I was turned on to Eastern Approaches while reading about the Soviet purges of 1937-1938. MacLean was a young British diplomat who requested transfer from Embassy Paris to the embassy in Moscow; while there, he attended each day of the Bukharin show trial which receives detailed description and analysis in the book. MacLean also used his leave time to strike out on unofficial, NKVD-dodging trips through the Caucuses and Central Asia, with Samarkand and Bokhara as chief destinations for his journeys.Once WWII broke out, MacLean got out of the foreign service by running for and winning a seat as MP. He then went into the ranks and climbed quickly to Brigadier (?!?), engaging in action on the North African front, much of it clandestine. After an interesting kidnapping mission in Iran, MacLean was handed the military cum diplomatic mission to Tito and the Partisans, then scrambling through the wilds of Bosnia ahead of Nazi troops and local collaborators.The book was entirely worth the read, if only for the slightly self-conscious but hugely entertaining voice of MacLean. There is a certain boyish enthusiasm in his prose where even long and desperate marches with guerilla forces or terrifying drives through endless desert without water take on the flavor of a Boy Scout adventure. His political analysis also shines through as measured, pragmatic, and with an eye to the unexpected opportunity.It was disappointing to see a mind sharp as MacLean's descend into trite stereotypes and occasionally, more virulently racist depictions (as seen in an encounter with an Italian Somali soldier in Benghazi). His laziness in attributing behavior to the inherent nature of the Russian "race" muddied up otherwise clear-eyed observation of ordinary Soviet people's way of coping with extraordinary oppression. For the most part, however, for a man of his background and class, he clearly had an ability to relate to people on their own terms and plunge into new environments and relationships with enthusiasm. His extraordinary linguistic skills left me sighing in envy, as well- dropped behind enemy lines and he still takes to Serbo-Croatian like a duck to water...There was an interesting silence in his chapters on his time in Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia- he writes very little on atrocities committed against civilian populations and the little he does write is sanitized (for example, the story of the unfortunate child Ginger). Given the ferocity of the Ustashe regime's commitment to final solution-style ethnic cleansing, it was strange to find MacLean's narrative largely devoid of information on the subject (at least until the end and the capture of Belgrade). At the close of his narrative he casually mentions a conversation with a Red Army soldier on the Soviet man's plan to execute captured German and collaborationist soldiers, a conversation later confirmed by piles of soldiers shot execution style. I cannot begin to guess what such narrative silences indicate- lack of knowledge at the British mission to the Partisans on the full extent of the situation? Hesitancy or inability to write about the carnage? Certainly the grim reality of life for many in the former kingdom of Yugoslavia would have been an awkward fit with MacLean's witty, breezy, detached narration.The cameos of places I have visited, such as the large fresh water stone cistern in Siwa, Egypt, where I spent an afternoon tossing lemons back and forth with local kids while splashing around, were arresting in how little had changed. The depiction of places still unknown to me were tempting- do I have time to learn Russian?Despite his repeated disparagement of the slow and grinding inevitability of a diplomatic career, MacLean clearly always retained the framework and approach of a Foreign Office type. Despite his relish in knocking out tactical victories one after the other, it was in his strategic vision and his rather amusing access to people no less than Churchill that clearly left its mark on the course of the war in the Balkans. Still, MacLean's love of action for the sake of adventure was clearly a defining personality trait- apparently he and his wife were driving relief supplies into the former Yugoslavia in a pause in the Balkan wars of the 90s, despite being in their 70s at the time.Well worth the read:"On the evening of March 12th Bukharin rose to speak for the last time. Once more, by sheer force of personality and intellect, he compelled attention. Staring up at him, row upon row, smug, self-satisfied, and hostile, sat the new generation of Communists, revolutionaries no longer in the old sense, but worshippers of the established order, deeply suspicious of dangerous thoughts. Watching him standing there, frail and defiant, one had the feeling that here, facing destruction, was the last survivor of a vanished race, of the men who had made the Revolution, who had fought and toiled all their lives for an ideal, and who now, rather than betray it, were letting themselves be crushed by their own creation.""In the General's bedroom I found a collection of automatic weapons of German manufacture, a good deal of silk underwear, some opium, an illustrated register of the prostitutes of Isfahan, and a large number of letters and papers which I took back with me to the Consulate.""Mr. Churchill's reply left me in no doubt as to the answer to my problem. So long, he said, as the whole of Western civilization was threatened by the Nazi menace, we could not afford to let our attention be diverted from the immediate issue by considerations of long-term policy. We were as loyal to our Soviet Allies as we hoped they were to us. My task was simply to find out who was killing the most Germans and suggest means by which we could help them to kill more. Politics must be a secondary consideration.""Entering the cave in a small boat, we all stripped and bathed, our bodies glistening bluish and ghastly. Almost everyone there was a Cabinet Minister in one or other of the two Jugoslav Governments, and there was much shouting and laughter as one blue and phosphorescent Excellency cannoned into another, bobbing about in that caerulean twilight. Then we emerged once more into the sunlight and sea breezes and lunched off of lobsters and white wine. It was choppy going home and several of the party were sick."
