game that was spying on both sides of Berlin. That doesn't matter. What this game proves to be is a wonderfully evocative symbol of a time when the world was that bit more simpler.

Two sides: Russian and American. A Wall, dividing those two sides. One city, the focus of it all. Brave (foolish) men. These are in the DNA of this board game. The Cold War as a game. In real life, that particular game had globally fatal consequences.

But game it was: the 'players' had pieces - agents. There was a 'board' on which the game was played out - Berlin, and other global hot-spots. There were rules (not always followed). There were tasks and missions. And there was a finish. Supposedly. And a winner.

It seemed ripe for turning into a board game. How the game makers tried to do that is interesting, showing both the possibilities and the limitations of trying to fit the global battle between superpowers onto a 60cm square board.

The board itself has a wall running down the middle of it. A 2D wall. That's straight. Both sides of Berlin are similar, the roads on a grid system to compensate for easier game play. There is no Ku'damm. No Alex. Just a representation of the city.

There are, too, no familiar landmarks: one cannot exchange prisoners on the Glienickebrücke; nor look over the wall at Potsdamerplatz. What players moved towards instead are embassies, special weapons bases, safe houses and decoding areas. All the motifs of the spying game are there.

The basic 'moves' of spying are also open to the players: there are coloured boxes on the board called 'assassination points', 'agent eliminated' and 'border patrol'. Each player - Agent - is represented by a plastic tube with a cap on the top - blue for Allies, Red for Soviets - into which secrets are put. The aim - and here life imitates art - is to track and expose a double agent amongst the other players, while simultaneously reaching the embassy of the enemy and ending the game.

The parallels with real spy-craft are necessarily limited: few spies ever received their orders by turning over a small two-inch long card marked "Top Secret". However there is danger. Or, at least, a series of red danger squares when the player is required to roll the danger dice, from which six actions are possible. Roll one? 'Shoot to kill - remove any of your enemy's agents from the board'. In that respect, there are parallels with the real thing.

There is, too, on the board a 'Checkpoint Charlie' though it lacks any of the dramatic presence as a conduit between East and West of the real thing.

This board game follows the familiar format of all board games: board, token, dice, moves, secrets instructions and chases, all dependent upon a big heap of randomness. Maybe, then, it's not that far off what reality was back then in Berlin?

The Wall is a great find, a throwback to a time when espionage and Berlin were front and centre of the news papers and nightly bulletins.

As a game, it's fun but has limitations; as a piece of Cold War ephemera, it's very collectable.

Inspired by the Berliner Luft ....

In this new National Post article, author Philip Kerr discusses his return to the stories of Bernie Gunther, the Berlin detective who came to prominence in Berlin Noir. The article themes in part the recurring attraction of Berlin as a source of fictional inspiration for British writers:

“So you have Christopher Isherwood, W.H. Auden, John Le Carre and Len Deighton,” he says. “There’s a great tradition among the English of writing about Berlin. It’s kind of a state of mind, almost. That even translates in terms of music. A lot of people go to Berlin with the idea that it’s a state of mind.”

Berlin has always been for me a main character of the Game, Set & Match series of novels, important for understanding the dynamics of the Great Game played out on its streets and essential to understanding Bernard Samson's character. There's definitely something about the city that inspires a certain type of fiction - the Berliner Luft must definitely do something a writer.

A new cold front in spy fiction: a review of The Coldest City

Is the Berlin Wall still relevant to modern spy fiction?

When die Berliner Mauer was still wrapped around West Berlin like a ligature and operating as the main stage for the murderous theatre of the Cold War, it was a physical, dangerous, moody presence. This was perfect for framing taut, action-packed fiction.

Now, 22 years after its collapse, little remains of the Wall in a united Berlin. A new paradigm in global power politics exists which has few of the certainties of the Cold War. So does the Berlin Wall remain relevant to writers and readers of spy fiction any more?

One way to recapture the reality of what the Wall represented is in pictures, not words. The new black & white graphic novel The Coldest City, by New York Times-bestselling author Antony Johnston and artist Sam Hart does just that, rebuilding the Wall and the representing the doubts and absurdities of operating in a divided Berlin in frame after frame of moody, sparse images. 

I've been lucky enough to receive a preview copy of this 176-page graphic novel. The black & white illustrations by veteran artist Hart are beautiful and his frequent use of shadow and blocks of black, with little intermediate shading, helps recreate the monochrome pallor of a divided Berlin split by the Wall, running through the city like a skewer.

