Bridge of Spies Spielberg is kindly criticized and deserved. This is really a great movie, but as usual, many nuances and details are far behind the scenes. Some because of the format, and some will of the director.
The end of the 50's, the Soviet supermodel Rudolf Abel fails in the US and soon a Soviet anti-aircraft missile is taken by an American reconnaissance aircraft. In socialist East Germany, an American student is arrested. They are all connected by one figure - American lawyer James Donovan, who first defends Abel in court, and then negotiates an exchange of Americans for a Soviet super-spy. In this era, the Soviet Union and the United States waged a war between themselves, secret and not too bloody, but it is no less tense. Diplomats and scouts of the two countries risked their lives so that the conflict did not have to be solved by the armies and squadrons. Rudolf Abel (his real name Fisher) was one of the best soldiers of this war. His parents were deported from Russia at the beginning of the 20th century for revolutionary activity and he came to the United States after the war as an illegal scout on false documents. His cover was a photo studio in Brooklyn. Abel dealt with a question more important than that after the war in the exploration there was nothing - nuclear secrets. The transfer of his residency and drafts of the Manhattan project in the USSR greatly accelerated the Soviet atomic program and, perhaps, saved the country from nuclear strikes.
Abel got caught because his own assistant, sent by Moscow, had committed a crime and ran to the Americans. That's when Abel was captured by the FBI. Donovan claims (and it's hard not to believe) that Abel did not say anything at all, did not even admit that he was working for the Soviet Union, he did not even tell his lawyer his real name. It is amazing, but he never gave out excitement about his fate. The lawyer James Donovan appears in the film as a professional in the insurance business, completely cut off from the cruel world of special services. However, no one would ever offer such a simple clerk without a double bottom to work to protect the Soviet superciant. Donovan had a rich past of a military and cadre officer of the special services. During the war, he worked in the management of strategic services - the service predecessor of the CIA. As an assistant judge at the Nuremberg Tribunal, he, of course, also became not for his merits in the field of insurance jurisprudence. Only in 1950 he left the public service in favor of private practice. So the case of Abel was not in the hands of the first lawyer who came in, but a man whom the secret services knew well. It's true that the creators of the film did not make a mistake against the truth.
He worked in good faith, he could not say a bad word about his defender Abel. Donovan's previous service in intelligence only gave weight to his words, when he recalled that in such a situation there could be an American in the Soviet Union. Moreover, this circumstance even helped to find contacts between Donovan and Abel. Soldiers of the secret war understood each other better than the crowd.
By the way, the film's authors somewhat exaggerate the obstruction to which Donovan was subjected for this process. The post of defender Abel was not at all disgraceful, on the contrary Donovan circumambulated two dozen other lawyers who wanted to defend the Soviet intelligence officer and received public gratitude from the chairman of the US Supreme Court. Such an assignment inevitably made the famous lawyer famous. It soon became clear that Donovan was completely right and Abel really needed a living.
May 1, 1960 from Peshawar flew reconnaissance aircraft U-2. According to the official version it was a plane of the meteorological service, in reality it was an espionage flight. Americans were worried about the missile program of the USSR. So far, attempts by Soviet air defense to shoot down these aircraft have been unsuccessful. U-2 flew at too high altitude, so it was planned to conduct this raid. The pilot Harry Powers lifted the plane to a height of almost 20 kilometers. Worries about it in the US did not feel, the height was considered unattainable for missiles and fighters, and in extreme cases Powers was supposed to commit suicide. The pilot was going to photograph the Baikonur cosmodrome and the weapons-grade plutonium plant in Ozersk, in the Urals. But this time everything went wrong. Powers was waiting for the newest at the time anti-aircraft missile complexes Desna, which took the U-2 over the Urals by two missiles. The pilot got out of the plane and jumped with a parachute. For several days the Soviet authorities did not say anything about his fate, so the Americans managed to report the disappearance of a research aircraft in Turkey. When the world was presented with the wreckage of the aircraft, the equipment and the live pilot, all this produced the effect of a bomb that exploded. The President of the United States was publicly caught lying.
In the film, Powers is tortured and kept in bad conditions, the reality is much more prosaic. When arrested, Powers did not resist. The subversive device mounted in the plane also did not use. During the interrogations, the pilot gave detailed and truthful testimony, and therefore the term received a small one - only ten years. The idea of exchanging Abel for Powers appeared immediately. The problem was that the goods turned out to be very unequal: Abel was a high class scout, literally a piece professional, but Powers was just a good pilot. In addition to the history of the U-2 and the aircraft itself, the Russians have already extracted all the benefits and, in effect, did not lose anything, giving Powers home. That's when the presenter negotiated Donovan's exchange and the idea arose to add someone else to Powers.
In the film, the student Fredrik Pryor accidentally falls into the hands of the East Germans, in turmoil, in the construction of the Berlin Wall. Everything was simpler. Pryor did write a dissertation on economics and, at the same time, accidentally or intentionally used information that was considered secret, so he was detained. He wanted to receive Donovan in exchange for Abel. The lawyer was not mistaken about the value of his charges. "One artist is worth three artisans" - he said. The subversive struggle lasted for a while, but certainly was not as sharp as in the movies. Negotiations were on business, a few days before the exchange, and the Russians, Germans, and Americans already knew how the liberation of Prior, Powers and Abel would occur. For both sides, the meeting on the spy bridge was a victory. Those and others achieved what they wanted: the Americans rescued two of their people in exchange for one, the Russians saved one of their best scouts. Abel after the exchange lived in the Soviet Union and worked in the central intelligence apparatus in a teaching position. In the final of the Soviet film Dead Season Americans and Russians are also changing their failed agents on the bridge. This detail is taken from the biography of Rudolph Abel. He worked as a consultant on the set.
Thank you for attention!