Background
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold occurs during the heightened-alert politico-military tensions that characterised the late 1950s and early 1960s of the Cold War, when a Warsaw Pact–NATO war in Europe (Germany) seemed likely. The story begins and concludes in East Germany, about a year after the completion of the Berlin Wall and around the time when double-agent Heinz Felfe was exposed and tried.
In Call for the Dead, Le Carré's debut novel, a key character is Hans-Dieter Mundt (nicknamed "Blondie"), an assassin of the Abteilung, the East German Secret Service, who is working under diplomatic cover in London when uncovered by Circus agents George Smiley and Peter Guillam. When discovered, he escapes from England to East Germany before Smiley and Guillam can catch him. Two years later, at the time of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Mundt has risen from the field to the upper-echelon of the Abteilung, because of his successful counter-intelligence operations against the spy networks of the British Secret Service.
Read more about this topic: The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
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