Johnston sets his story just at the time when the East German regime is being challenged by its people and the Wall starts to crumble - a fascinating time in the Wall's history which has only recently started to be addressed in fiction. As the world turns toward a new, open future, the old rules of the spy game must be honored one last time if all the players are to get out alive.

In the lair of the Wolf - understanding the Stasi's top spymaster

When you're a spy, how do you measure success? In the case of Markus Wolf, the chief of the East German foreign intelligence service the HVA - Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung - he can look back during a 40-year career with the Stasi at the successful deep penetration of West Germany's intelligence and political structures, and the creation of an overseas agent network that was highly regarded/feared by both sides of the Cold War, and think: job well done.

And yet, like a uniformed King Cnut, ultimately his professionalism and skill was unable as part of the East German political and security leadership to hold back the tide of contradictions in a system that - ultimately - failed economically, politically and morally. How he addresses these twin tracks of professional pride and political failure make the autobiography I've just completed a fascinating read. That, following retirement, he became a Gorbachev follower and in 1989 ended up speaking - now as a writer - to one of the dissident protest forum's that sprang up in that year, is just one of many surprising facts in this book.

Man without a face provides a useful counterpoint to any conventional western understanding of the thrust and parry of Cold War espionage. Wolf comes across as immensely proud of what he achieved, the professional standards he introduced, the innovations his team developed - in particular, the use of Romeo agents to hook unsuspecting West German women into sharing intelligence - and the society which he was defending.

And yet, throughout the book, he expresses significant doubts: about the realities of the comradely relationship with the KGB, about the lives of agents sacrificed to achieve the bigger goal of defending the GDR, and the realities of defending the indefensible when, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the opening of the Stasi files, the reality of East German was exposed for all Germans to see. It is, in its way, a wonderfully expressive defence of the personal over the political.

Concrete wall, iron curtain - Berliner Mauer, 50 years on

It would get bigger.

Fifty years ago, as Deighton writes in Berlin Game, the first people to know anything was wrong were the cab drivers of Berlin, who were unusually being stopped and searched when they crossed the boundaries between the allied zones and the Soviet zone, something that on every other night would be routine.

The uneasy existence of the four-power control of occupied Berlin was to become even more so with what followed. Over the next four nights, as barbed wire and breeze block fell across what were once busy streets, brother was separated from sister, grandmother from grandchild, friend from friend. There was little East Berliners could do but watch or, in rare cases, make a last bid for freedom.

The building of the Berlin Wall – which began not with an iron but rather a steel barbed wire curtain - ‘Stacheldraht’ in German – stretched across roads, parks, through buildings, even crossing rivers. The pompously named ‘anti-fascist protection rampart’ would not come to look like the Wall we all remember until the concrete version was put up in 1965, and improved in design in 1975.

It's completion and subsequent operation - it was, in effect, a 161 km long machine of torture and repression which required constant manning and maintenance - kicked off a deep freeze in the Cold War.

The Gehlen Networks - New spies for old

One theme which crops up from time to time in Deighton's works - in the Game, Set and Match novels with the Bernard Samson character, in particular the Winter prequel novel, detailing the post-war Berlin of his father; in XPD and Funeral in Berlin - is the role and influence of the networks set up by Reinhard Gehlen, which I've been reading up on recently online. It's a fascinating early part of the history of the Berlin spy networks and I've found some interesting snippets of information about it from my research. It's a fascinating story and you can see why Deighton would use it as source material for some of his stories.

In XPD, for example, Willi Kleiber, a German Moscow agent, leads the hunt for the Hitler Minutes at the heart of the story which were hidden by the Nazis in the Kaiseroda mine and subsequently found by the Americans. He is a former Abwehr officer who went to work for Gehlen after the war. In Funeral in Berlin, it is the Gehlen organisation which arranges the transfer of Semitsa from East to West Berlin (the chaps with the rimless specs and the hearse). Brian Samson - Bernard's father - was Berlin resident in the post-war period (which is covered in dialogue in Game, Set and Match, mostly when Bernard Samson chats with the Berlin Resident Frank Harrington) and dealt with many of Gehlen's agents.

