The Red Orchestra Author:Gilles Perrault, translated by Peter Wiles Perrault’s rendering is masterful, suspenseful, and reads like a thriller. Trepper and his associates were for years able to smuggle valuable information out of Germany. Diplomatic secrets and detailed reports on German troop movements were uncovered by Trepper’s spies. But L’Orchestre Rouge is not just the story of communist agents doing Moscow... more »’s bidding. Trepper depended on a remarkably diverse cast of characters for his information—Tsarist barons, businessmen, clergymen, housewives, nurses, secretaries, all resisting the Germans to one degree or another. As a result, Perrault’s book relates the struggle not only of the Soviet Union against the Germans, but of the French Resistance, British intelligence, and many ordinary French, Belgian, Dutch, and German men and women as well. L’Orchestre Rouge is also the story of Gestapo efforts to crack Trepper’s network and prevent the broadcast of its “music” to the Soviet Union from transmitters in Paris, Brussels, Marseilles, Switzerland, and elsewhere in Western Europe. Villains, heroes, cowards, martyrs, and dark mysteries abound.« less