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A'savvy study'(Publishers Weekly) and a fascinating exploration of the roles many spy novelists played during World War II and the influence of intelligence work on their writing.World War II deception operations created elaborate fictions and subterfuges to prevent the enemy from apprehending the true targets and objectives of Allied forces. These operations shortened the war considerably and saved countless lives—and they were often invented, proposed, and sometimes executed by creative minds that would come to be known worldwide for their spy novels.In Counterfeit Spies: How World War II Intelligence Operations Shaped Cold War Spy Fiction, Oliver Buckton reveals the involvement of writers in wartime deceptions and shows how those operations would later impact their work. He also examines how the details, personnel, and methods of the GARBO network, Operation Mincemeat, Philby's treason, Operation Bodyguard, and more were translated from real life into spy fiction by these authors, necessitated by the Official Secrets Act which prevented writers from revealing their experiences in memoirs or other nonfiction works. Featuring Ian Fleming, Dennis Wheatley, Graham Greene, Helen MacInnes, John Bingham, and John le Carré, Counterfeit Spies is a captivating examination of the brilliant novelists who took wartime espionage and deception to another level with their enduring works that continue to entertain and fascinate readers today.

INSTANT #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLERLove, betrayal, and a secret war: the untold story of two elite agents, one Canadian, one British, who became one of the most decorated couples of WWII.On opposite sides of the pond, Sonia Butt, an adventurous young British woman, and Guy d'Artois, a French-Canadian soldier and thunderstorm of a man, are preparing for war.From different worlds, their lives first intersect during clandestine training to become agents with Winston Churchill's secret army, the Special Operations Executive. As the world's deadliest conflict to date unfolds, Sonia and Guy learn how to parachute into enemy territory, how to kill, blow up rail lines, and eventually... how to love each other. But not long after their hasty marriage, their love is tested by separation, by a titanic invasion—and by indiscretion.Writing in vivid, heart-stopping prose, Ayed follows Sonia as she plunges into Nazi-occupied France and slinks into black market restaurants to throw off occupying Nazi forces, while at the same time participating in sabotage operations against them; and as Guy, in another corner of France, trains hundreds into a resistance army.Reconstructed from hours of unpublished interviews and hundreds of archival and personal documents, the story Ayed tells is about the ravaging costs of war paid for disproportionately by the young. But more than anything, The War We Won Apart is a story about love: two secret agents who were supposed to land in enemy territory together, but were fated to fight the war apart.

“Well researched and riveting….The struggle of these four men against totalitarian injustice was noble, and this book memorializes it superbly.”—The Wall Street JournalThe untold story of four special operations officers who fought together behind enemy lines across multiple theaters of World War II, and then continued to serve, officially and unofficially, for decades after in the hottest parts of the Cold WarThere have always been special warriors; Achilles and his Myrmidons are the obvious classical examples. What we now think of as “special operations,” however, were born in World War II, and one of the earliest and most exciting units formed was Britain's SOE. In the early years of the war, when Britain stood alone against the Nazis, Winston Churchill put them on a mission to “set Europe ablaze”: to foment local revolt, to gather intelligence, to blow up bridges, and to do anything that could help to disrupt the Axis cause. A Quiet Company of Dangerous Men follows four SOE officers who distinguished themselves in this fight: the Spanish Civil War veteran Peter Kemp, the demolitions expert David Smiley, the born guerrilla leader Billy McLean, and the political natural Julian Amery.With new and extensive research, including unprecedented access to private family papers that reveal the men's unbreakable bonds and vibrant personalities, Shannon Monaghan has uncovered a story of war in the twentieth century that, due to the secretive nature of the SOE's work, has remained largely unknown. A Quiet Company of Dangerous Men is a thrilling and inspiring story of four remarkable men who, through sheer determination and daring, as well as unwavering friendship and loyalty, fought for a better world.

Exactly a century ago, intelligence agencies across Europe first became aware of a fanatical German nationalist whose political party was rapidly gathering momentum. His name was Adolf Hitler. From 1933, these spy services watched with growing alarm as they tried to determine what sort of threat Hitler's regime would now pose to the rest of Europe. Would Germany rearm, either covertly or in open defiance of the outside world? Would Hitler turn his attention eastwards - or did he also pose a threat to the west? What were the feelings and attitudes of ordinary Germans, towards their own regime as well as the outside world? Despite intense rivalry and mistrust between them, these spy chiefs began to liaise and close ranks against Nazi Germany. At the heart of this loose, informal network were the British and French intelligence services, alongside the Poles and Czechs. Some other countries - Holland, Belgium, and the United States - stood at the periphery. Drawing on a wide range of previously unpublished British, French, German, Danish, and Czech archival sources, Spying on the Reich tells the story of Germany and its rearmament in the 1920s and 1930s; its relations with foreign governments and their intelligence services; and the relations and rivalries between Western governments, seen through the prism of the cooperation, or lack of it, between their spy agencies. Along the way, it addresses some of the most intriguing questions that still perplex historians of the period, such as how and why Britain defended Poland in September 1939, and what alternative policies could have been pursued?