Gehlen was a former Wehrmacht officer who was in charge of the Fremde Heer Ost unit (Foreign Forces - East) which gathered intelligence on tactics and personnel on the eastern front. In March 1945, as the Russians closed in, Gehlen and his associates micro-filmed all the files and stored them safely in drums, knowing the value of the intelligence. After capture, he was turned over to US army intelligence (or, it seems, spirited away by them!). In 1946 he returned to German to set up the 'Gehlen Organisation' of former German intelligence officers. A number of them were senior SS officers many of whom were on the central registry of war crimes suspects; clearly, the CIA was prepared to turn a blind eye. The hiring was overseen by Willi Krichbaum, his chief recruiter. Krichbaum, head of the dreaded Geheime Feld Polizei (GFP), recruited some pretty rogueish individuals into the network of agents.

The Gehlen Organization wasn't a total success, despite considerable funding by the US. Indeed, one author on the US and the Nazis, Richard Breitman, has written: "Reinhard Gehlen was able to use U.S. funds to create a large intelligence bureaucracy that not only undermined the Western critique of the Soviet Union by protecting and promoting war criminals but also was arguably the least effective and secure in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. As many in U.S. intelligence in the late 1940s had feared would happen, the Gehlen Organization proved to be the back door by which the Soviets penetrated the Western alliance."

One mission by the Gehlen Organization was Operation Rusty that carried out counter-espionage activities directed against dissident German organizations in Europe. They assisted in the Berlin Tunnel which was constructed under the Berlin Wall to monitor East German and Soviet electronic communications, although it ultimately failed. The Gehlen Organization was eventually compromised by communist moles within the organization itself and within the CIA and the British MI6, particularly Kim Philby.

In the morally grey world of espionage, the aphorism of my enemy's enemy is my friend - or rather here, my former enemy - was, for the Gehlen organisation, most apt. One interesting paper from the US National Security archive provides more details on what the CIA knew - it's fascinating to read some of the original papers around the time the networks were being set up, which you can find at the bottom of the page linked to here. For a man who ran former Nazis as agents into the Communist East, Gehlen did okay for himself in the new Germany, his organisation subsequently becoming the BND (Bundesnachrictendiest), the German intelligence service.

Is anyone aware of any recent books, or articles about the Gehlen networks which they could recommend? There are some mentioned on Wikipedia, but it looks like they're out of print (one is by notorious historian David Irving!).

Were there any films or TV series made about it (either in English or, more likely, German?) There are some fascinating stories there which would make great fiction and non-fiction films.

The influence of the Wall on German literature

Journalist Anne McElvoy - who studied in East Germany and served as a reporter there, and witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall from the Eastern side of the 'sperrzone' - is fronting a three-part Radio 4 series looking at the influence of the Berlin Wall on East German culture, with programmes about the experiences of three different East German writers

In the first episode on 6 October, she considers Christa T, who represents a generation who grew up under the shadow of the Berlin Wall. While they were believers in the ideals of socialism, they were frustrated by the realities of an oppressive state system. Christa T's writing showed that the gulf between those who built up the East German state and the next generation in the eighties was very apparent.

Each programme will be available to listen again for one week after broadcast on the BBC's excellent iPlayer.

Wall of Books

Interesting article in today's Guardian newspaper highlighting the top ten books about the Berlin Wall, the epicentre of so much Cold War fiction and the embodiment of the East-West tensions right up until its demise in November 1989.

The writer - Suzanne Munshower - has Len Deighton's Berlin Game - my particular favourite - as her number three choice, citing the centrality of the wall to lead character Bernard Samson's efforts to get to the bottom of the mystery of the apparent Soviet mole at the heart of London Central, necessitating numerous crossings, the last of which leads to his capture and interrogation by KGB major Erich Stinnes. She writes: "Out of several books set in Berlin, Berlin Game is one of his most compelling. Spymaster Bernie Samson crosses and recrosses East Berlin checkpoints as he schemes to get an operative out of the east and discover who's double-crossing him. Somebody's got to lose, but it won't be the reader of this sly, sardonic tale."

Of her other choices, she picks mostly books in the English language (or those which have been translated from the German), including Anne Funder's Stasiland - which highlighted the extraordinary lengths to which the Stasi would go to monitor suspect citizens, creating as they did so the ultimate big brother state where neighbour spied on neighbour - and also Peter Schneider's The Wall Jumper, a fictional account by a West Berliner's of the disparate lives of a group of Berliners, all affected in some way by the looming presence of the wall. It's not a book I've read, but I'll be seeking it out.

Expect, in the next few months leading up to the November anniversary, an increasing amount of media commentary on the Wall, its cultural significance and the new stories emerging from the files. Fascinating stuff.

