Over the Wall

Will Britten, a career Military Intelligence Officer, treats us to a fresh, and in places hard-hitting, look at the British Commanders’-in-Chief Mission to the Soviet Forces in Germany.Better known as BRIXMIS, it was arguably the most successful and enduring intelligence organisation of the whole Cold War, its three-man teams maintaining a permanent presence behind the Iron Curtain, patrolling East German soil every single day from 1945 until the fall of the Berlin Wall changed the face of post-war Europe.Over the Wall is Will’s story of his experiences as one of the last generation of Cold War warriors, detailing reconnaissance missions in the depths of the DDR, targeting by Stasi surveillance teams, fascinating personal contacts with ‘the enemy’ and human source operations. Beyond this, he puts forward the shocking proposition that Moscow had almost certainly compromised BRIXMIS through their own agents operating within the wider US military system.Providing a rare insight into the activities of the GRU-staffed Soviet military teams deployed reciprocally in West Germany, Over the Wall ultimately poses an intriguing question: in the final balance, whose missions were operationally more effective?