The Tunnels: The True Story of Tunnel 29 and the Daring Escapes Under the Berlin Wall

About the Book

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
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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.
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'A stark reminder that barriers can never cut people off entirely but only succeed in driving them underground.' New York Times

About the Author :
GREG MITCHELL is the author of nearly a dozen books, including The Campaign of the Century, winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize. He is the former editor of Editor & Publisher.

Review :
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. This book serves as a stark reminder that barriers can never cut people off entirely but only succeed in driving them underground. 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 Carre might have imagined. Easily the best book I’ve read all year. 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. A fascinating and complex picture of the interplay between politics and media in the Cold War era. I was stunned by the tunnelling exploits detailed by Greg Mitchell. This intricately detailed account was 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. [An] important work. An extraordinarily revealing political thriller... 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. Greg Mitchell's 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. When you have read the last page of Greg Mitchell's The Tunnels you will close the book. But not until then. 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.