I came to Eastern Approaches by way of a glowing testimonial in Peter Hopkirk's The Great Game (see my review elsewhere). The front cover calls Maclean's memoir "The best book you will read this year" and for once a clever line in a blurb is hard to challenge. Eastern Approaches will linger in the memory for many a year. It was, after all, first published in 1949 and remains in print. Fitzroy Maclean - later Sir Fitzroy - tells the story of eight years in his life, from 1937 to 1945. It begins with Maclean as a junior diplomat in Paris, then at the epicentre of European upheaval. He breaks with all precedent by applying for a transfer to the supposedly dead end of the British embassy in Moscow. Once there, he becomes a shrewd observer of a Russia in search of identity; meanwhile, on his frequent (and seemingly often overstayed) leaves he explores - by train, bus, clapped-out car and ferry, on horse and camel, and on foot - the terra incognita of Caucasia. When war is declared in 1939 Maclean wants to become a soldier but diplomatic rules prevent it. He discovers that diplomacy and politics are not allowed to mix, gets himself proposed as a parliamentary candidate and thus forces the Foreign Office to demand his resignation. He is elected Conservative member for Lancaster but before taking his place at Westminster, enrols as a private soldier. Soon promoted as a subaltern, he finds himself in Cairo where the old pals network steers him into the SAS, leading a raid on Benghazi hundreds of miles behind German lines. There is no false glory: the raid, which reads like the script for a wartime movie, is a failure. Lives are lost, survival is always in the balance. But Montgomery is winning the war in the desert and Maclean needs new adventures. He is parachuted into occupied Yugoslavia as head of an official British military mission to the Partisans led by Tito - this at a time when the British government is actually backing another group of insurgents. A substantial body of Eastern Approaches is taken up by a gripping account of delicate diplomacy (Tito is a convinced communist with Stalin as a natural ally) and military bravado. From time to time Maclean is temporarily lifted out for consultations at the highest levels, military and political (Churchill asks if, when he parachuted into Yugoslavia, he was wearing the kilt), but he returns each time to see the campaign through to its ultimate victory with the fall of Belgrade. So in eight years, Maclean experienced enough for three lifetimes, enough for three books. As if that were not enough, he writes with fluency and wit, enlivening his story for page after page by pointed anecdotes and evocative recreation of people and places. In short, this is superb story-telling by one who was there in the heart of it.
What do You think about Eastern Approaches (2004)?
You couldn’t make up Fitzroy MacLean’s life story. Oh you could try of course, but no one would believe you. A child of the old Scottish gentry; born in Cairo, raised in Italy; educated at Eton and Cambridge before completing his studies in Germany as the old Weimer Republic gives way to the Third Reich. See what I mean? But hang on, wait until you hear about the man’s career - Diplomat; soldier; soldier and Member of Parliament; SAS officer and MP; Brigadier, Diplomat and MP; and finally in 1947 whilst still an MP he gets promoted to Major- General – at the age of 35. All that only takes us up to where his splendid 1949 memoir ‘Eastern Approaches’ leaves off; but it begins with his departure from a comfortable two year posting in Paris to take up his new job in the British Embassy in Moscow. At the time friends and colleagues thought he was mad to give up one of the plumb postings in the diplomatic service, in favour of working in what was thought of, somewhat ironically, as the diplomatic version of Siberia. But as distracting as embassy life in Paris was, it was never going to be enough to occupy someone with MacLean’s energies and taste for adventure. Although I don’t doubt him in his stated reasons for volunteering to go to Moscow, I must confess I have long harboured a suspicion that MI6 may have had a hand in sponsoring and smoothing over his speedy transfer; especially given his extraordinary penchant for long range travel and exploration in the highly secretive Soviet Union. Whatever the case we are soon accompanying him on one of three great journeys he undertakes during his time in the USSR; and I defy anyone whose soul contains even a trace of the romantic not to fall in with his boyish enthusiasm for forbidden and difficult exploration. His own Golden Road takes him to places no outsider had visited for decades, places of magical, mystical memory; Bokhara and Tashkent; Samarkand and Chinese Turkestan (I know, I had to look it up too!).For me his description of his wanderings rivals that of Patrick Leigh Fermor in his great travel memoir ‘A