David E. Murphy, Sergei A. Kondrashev, George Bailey: Battleground Berlin. CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War. New Haven, London: Yale UP, 1997. 530 pp. Ill.
While Murphy, Bailey and Kondrashev had interesting archival matter to work with, they became rather too enthralled by all their new documents, which they rushed to get out in the public record. In the process, they neglected the primacy of story-telling. Readers are subjected to tales of bureaucratic infighting over turf, lines of authority, even budgeting disputes. Considering the authors’ fascination with statistics and organizational structures (particularly on the Soviet side), one is almost surprised at the absence of flow charts. At times it seems like their main concern is to provide a corrective to previous accounts, to set the record straight in all its details rather than to tell an exciting tale. The result may be that readers become impatient and choose not to plow through the whole volume but instead head to the excellent index to consult only those parts of particular interest to them, thus running the risk of taking them out of context. For beware – more than once the authors present a seemingly persuasive interpretation of events in one section, only to dispute or correct it in the next.
Many persons are mentioned, but few personalities are described. As for the illustrations, they are a mix of the familiar (Beria and Malenkov at the Kremlin) and the personal (Peter Sichel in conversation with Henry Hecksher in Berlin). Perhaps the most revealing, though, shows the troika of authors, with Murphy and Bailey together on the left, Kondrashev standing a little apart on the right. I say revealing because they were responsible for different parts of the book, and their approaches do not always overlap. Kondrashev’s parts in particular seem more concerned with organizational areas of responsibility and the process of administering intelligence, less with individual adventures.
In sum, while the book’s subtitle is: “CIA and KGB in the Cold War,” a more accurate one would have read: “Bureaucracies in Conflict.”
The cover picture, showing tank versus tank at Checkpoint Charlie, promises more drama than the book in fact delivers.
Errata: Field Marshal Erich von Manstein’s name is repeatedly misspelled “Mannstein” (187). Another Field Marshal, Friedrich Paulus, was neither born a nobleman nor was he named one, so it is incorrect to call him “von” Paulus (197; admittedly, a common error). The name of the district in East Berlin where some key agencies were located is Lichtenberg, not Lichtenburg (210); I once lived there.
© Hamilton Beck
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