Summary of Gordon Corera's The Art of Betrayal

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The Iron Curtain was not just a political concept or rhetorical device, but a tangible barrier that was rising mile by mile. It was a dangerous time for those seeking to cross it, as they would face death if they were caught.

#2 The Czechoslovak army was being integrated with the Soviets, and Mašek had information on it. He was a simple man, and extracting more detail was painfully slow. But after two and a half weeks, his life had yielded up forty-five pages of double-spaced typed notes.

#3 After the war, Vienna was left in a state of limbo, between life and death, East and West, for years. The city was a crossroads for those escaping the Iron Curtain and a route in for those seeking to penetrate it.

#4 The Soviets unveiled a memorial to the Red Army in the central Schwarzenbergplatz. The city was a hollowed-out shell of its imperial self. The destruction was not as complete as that inflicted on Berlin, so the still-standing but skeletal façades gave the city the feel of a film or theatre set.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822505452

IRB Media

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Insights on Gordon Corera's The Art of Betrayal

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The Iron Curtain was not just a political concept or rhetorical device, but a tangible barrier that was rising mile by mile. It was a dangerous time for those seeking to cross it, as they would face death if they were caught.

#2

The Czechoslovak army was being integrated with the Soviets, and Mašek had information on it. He was a simple man, and extracting more detail was painfully slow. But after two and a half weeks, his life had yielded up forty-five pages of double-spaced typed notes.

#3

After the war, Vienna was left in a state of limbo, between life and death, East and West, for years. The city was a crossroads for those escaping the Iron Curtain and a route in for those seeking to penetrate it.

#4

The Soviets unveiled a memorial to the Red Army in the central Schwarzenbergplatz. The city was a hollowed-out shell of its imperial self. The destruction was not as complete as that inflicted on Berlin, so the still-standing but skeletal façades gave the city the feel of a film or theatre set.

#5

The desire to capture post-war Vienna on celluloid came from the Hungarian-born film producer Alexander Korda, who had scouts access to places otherwise hard to reach. Smollett, a Times correspondent, knew the city inside out.

#6

The setting for the climactic scene in Greene’s Viennese screenplay was provided on the penultimate day of his first visit by a young British intelligence officer. The officer explained that he had seen a reference to underground police and thought this meant secret police.

#7

In 1934, Philby went to help the Communist cause in Austria. He fell in love with a leftist activist named Litzi, and they became lovers. He later said that he married her just to provide her with a way out. But those who saw the couple at the time were convinced that their love was real.

#8

In June 1934, Philby was recruited by the Communist cause. He had said there were other sons of functionaries at Cambridge who shared his views, and he would soon provide a list.

#9

Philby was a master at hiding his Communist past, and he publicly began to disavow it. He had skilfully glided up the ranks of the British Secret Service, and betraying those around him came easy to him.

#10

The Third Man, a film based on the novel by Graham Greene, was inspired by the relationship between Greene and Philby. It was not long after Greene’s visit that the CIA chief could stand on the city’s streets and watch Orson Welles film his scenes.

#11

In the Austrian town of Graz, another twenty-year-old member of Field Security was discerning the cadences of loyalty and betrayal. He would draw on his experiences to create a fictional world that would define the public understanding of the British Secret Service.

#12

The British had similar problems with their agents. One agent codenamed Dandelion was being run as a double agent against the Soviets until he explained that his Russian case officer wanted him to go to South America and needed money to continue his work there. He was a fraud.

#13

Vienna was a place to take risks and play spy games because it was isolated from the other three zones. The city was divided into four sectors, one for each power. The exception was the First District, the old medieval Innere Stadt or inner city, which was policed collectively by four men in a jeep.

#14

Cavendish was a young officer who was assigned to Vienna to recruit agents. He was imbued with the brash self-confidence that comes from youth and membership in the secret world.

#15

The life of a junior MI6 officer in Vienna was taken up with the routine work of maintaining an infrastructure for espionage. There was also the work of recruiting support agents, the musicians in the beer cellars, the hotel porters, and the taxi-drivers who could