This is the first biography of an intrepid young French woman, Lily Sergueiew, who led an adventurous life and became famous as one of the five D-Day spies. In 1939, her bicycle ride from Paris to Saigon was interrupted by the outbreak of war. Disgusted by the Fall of France in 1940, she took the courageous decision to personally help the Allies drive the Nazis out of France: she would get the Abwehr to train her as a spy and have herself sent to England. Once there, she would betray the Nazis and place herself at the disposal of the Allies. It took three emotionally exhausting years to achieve this. She arrived in England just in time to become TREASURE, one of the five spies who misled the Nazis into believing that the Allies would land in the Pas de Calais. This disinformation operation saved countless lives. But Lily found the English cold and ungenerous towards her. They knew that she had a fatal medical condition. She had also risked her life – and her parents'lives – every day she worked for the Nazis, yet the English would not let her bring the dog who was such a comfort to her. They told her that her work was vital to their cause, but for Lily their behavior meant that it was not worth a dog. So she hid from them that the Nazis had given her a control code to prove that her radio messages were genuine: it gave her a sense of power to know that she could destroy her work – and the whole D-Day deception – with a single keystroke. She did not intend to use it, but once she had revealed it, she was dismissed straight after D-Day. This meant that she could join the Free French Forces and be sent to France to care for Displaced Persons left in the wake of the retreating Nazis. Working with liberated prisoners from Buchenwald, she married the American Major in charge of the region who had fallen in love with her. He took her to America where he hoped that her condition could be cured. It could not, and she died (largely forgotten) with her husband at her side in 1950.

The first full history of the highly trained and ruthless civilian volunteers secretly trained across Britain to be deployed in the case of a German invasion.The narrative surrounding Britain's anti-invasion forces has often centered on ‘Dad's Army'-like characters running around with pitchforks, on unpreparedness and sense of inevitability of invasion and defeat. The truth, however, is very different. Top-secret, highly trained and ruthless civilian volunteers were being recruited as early as the summer of 1940. Had the Germans attempted an invasion they would have been countered by saboteurs and guerrilla fighters emerging from secret bunkers, and monitored by swathes of spies and observers who would have passed details on via runners, wireless operators and ATS women in disguised bunkers. Alongside these secret forces, the Home Guard were also setting up their own ‘guerrilla groups', and SIS (MI6) were setting up post-occupation groups of civilians – including teenagers – to act as sabotage cells, wireless operators, and assassins had the Nazis taken control of the country. The civilians involved in these groups understood the need for absolute secrecy and their commitment to keeping quiet meant that most went to their grave without ever telling anyone of their role, not even their closest family members. There has been no official and little public recognition of what these dedicated men and women were willing to do for their country in its hour of need, and after over 80 years of silence the time has come to highlight their remarkable role.

'I would recommend the book to intelligence practitioners, scholars, and other persons interested in World War II intelligence history.'—Michael Nady, American Intelligence JournalOn 9 November 1939, two unsuspecting British agents of the Special Intelligence Services walked into a trap set by German Spymaster Reinhard Heydrich. Believing that they were meeting a dissident German general for talks about helping German military opposition to bring down Hitler and end the war, they were instead taken captive in the Dutch village of Venlo and whisked away to Germany for interrogation by the Gestapo. The incident was a huge embarrassment for the Dutch government and provided the Germans with significant intelligence about SIS operations throughout Europe. The incident itself was an intelligence catastrophe but it also acts as a prism through which a number of other important narrative strands pass. Fundamental to the subterfuge perpetrated at Venlo were unsubstantiated but insistent rumours of high-ranking German generals plotting to overthrow the Nazi regime from within. After the humiliation suffered when Hitler tore up the Munich Agreement, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was anxious to see just how much truth there was in these stories; keen to rehabilitate his reputation through one last effort to find a peaceful rapprochement with Germany. When Franz Fischer, a small-time petty crook and agent provocateur, persuaded British SIS operatives in the Netherlands that he could act as a go-between for the British government with disaffected German generals, the German Security chief Reinhard Heydrich stepped in and quietly took control of the operation. Heydrich's boss, head of the Gestapo Heinrich Himmler, was anxious to explore the possibility of peace negotiations with Britain and saw an opportunity to exploit the situation for his personal benefit. On the day before a crucial meeting of conspirators and British agents on the Dutch-German border, a bomb exploded in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich in the exact spot where Hitler had stood to deliver a speech only minutes earlier. The perpetrator was quickly arrested, and Hitler demanded that Himmler find evidence to show that the two events were intimately connected—the British agents were snatched hours later. While the world was coming to terms with the fearsome power of German military might the British intelligence capability in northern Europe was consigned to the dustbin in the sleepy Dutch town of Venlo. This first full account of the Venlo incident explores the wider context of this German intelligence coup, and its consequences.