No smoke without fire? QT talks GS&M

Quentin Tarantino wants to re-make Game, Set and Match? That's what he's told the media in the UK today, according to the Press Association, Slashfilm, Screening Log, igm and many other sources.

This is the second time I've heard Quentin Tarantino quoted in a newspaper or magazine about his desire to remake Deighton's classic thriller. The first time was 2008 here, when Inglourious Basterds was starting production. Once? Well, you could put down to a directorial flight of fancy. Twice - and in the context of a press interview for the same film? Well, that suggests he's been thinking about this while shooting his current movie in Europe.

He's obviously a fan of the novels. Perhaps he's seen the 1988 original TV series which, while well made and true to the script, with over 13 episodes proved too much for the ITV-watching public back then as it was a ratings flop? As Deighton subsequently pulled the plug on any further showings, it seems unlikely.

Game, Set and Match (more accurately, Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match) is the story of British spy Bernard Samson, who has to deal with the consequences of the ultimate betrayal as he discovers his wife is not cheating on him...she's cheating on her country as a long-time KGB mole working at the heart of British intelligence. The story arc develops as the care-worn, family man copes with the idea of his wife living on the other side of the Berlin Wall, seemingly intent on finishing his career.

Tarantino is quoted thus: "One of the things I am musing about doing is the trilogy of Len Deighton books, Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match. The story takes place in the Cold War and follows a spy name Bernard Samson. What is attractive is the really great characters and the wonderful opportunities of British and German casting."

What can we read into that? I need to hear a bit more detail, or solid outputs from the movie rumour mill over the next six months before I give this credence.

But it's damn intriguing. Is Tarantino - not averse to subverting existing genres - the right man for a classic Cold War tale? Who would play Samson? What about KGB man Erich Stinnes (Daniel Brühl, the great young German actor, has been used by Tarantino in Basterds, but he must be too young, I think). Angelina Jolie as Fiona?

Is it feasible? The timing's auspicious - it's soon the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But then again, Berlin's changed out of all recognition - can the city be recaptured in all it's Cold War glory by CGI? Is Game, Set and Match do-able with lots of blood and guts and a mid-eighties, ultra-hip soundtrack.

Now I'm writing about it, the prospect intrigues me further. If we're never to see the original TV broadcast again (watching it on VHS-to-DVD copies is never wholly satisfying), then maybe a film is the next best thing?

Watch. This. Space.

Insights into the Cold War behind the Iron Curtain

A couple of interesting items I've spotted on the Internet today. Firstly, the BBC's outgoing Washington correspondent Matt Frei recalls his previous visits to Berlin and the impact that the Cold War had on the divided city in terms of the two separate paths of development they took between 1945 and 1989, following the destruction reached in the second world war, the scars of which are still seen in the city's architecture and split personality. Berlin's always been my favourite European city and he's right when he points out that Berlin's always had a confrontational spirit, it's been at the cutting edge of change and, in the case of the Berlin Wall, that confrontation was manifested in concrete.

Secondly, on Radio 4 this morning Gordon Corera continues his history of MI:6 by interviewing Mikhail Lyubimov, who was sent to London by the KGB as a spy to recruit from within the Conservative Party, mostly because he looked a bit 'horse like' and could appear very English. It's interesting to hear his recruiting technique and how he was trapped in a 'compromising situation' in a London pub. You can also hear some new perspectives on Kim Philby's involvement in the Cambridge spy ring.

This is an intro into today's programme on the history of MI:6, which can be found here on iPlayer and will be playable for the next week. Gordon Corera, BBC security correspondent, looks inside Britain's Secret Intelligence Service. He talks to senior intelligence officers, agents and diplomats as well as their former arch enemies about the shadowy world of espionage. In the second part, Heroes and Villains, MI6 Chief John Scarlett describes his clandestine meeting with an agent and the Russian defector Oleg Gordievsky talks about his reasons for coming over to the other side.

Anthony Cavendish was the youngest agent recruited into MI:6 running agents in Vienna, and he describes in great detail how he recruited in a music hall where the sign for everything being okay for the recruitment was for the band to play a certain tune. Fascinating stuff. He tells of recruiting a girl he gave a lift to, and it went well for nine months, but in Berlin later she got frightened and was ultimately caught and executed. This was the memory that most upset him while in "the Firm".

Roderick Braithwaite, a naval officer, says it was just like the Third Man!, dealing with criminals and agents in Vienna. "It was a morally ambigous world", he says. Fascinating!