Eastern Approaches

An exciting and adventurous historical read. Ties in great stories, with real history, geography, and politics, which laid the groundwork for the current world.

long time to reprint, a great book

Das Buch ist sehr lesenswert. Fitzroy Maclean beschreibt sehr unterhaltsam seine Junge und abenteuerliche Jahre. Das buch besteht eigentlich aus 3 teilen. Seine zeit in de Sovjet Union von Stalin vor den krieg, Seine Zeit in Nord Afrika bei der SAS im Kampf gegen Rommel und wie er in das Besetzte Jugoslawien geht und als Berater oder Kontaktoffizier bei Tito tätig ist. Alle drei teilen sind sehr gut und lesen sich wie einen spannenden Roman von einen Bestsellerschreiber, flott geschrieben, hohes Tempo, spannend, unterhaltsam.Er war als Diplomat in die Britische Botschaft in Moskau und kriegt es hin in verbotene teile in Asien zu reisen. Auch beschreibt er die Diktatur und wie die auftritt.In Nord Afrika angekommen beschreibt er seinen Einsatz bei der SAS und wie die den Wüstenkampf fuhren, aus erste Hand erfahren wir die Kampfeinsätze.Danach geht es in Jugoslawien, wir erfahren über den Alltag der Partisanen, lernen Tito kennen und wie der Tickt. Auch hier kann man das Kordit fast riechen.Nicht um sonnst gilt der Autor als Inspiration für James Bond (wie übrigens auch Bernhard zur Lippe Biesterfeld)Ich liebe Thriller und Biografien von historisch wichtige Leute, dies ist so wohl wie auch.

There is nothing I dislike about this book.He is a n incredible man ,who writes a most interesting story in great detail

It has been claimed that Fitzroy Maclean was one of the real life inspirations for Ian Fleming’s character of James Bond. According to his obituary in ‘The Independent’ “Fitzroy Maclean owes his place in history to the extraordinary 18 months he spent as Winston Churchill's special envoy to the Yugoslav leader Josip Tito in 1943-45. He sometimes expressed regret that, as with his hero Bonnie Prince Charlie, the historically significant portion of his life was compressed into 18 months at a comparatively young age. More dispassionate commentators would say that he packed an unbelievable amount into his 85 years.” Indeed, whilst this autobiography covers, roughly the 10 years between 1935-45 MacLean was to go on to serve in Government, briefly, and Parliament, at length, achieving much beyond these years for which he is famous.First published in 1949, this autobiography is broken into 3 parts each of which would qualify in its own right as worthy of a book. Part One tells of the author’s years in the Soviet Union from 1937 to 1939. Having spent a couple of years as a diplomat at the Paris Embassy, a plumb posting, MacLean asked to go to the USSR, as no-one else wanted to go this was an easy assignment to get! Arriving in Moscow at the height of Stalin’s purges (and witness to one of the most famous trial – that of Bukharin and co – the story of which is told here with great insight) the young polyglot was determined to see as much of the country as possible and to get away from the cloying paranoia of Moscow where for a Soviet National to be seen talking, even in passing, to a foreigner could lead to torture, imprisonment or even death.MacLean’s travel hobby was a pastime highly discouraged by the Soviet Government. Nevertheless, he was determined to see as much of the fabled silk road as possible and in a series of journeys, recounted here superbly, and with an ever increasing posse of NKVD watchers he was to visit the Caucasus, Samarkand, Chinese Turkestan (from where he was deported) and Bukhara and Kabul – the latter then much more peaceful than today. IN reading of these adventures I was struck by the realisation of just what a different place the world is today from the time when MacLean was travelling which of course is now the best part of a century ago. Places that were then difficult to visit are now relatively easy to get to and vice versa of course.As a career diplomat, MacLean was not allowed to join the armed forces nor to resign his post at the start of the 2nd World War. Determined to join the army he announced his intention to run for Parliament – thus barring him from remaining in the Foreign office, ran and was elected as Conservative MP for Lancaster and promptly joined the Army as a Private soldier thereby prompting Churchill to comment that he had used the ‘House of Commons as a Public Convenience’. Family connections meant that he was commissioned son after basic training and his friend David Stirling got him into the SAS in the North African campaign where he served with distinction on several raids and reconnaissance’s – notably of Benghazi. With the threat to Iran where there were plenty of Nazi sympathisers, in 1942, of the German’s breaking through in the Caucuses and thereby threatening Britain’s main oil supply he was seconded to the theatre to set up an irregular group of SAS to work as they had in the Western Desert and it was here that he was also tasked with, and successfully succeeded in kidnapping a pro-German Iranian General – a tale he also recounts in his appearance in the early 1980s on Desert Island Discs. This period as an irregular soldier in North Africa and the Middle East makes up the 2nd part of the bookPart three tells the tale of the Balkan War, where MacLean now a Brigadier (I think as he never really mentions his promotions in the book though he was eventually to rise to the rank of Major General) is parachuted into Yugoslavia* at Churchill’s specific request to identify which group of Partisans – the Chetniks or the communist partisans of whom little was known (though a revelation in the desert island discs interview but not the book is that Ultra Intercepts of German Traffic was indicating the Germans were taking severe losses at the hands of the latter – hence the reason for the mission). As he was dropped into German Occupied Europe, neither MacLean nor anyone else in the west had any idea who Tito was. Rumours abounded that it was codename that applied to different people, that Tito was a committee or that Tito was a woman. What was known was that a full scale 3-way guerrilla war was in progress and that the partisans previously supported by the British – the Chetniks were either quiescent or even allied to the Germans seeing Tito’s communists as the main enemy. Churchill personally gave MacLean the mission of finding out which group was killing most Germans regardless of political persuasion so that Allied resources would be allocated to the group doing most for the Allied War effort.MacLean quickly became a confidant to Tito and the 2 men obviously got on well though neither was in the pocket of the other. MacLean’s British mission to Tito eventually became a large one supported eventually by the RAF’s ‘Balkan Air Force’ operating from Italy and even setting up base with a full Commando Brigade and RN support on the island of Vis though none of this happened overnight and there were many nights spent in the woods of Bosnia on the run from German offensives. At the end MacLean was in on the liberation of Belgrade and the negotiations between the Royal Jugoslav Government in exile and Tito’s partisans for the setting up of an interim government (which as we know was not to last). The book ends with MacLean’s flight out of Yugoslavia in early 1945 as the British Ambassador (previously accredited to King Peter’s court in exile) arrives to normalise relations with the new government*spelled throughout the book as Jugoslavia, another indication of the passing of time since the events recalled as is the punctuation where a surfeit of hyphenated words would not be used as they are here. This older forms of spelling and grammar actually help to place this book in its time rather well and remind one that the events we are talking about are now long since passed so I am glad that in this Penguin World War II Collection edition, published in 2015, that the original text has been kept.Maclean’s turn on BBC “Desert Island Discs” is well worth listening to its available as a podcast from the BBC’s Desert Island Discs Archives 1981-85. Overall this is a cracking read at more than 500 pages it could easily have formed 3 books but I am glad that for continuity MacLean chose to tell the story of this decade of his life in one.