Initially Briggens was established to train Poland's elite fighting force, the Cichociemni, members of the Polish Home Army who had escaped the atrocities in Poland. Here they were taught to command men, parachute, fight hand to hand and carry out acts of sabotage. When three Poles began forging false identity papers, this inspired SOE to recruit the best printers in Britain and so began the other important work of Station XIV, the forging of counterfeit documents to deceive the enemy using miniature and microphotography techniques. The forgeries had to be perfect; any error could mean arrest, interrogation, torture and assassination. Central to supporting both Briggens groups were the women of FANY who provided cooking, laundry, transport and counselling. Des Turner spent 11 years researching Briggens, and reveals the history of this important SOE station through moving human stories of bravery, courage, skill, tragedy and humour.

An edited collection of peer-reviewed articles using newly-released sources - British, German and Italian - integrated to form a fascinating narrative of the intelligence-led fight of the British Secret Service in the existential struggle with Nazi Germany. The main sections are: British Secret Warfare and the Nazi Challenge; Counter-Intelligence Against Axis Spies; and Hugh Trevor-Roper and Secret Service. An inside and authentic story with original and little-known but vital themes including the British Military Mission to Poland, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Poland, British subversion in French East Africa,'on secret service for the Duce', British Radio Intelligence, and J C Masterman and the Security Service. This is a uniquely human story of survival with all the drama of power struggles, personality clashes, errors, heroism, human intelligence.

Operation Foxley was the name of the secret plan supported by Winston Churchill to assassinate Hitler in 1944-45. More than 75 years after its conception, the assassination plan remains shrouded in mystery. Eric Lee's new book is the product of painstaking research and sheds more light on this plan. Lee also asks what would have happened if Foxley had been executed successfully.Concocted in 1944 by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), Foxley's objective was to kill Hitler and any high-ranking Nazis or members of the Fuhrer's entourage who might have been present at the time.Different methods of assassination had been considered by the SOE, but were ultimately deemed too complicated. These methods included derailment and destruction of the Hitler's personal train, the Fuhrerzug, by explosives, and also clandestine means such as slipping a tasteless poison into Hitler's drinking and cooking water. Some of the ideas were considered quite bizarre, including one scheme to hypnotise Rudolf Hess and return him to Germany to kill Nazi leaders. The Americans and Soviets had their own plans to kill Hitler too, with some equally strange ideas (including injecting female hormones into the Fuhrer's vegetables).Eventually, after intel gathered revealed that Hitler took a routine, solitary walk every morning to the Teehaus on the Mooslahnerkopf Hill from the Berghof residence, a plan was created to assassinate Hitler using a sniper rifle fitted with a silencer.A perfect investigation for readers who enjoy reading about modern historyl, and the Second World War in particular. It is also tailored to those with an interest in the “secret war”, covering topics like the SOE, and military intelligence.

A “fascinating, gripping, and expertly researched” true story of WWII-era espionage “told with all the drama and panache of a spy thriller” (Michael Smith, author of The Secret Station X).Dundee, 1937. When housewife Mary Curran became suspicious of hairdresser Jessie Jordan's frequent trips to Nazi Germany, she had no idea that she was about to be drawn into an international web of espionage. Thanks to a tip off from Mary, MI5 and the FBI launched major spy hunts on both sides of the Atlantic.This is the true story of a decade-long series of Nazi espionage plots in Britain, Europe and the United States. It shows how a Nazi spy's letter, posted in New York and intercepted in Scotland, broke spy rings across Europe and North America. And it reveals, for the first time, how that letter marked the genesis of an intelligence and security alliance that today includes the United States, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

From a small number of clandestine activities against the German occupation of Denmark in 1940, a sophisticated resistance movement developed which by 1944, with the support of Special Operations Executive, had become a highly effective intelligence gathering and sabotage organisation.Denmark is composed of a mainland and more than 500 islands, a fifth of which are inhabited, and the countryside is devoid of any inaccessible or mountainous region. Together this made communication between resistance cells difficult and meant that there were no natural bases from which guerrilla operations could be mounted. Nevertheless, thanks to supply drops of explosives, weapons and ammunition arranged by SOE, the Danes harassed the Germans and raised the moral of the Danish people in the latter, and most brutal, stages of the war.This largely forgotten story of SOE and its agents in Denmark, the latter facing extremely hazardous conditions, was written immediately after the war by a SOE staff member and read and validated by the Director of SOE, Major General Colin Gubbins. A very large number of documents were burned at SOE's London headquarters in Baker Street when the organisation was wound down in 1946 making this history of the Danish Section an invaluable and irreplaceable study.SOE in Denmark was written at a time when SOE was still largely unknown to the general public and its operations a closely guarded secret. It was expected that its activities would never be officially acknowledged and the study of its actions in Denmark was compiled with the aim of provide a lasting record of its achievement. Within its pages we read of the dangers the agents faced, the logistical mountains they had to overcome, and the successes achieved in the face of a ruthless enemy. Completed with unique photographs from the Danish archives, SOE in Denmark is an essential addition to the SOE literature.