Time of Gifts’ – but it is in his description of the great Stalinist show trials of 1938 that MacLean comes into his own. His is an important eye witness account to the bizarre, savage theatre of repression that gripped the world in the spring of that year. Stalin’s great terror was at its height and the victims of his ruthless paranoid desires now included old comrades such as Nikolai Bukharin, whose charge sheet was, in common with the rest of the accused in ‘The Trail of the 21’, wholly ridiculous. MacLean’s account is gripping and his forensic analysis of why people with impeccable Bolshevik credentials should have been so willing and convincing in their admissions of guilt is both shrewd and fascinating. Incidentally, for an excellent literary analysis of this process I can’t recommend highly enough Arthur Koestler’s superb novel ‘Darkness at Noon’.On the outbreak of war MacLean finds himself in a quandary. Desperate to join up but stymied by the fact that he’s in a reserved occupation he hatches an audacious plan. Using a little known and ever so slightly spurious codicil he points out to his employers that whilst he can’t resign to join the army he can do so to pursue a career in politics. He promptly hands in his resignation and catches a cab to the nearest recruitment office where he enlists as a private. After months of square bashing and peeling potatoes he is commissioned, but by this time the Foreign Office is starting to get the feeling that it’s been had and begins to make noises about his lack of effort in pursuing a political career. So, he promptly gets himself elected as MP for Lancaster. Well, you would, wouldn’t you?Not long after this the Right Honourable Fitzroy MacLean is posted to North Africa where he serves with some distinction with the newly formed Special Air Service. Throughout the book whenever he writes about those situations in which he undergoes physical hardship and faces personal danger, MacLean routinely writes in a very British and understated way. But the fact is the fighting in the Western Desert was hard and the men of the SAS and LRDG had to face extremes of climate that were often every bit as dangerous as Rommel’s Afrika Korps, and MacLean saw more than his fair share of it.Following on from his exploits behind enemy lines the Honourable Member for Lancaster finds time to kidnap a troublesome Persian General before being personally selected by Winston Churchill to become the head of the Allied Military Mission to the partisans fighting the Axis forces in Yugoslavia. Under his auspices the support for the partisans goes into overdrive and the German Army is forced to deploy more than seven divisions just to hold onto the strategically important parts of the country.I think dear reader that by now you’ve got the picture; it’s an extraordinary account of an extraordinary man. Thankfully he was also a good writer and he holds your attention as he passes you seamlessly through the many fascinating episodes in this 12 year period of his life. On a personal note, as I write this my copy of ‘Eastern Approaches’, which was my father’s before me, sits in front of me on my desk - tattered, battered and beloved. And in the way that only a book can for the bibliophile, it has happily occupied a part of my soul from which no amount of partisans or NKVD troops could ever hope to shift it … thank you dad.
—Alfred Searls
A fantastic WWII memoir written by an amazing character. Highly recommended to any WWII history buff.Part 1 covers Maclean's experiences as a British Diplomat serving in Moscow prior to WWII. He takes several unauthorized trips into areas of Russia closed to most outsiders and returns with first-hands reports to send back to London.Part 2 follows Maclean's tour of duty in North Africa as he engages in various desert missions against the Germans in Libya.Part 3 details his mission to Jugoslavia in order to make contact with Tito, the leader of Partisan (communist) resistance movement against the Germans in the various Balkan Republics. One of the chapters in this section gives the most amazing concise description of the tumultuous history of the Balkan nation-states prior to their being turned into Soviet republics. Part 3 ends with the fall of Belgrade to the Allied powers in 1944.
—Jay
This was a book of my Grandmother's that I found in a box recently. I was very surprised at how engaged I became within a few pages of first chapter, not to mention the excitement my Grandmother expressed at finding my interest in history after her own heart. Fitzroy MacLean is a wonderful story teller, who's personality shines through every page of this adventurous memoir. I find myself well informed concerning the Russian viewpoint during the Bulshevic revolution, and on through the second world war. I would heartily suggest this book to anyone who has interest in history, mixed with a humor stricken story line.
—Travis Gensler
