THE GREAT GAME: Memoirs of the Spy Hitler Couldn't Silence

by Leopold Trepper ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 3, 1977

The Rote Kapelle (""Red Orchestra"") was the Soviet underground intelligence network in occupied Europe and Japan during WW II, and Trepper was one of its key founders and on-the-spot coordinators. A Polish-born Zionist who emigrated to Palestine, where he joined the Communist Party in 1925, Trepper moved to the USSR seven years later. In between he developed European contacts who proved crucial when he and the chief of Soviet Military intelligence perceived that Hitler would attack the USSR and they must begin covert operations under his nose. As a cover, Trepper was a Belgian-based manufacturer doing business with the Nazis; his liaisons included top Berlin officials and the stenographer at Hitler's military summit meetings. Because of Moscow's mistakes, he says, the Gestapo shattered these networks and caught Trepper himself in November 1942. Then began ""the Great Game."" The Paris Sonderkommando head, proposing work ""between two professionals,"" sought Trepper's help in promoting a separate German-Soviet peace to divide the Allies (though Trapper also says some Germans were serious about it). Trepper played along, demanding that the Nazis prove their sincerity by treating him well and feeding solid intelligence to the USSR. The book tries to counter a presumed onus of cooperation with the Gestapo; what comes through is not any sin of Trepper's but the perplexing stupidity of the Nazis as he describes them. Trepper finally escaped, was imprisoned--until 1953--like many other returnees to the USSR, and now lives in Belgium. His reading of his own life centers around the primacy of his Jewishness throughout the years; his amateur status as an intelligence operative; and the tyrannies of the East. Written with a literary collaborator, the book lacks the degree of psychological insight anticipated from a master spy, but offers plenty of rather disjointed excitement for its large readership.

Pub Date: April 3, 1977

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1977

Categories: NONFICTION