In the darkest days of the Second World War, with Europe falling under German occupation and Britain facing invasion, a 36-year-old refugee from the Nazis, Louis de Wohl, made a curious offer to British Intelligence. Based on the widely-held belief that Hitler's every action was guided by his horoscope, de Wohl claimed he could reveal precisely what advice the Fuhrer's astrologers were giving him. Rather than being dismissed out of hand as a crank, Churchill could see de Wohl's worth for himself. He was subsequently made an army captain and quartered in the Grosvenor House Hotel, from where he passed detailed astrological readings to the War Office and Naval Intelligence, before being transferred to work for the SOE in the United States. Was it possible that senior military and naval intelligence officers could take the ancient and arcane practice of astrology seriously? And was de Wohl genuine or merely a charlatan? In The Astrologer, author James Parris examines the evidence, including recently released files, and reaches remarkable conclusions about this bizarre aspect of the war.

A captivating history of the highly secret group of women who helped win the Second World War.The World War II codebreaking station at Bletchley is well known and its activities documented in detail. Its decryption capabilities were vital to the war effort, significantly aiding Allied victory. But where did the messages being deciphered come from in the first place?This is the extraordinary untold story of the Y-Service, a secret even more closely guarded than Bletchley Park. The Y-Service was the code for the chain of wireless intercept stations around Britain and all over the world. Hundreds of wireless operators, many of them who were civilians, listened to German, Italian and Japanese radio networks and meticulously logged everything they heard. Some messages were then used tactically but most were sent on to Station X—Bletchley Park—where they were deciphered, translated and consolidated to build a comprehensive overview of the enemy's movements and intentions.Peter Hore delves into the fascinating history of the Y-service, with particular reference to the girls of the Women's Royal Naval Service: Wrens who escaped from Singapore to Colombo as the war raged, only to be torpedoed in the Atlantic on their way back to Britain; the woman who had a devastatingly true premonition that disaster would strike on her way to Gibraltar; the Australian who went from being captain of the English Women's Cricket team to a WWII Wren to the head of Abbotleigh girls school in Sydney; how the Y-service helped to hunt the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic, and how it helped to torpedo a Japanese cruiser in the Indian Ocean. Together, these incredible stories build a picture of World War II as it has never been viewed before.“We get to see how the work of individual Wrens helped in such operations as the interception and sinking of the Bismarck, the Slapton Sands disaster, several naval battles (Channel Dash, Matapan, etc.), the ongoing small warship clashes in coastal waters, convoy defense, and more. A good read for anyone interested in the naval side of the war in Europe or in the role of women in military service.” —The NYMAS Review“Will reward a patient reader with a remarkably intimate view into the lives and times of these hidden heroes.” —Naval Historical Foundation

There have been many remarkable women who served British Intelligence during the Second World War. One whose dubious claim to have worked for them is a fascinating tale involving three marriages – the first, to a spurious White Russian prince; the second to a playboy-turned-criminal involved in a major jewellery robbery in the heart of London's Mayfair in the late 1930s. After the war she became romantically involved with a well-known British Fascist, but finally married another notorious criminal whom she had met earlier during the war. The descriptions variously ascribed to her ranged from ‘remarkable'and ‘quite ravishing'to ‘…a woman whose loose living would make her an object of shame on any farm-yard'. Until now, very little has been recorded about Stella Lonsdale's life. She doesn't even merit a mention in the two official histories of MI5, even though she managed to tie them up in knots for years. This book will explore the role this strange woman may or may not have played in working for British Intelligence, the French Deuxième Bureau, or the Abwehr – German military intelligence – during the Second World War, using her MI5 files as a primary source.

The life story of the working-class woman from Manchester, England, who volunteered to fight Fascism and Nazism in two major wars. Madge Addy left her job and her husband to serve in the Spanish Civil War as a nurse with the Republican medical services. In Spain, she was wounded in a bombing raid, fell in love with another foreign volunteer who became her second husband, was made a prisoner of war, and was the last British nurse to leave Spain, witnessing the horrors of Franco's Fascist regime before she left. She was caught up in the “Fall of France,” and lived in Marseille with her Norwegian husband. From 1940 to 1944 Addy was first an amateur resister and later a full-time secret agent, working with the likes of Ian Garrow, Pat O'Leary, and Guido Zembsch-Schreve. She also acted as a courier, flying to Lisbon to deliver and receive secret messages from British intelligence. In addition, she became romantically involved with a Danish secret agent and married him after the war. Ultimately she was recognized by the British with the award of an OBE and by the French with the award of the Croix de Guerre. Chris Hall brings Addy's story to life in this biography, using archive material and photographs from Britain, France, Spain, and Norway. Her Spanish Civil War experiences are vividly described in a mass of letters she wrote requesting medical aid and describing the harrowing conditions at her wartime hospital. Her activities in the Second World War show a woman with nerves of steel and a bravery at times bordering on recklessness. As she herself said, “I believe in taking the war into the enemy camp.”

Masterarbeit aus dem Jahr 2020 im Fachbereich BWL - Unternehmensführung, Management, Organisation, Note: 1,3, Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Das Ziel der Arbeit ist es zu untersuchen, welche konkreten Methoden des agilen Projektmanagements (APM) im Mittelstand überwiegend zum Einsatz kommen. Des Weiteren soll herausgefunden werden, ob eine reine agile Vorgehensweise in der betrieblichen Praxis Anwendung findet oder Bestandteile des klassischen Projektmanagements mit dem APM kombiniert werden. In diesem Fall handelt es sich um eine hybride Form des Projektmanagements. Außerdem soll die Frage beantwortet werden, ob die für die Interviews ausgewählten Unternehmen bei den jeweiligen Projekten mit Anwendung des APMs hinsichtlich der Befriedigung der Kundenbedürfnisse sowie der Budget- und Termintreue im Vergleich zu klassisch durchgeführten Projekten Optimierungen erzielen konnten. Hieraus ergeben sich in der Folge die Vorteile des APMs im Vergleich zum klassischen Projektmanagement. Unternehmen müssen sich im Mittelstand heutzutage immer schneller an verändernde Umwelt- und Rahmenbedingungen anpassen und sich mit einer steigenden Dynamik auseinandersetzen. Derartige Veränderungsprozesse werden in Unternehmen meist in großen Projekten umgesetzt. Neben dem klassischen Projektmanagement wird vor allem im Softwarebereich immer häufiger das APM angewandt. Inwieweit jedoch APM in mittelständischen Unternehmen in Deutschland außerhalb des Softwarebereichs eingesetzt wird und um welche Art von Projekt es sich hierbei in den meisten Fällen handelt, ist bisher nur unzureichend erforscht.

When Japanese signals were decoded at Bletchley Park, who translated them into English? When Japanese soldiers were taken as prisoners of war, who interrogated them? When Japanese maps and plans were captured on the battlefield, who deciphered them for Britain? When Great Britain found itself at war with Japan in December 1941, there was a linguistic battle to be fought—but Britain was hopelessly unprepared. Eavesdropping on the Emperor traces the men and women with a talent for languages who were put on crash courses in Japanese, and unfolds the history of their war. Some were sent with their new skills to India; others to Mauritius, where there was a secret radio intercept station; or to Australia, where they worked with Australian and American codebreakers. Translating the despatches of the Japanese ambassador in Berlin after his conversations with Hitler; retrieving filthy but valuable documents from the battlefield in Burma; monitoring Japanese airwaves to warn of air-raids—Britain depended on these forgotten ‘war heroes'. The accuracy of their translations was a matter of life or death, and they rose to the challenge. Based on declassified archives and interviews with the few survivors, this fascinating, globe-trotting book tells their stories.

The full story of the thirty-nine female SOE agents who went undercover in France Formed in 1940, Special Operations Executive was to coordinate Resistance work overseas. The organization's F section sent more than four hundred agents into France, thirty-nine of whom were women. But while some are widely known—Violette Szabo, Odette Sansom, Noor Inayat Khan—others have had their stories largely overlooked. Kate Vigurs interweaves for the first time the stories of all thirty-nine female agents. Tracing their journeys from early recruitment to work undertaken in the field, to evasion from, or capture by, the Gestapo, Vigurs shows just how greatly missions varied. Some agents were more adept at parachuting. Some agents'missions lasted for years, others'less than a few hours. Some survived, others were murdered. By placing the women in the context of their work with the SOE and the wider war, this history reveals the true extent of the differences in their abilities and attitudes while underlining how they nonetheless shared a common mission and, ultimately, deserve recognition.

A thrilling history of MI9—the WWII organization that engineered the escape of Allied forces from behind enemy lines“A fitting tribute to the hundreds of men and women who risked their lives in assisting Allied escapees.”—Giles Milton, Sunday Times (London)“A masterful retelling with a fascinating cast of characters straight out of a John le Carré thriller.”—Mark Felton, author of Castle of the Eagles When Allied fighters were trapped behind enemy lines, one branch of military intelligence helped them escape: MI9. The organization set up clandestine routes that zig-zagged across Nazi-occupied Europe, enabling soldiers and airmen to make their way home. Secret agents and resistance fighters risked their lives and those of their families to hide the men. Drawing on declassified files and eye-witness testimonies from across Europe and the United States, Helen Fry provides a significant reassessment of MI9's wartime role. Central to its success were figures such as Airey Neave, Jimmy Langley, Sam Derry, and Mary Lindell—one of only a few women parachuted into enemy territory for MI9. This astonishing account combines escape and evasion tales with the previously untold stories behind the establishment of MI9—and reveals how the organization saved thousands of lives.

Many of the most famous escapes in history took place during the Second World War. These daring flights from Nazi-occupied Europe would never have been possible but for the assistance of a hitherto secret British service: MI9. This small, dedicated and endlessly inventive team gave hope to the men who had fallen into enemy hands, and aid to resistance fighters in occupied territory. It sent money, maps, clothes, compasses, even hacksaws – and in return coded letters from the prisoner-of-war camps and provided invaluable news of what was happening in the enemy's homeland. Understaffed and under-resourced, MI9 nonetheless made a terrific contribution to the Allied war effort. First published in 1979, this book tells the full, inside story of an extraordinary organisation.

A brief history of secret British and American World War II organizations, their training, tools, successes, and their legacy.Winston Churchill famously instructed the head of the Special Operations Executive to “Set Europe ablaze!” Agents of both the British Special Operations Executive and the American Office of Strategic Services underwent rigorous training before making their way, undetected, into occupied Europe to do just that. Working alone or in small cells, often cooperating with local resistance groups, agents undertook missions behind enemy lines involving sabotage, subversion, organizing resistance groups and intelligence-gathering. SOE's first notable success was the destruction of a power station in France, stopping work at a vital U-boat base. Later operations included the assassination of Himmler's deputy Reinhard Heyrich and ending the Nazi atomic bomb program by destroying the heavy water plant at Vemork, Norway. OSS operatives established anti-Nazi resistance groups across Europe, and managed to smuggle operatives into Nazi Germany, including running one of the war's most important spies, German diplomat Fritz Kolbe. All missions were incredibly dangerous and many agents were captured, tortured, and ultimately killed—the life expectancy of an SOE wireless operator in occupied France was just six weeks. In this short history, historian James Stejskal examines why these agencies were established, the training regime and ingenious tools developed to enable agents to undertake their missions, their operational successes, and their legacy.

'Turing writes on codebreaking with understandable authority and compelling panache.'- Michael Smith, bestselling author of Station X.At Bletchley Park, some of Britain's most talented mathematicians, linguists, and intellectuals were assembled to break Nazi codes. Kept secret for nearly thirty years, we have now come to realise the crucial role that these codebreakers played in the Allied victory in World War II. Written by Dermot Turing - the nephew of famous codebreaker Alan Turing - this illustrated account provides unique insight into the behind-the-scenes action at Bletchley Park. Discover how brilliant and eccentric individuals such as Dilly Knox, Alan Turing and Joan Clarke were recruited, the social life that grew up around the park, and how they dealt with the ever-present burden of secrecy. Including a foreword by Professor Christopher Andrew of Cambridge University, author of MI5's official history The Secret World, this book brings to life the stories of the men and women who toiled day and night to crack the seemingly unbreakable enigma code.

This WWII espionage history reveals how a British counterintelligence program turned Nazi spies into valuable double agents.Far from the battlefields of the Second World War, a secret conflict of intelligence and counterintelligence was being waged. As German spies infiltrated the United Kingdom, they were captured by MI5—and offered a deal. Through the Double Cross System, they could turn on their own country and spy for the British. The Double Cross System and the spies it produced saved thousands of Allied lives. They even contributed to the success of the D-Day landings at Normandy. Double agents helped convince Nazi Germany that the Allied invasion of Europe would take place across the English Channel, at Calais. One double agent was so good at what he did that Germany awarded him the Iron Cross, whilst Britain made him a Member of the British Empire (MBE).

‘One of our very best writers on France.'Antony Beevor After publishing an acclaimed biography of Jean Moulin, leader of the French Resistance, Patrick Marnham received an anonymous letter from a person who claimed to have worked for British Intelligence during the war. The ex-spy praised his book but insisted that he had missed the real ‘treasure'. The letter drew Marnham back to the early 1960s when he had been taught French by a mercurial woman – a former Resistance leader, whose SOE network was broken on the same day that Moulin was captured and who endured eighteen months in Ravensbrück concentration camp. Could these two events have been connected? His anonymous correspondent offered a tantalising set of clues that seemed to implicate Churchill and British Intelligence in the catastrophe. Drawing on a deep knowledge of France and original research in British and French archives, War in the Shadows exposes the ruthless double-dealing of the Allied intelligence services and the Gestapo through one of the darkest periods of the Second World War. It is a story worthy of Le Carré, but with this difference – it is not fiction. ‘A melange of Le Grand Meaulnes and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. It is unforgettable.'Ferdinand Mount, TLS, Books of the Year ‘A masterly analysis, impeccably presented.'Allan Mallinson, Spectator ‘Fascinating… Marnham has a vast and scholarly knowledge of this often treacherous world.'Caroline Moorehead, Literary Review

This book examines the nature of the secret services and the role of the secret police in Britain, Russia, and Germany during the interwar years. It traces the growth of the secret services and police in these countries, indicating how they differed in their development. The SIS (MI6), MI5 and Special Branch in England appeared more like a Gentleman's Club from Eton and Oxbridge, especially when compared to the German Gestapo, SS-SD, and Abwehr in Germany, and the Cheka, GPU, NKVD and KGB in Stalinist Russia. The British were short of money and resources, while the Germans were interested in establishing their services, and the Soviet Union poured in money, but with the emphasis on internal repression. It was the emerging signals of another World War which defined the shapes of their secret services, which later had long-term consequences for the Cold War.

'There was no sign of any movement from the car, or any sound coming from it. The Twins could not have timed it better. In that one moment, everything they had trained for came to fruition. They could never fully avenge their family, but at least this went some way towards it. At last, they had got some revenge. And it felt sweet.'December 1941: after setting up one of the first resistance organizations in Vichy France and escaping over the Pyrenees into Spain, brothers Henry and Alfred Newton received devastating news. The SS Avoceta, carrying their parents, wives, and children to the safety of Britain, had been torpedoed by a German U-boat. All of their family were dead. From that moment on, the Newton brothers were consumed by revenge. Recruited by SOE, and known to everyone simply as the Twins, they returned to France and waged their own personal war against the Nazis. For nine months they lived on the edge before they were betrayed, and the net finally closed. They were caught by the Gestapo and tortured at the hands of Klaus Barbie, known as the Butcher of Lyon, before being taken to the dreaded Buchenwald concentration camp. For the first time in more than 60 years, acclaimed historian Peter Jacobs reveals the full story of Henry and Alfred Newton. Drawing on personal archives and new research, The Twins is a dramatic tale of courage steeped in vengeance—and of the bonds of brotherhood in the face of hell on earth.

'A lively and readable account'Spectator'A fine book... well-written and well-researched'Washington Times In less than six hours in August 1942, nearly 1,000 British, Canadian and American commandos died in the French port of Dieppe in an operation that for decades seemed to have no real purpose. Was it a dry-run for D-Day, or perhaps a gesture by the Allies to placate Stalin's impatience for a second front in the west? Historian David O'Keefe uses hitherto classified intelligence archives to prove that this catastrophic and apparently futile raid was in fact a mission, set up by Ian Fleming of British Naval Intelligence as part of a'pinch'policy designed to capture material relating to the four-rotor Enigma Machine that would permit codebreakers like Alan Turing at Bletchley Park to turn the tide of the Second World War.'A fast-paced and convincing book... that clears up decades of misinformation about the ignoble raid'Toronto Star

“The story of the Code Breakers and Bletchley Park holds a fascination for many... A very enjoyable addition to the whole Enigma story.” —Military Model SceneThe book reveals the story of British Codebreakers from the reign of Elizabeth I to the Cold War. It explores the use of ciphers during the Napoleonic wars, the role of the Royal Mail's Secret Office and the activities the Admiralty's ‘Room 40'leading to the creation of the Government's Code and Cypher School. The main theme of the book are the events of the Second World War and the battle to break the German enigma codes. The center of Britain's codebreaking operation was located at Bletchley Park in rural Buckinghamshire and it was from here that a hastily assembled army of codebreakers battled to decipher Nazi Germany's secret wartime communications. The deciphered high-level signals intelligence was known as Ultra and had a major influence on the outcome of the war, most notably contributing to crucial successes in the battle for the Atlantic and the D-Day landings in June 1944. The book also reveals the work undertaken in the Far East and the allied efforts to break the Japanese military cipher code named Purple. The book ends with a re-assessment of the work undertaken by the British code breaker and mathematician Alan Turing and a brief overview of the codebreaking operations undertaken by GCHQ during the formative period of the Cold War.“Virtually every page of this 128-page book has a photo, diagram, map or document of importance in advancing the ability of the British code breakers of World War II.” —The Spectrum Monitor“A superb visual memoir.” —Books Monthly

“A compelling examination of an aspect of World War II that always has a rapt audience: espionage... With a cast of colorful characters.” —Library Journal (starred review)Beating the Nazi Invader is a revealing and disturbing exploration of the darker history of Nazis, spies and “Fifth Columnist” saboteurs in Britain, and the extensive top-secret countermeasures taken before and during the real threat of invasion in 1940.The author's research describes the Nazi Party organization in Britain and reveals the existence of the Gestapo headquarters in central London. The reader gains vivid insights into Nazi agents and terrorist cells, the Special Branch and MI5 teams who hunted them and investigated murders believed to have been committed by Third Reich agents on British soil.Accessing a host of recently declassified files the book explores the highly classified measures taken for the protection of the Royal Family, national treasures and gold reserves. The British government made extensive plans for the continuation of government in the event of invasion including the creation of all-powerful Regional Commissioners, “Black Lists” of suspected collaborators and a British resistance organization. We also learn of the Nazis'own occupation measures for suborning the population and the infamous Sonderfahndungsliste G.B, the Nazi “Special Wanted List.”The result is a fascinating insight into the measures and actions taken to ensure that Great Britain did not succumb to the gravest threat of enemy invasion and occupation for centuries.“Provides fresh and incisive answers to some intriguing 80-year-old mysteries about wartime espionage.” —Britain at War“A truly engrossing work.” —History of War Magazine

“Reveals the extent of MI5's methodical and implacable investigation into the lives of such people as the writer George Orwell.” —UK HistorianDuring the 1930s, the British intelligence agencies became increasingly concerned about Communist influence in the country. They reacted by spying on thousands of ordinary British citizens. Amongst them were many artists and writers who, in tune with “the spirit of the times,” had become sympathetic to left-wing causes, most notably the Spanish Civil War. Telephones were bugged, post opened, homes searched and people encouraged to report suspicious behavior—all reminiscent of the East German Stasi.This book has been written in the light of previously secret files, now available in The National Archives, which indicate the extent of the surveillance and the consequences for those being watched. It focuses on a significant number of writers and artists who were either members of the Communist Party of Great Britain or were suspected of being “fellow travelers.” They include: George Orwell, Stephen Spender, Olivia Manning, Storm Jameson, W.H. Auden, Sylvia Townsend Warner, J.B. Priestley, Doris Lessing, Julian Trevelyan, Randall Swingler, Paul Hogarth, Clive Branson, and James Boswell.The Secret War Against the Arts is a unique account of a dramatic period of modern history, from the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War to the Hungarian uprising in 1956, revealing how MI5 was systematic, unrelenting and uncompromising in its pursuit of artists and writers throughout the period, while failing to see the much more disturbing treachery of others—Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess and Kim Philby, for example.“A lively and thought-provoking book.” —Penniless Press

In September 1940 a beautiful young woman arrived by seaplane and rubber dinghy on the shores of Scotland accompanied by two men – one of Germany's many attempt to penetrate British defences and infiltrate spies into the UK. This seems to be one of the few established facts in the otherwise mysterious tale of Vera Eriksen. Even the origins of the woman described as ‘the most beautiful spy'remain hazy, as does her ultimate fate.David Tremain delves into the archives, and in doing so begins to reveal glimpses of her fascinating life story: her career as a dancer in Paris; a tumultuous and violent dalliance with a White Russian officer of uncertain identity; her time in England with the Duchesse de Château-Thierry, an Abwehr agent; the suspicious and untimely death of her husband, and a rumoured pregnancy. The Beautiful Spy also grapples with perhaps the biggest mystery of all: what happened to Vera after she was released by the British?

The author of The Kompromat Conspiracy shares the history of MI5, from its beginnings in 1909 to 1945 and its role in the Second World War. MI5 is arguably the most secret and misunderstood of all the British government departments. Its enigmatic title—much more than its proper name, the Security Service—stands in the public mind for the dark world of the secret services. In reality it has a very specific responsibility: counterintelligence. Its purpose is to combat espionage and subversion directed against the UK. Nigel West's book traces the history of MI5 from its modest beginnings in 1909 until 1945, focusing on the important role it played in World War II. This includes the story of the sixteen enemy agents rounded up in Britain who were either hanged or shot; the manipulation of the Axis espionage networks by the use of “turned” Abwehr agents (the famous Double Cross System) and the all-important check on its success provided by the intercepted German signals decoded at Bletchley; and the various deceptions practiced on the German High Command. Laced with true anecdotes as bizarre and compulsively readable as any John Le Carré novel, this book is the fruit of years of painstaking research. West has traced and interviewed more than a hundred people who figure prominently in the story: German and Soviet agents, counterintelligence officers, and even more than a dozen double agents. In this newly revised edition, Nigel West details the organizational charts which show the structure of the wartime security apparatus, in the most accurate and informative account ever written of MI5 before and during the Second World War.

A history of the elaborate and brilliantly sustained World War II intelligence operation by which Hitler's generals were tricked into giving away vital Nazi secrets“A great book.”—Michael Goodman, BBC History Magazine “An astonishing story of wartime espionage.”—Robert Hutton, author of Agent Jack At the outbreak of World War II, MI6 spymaster Thomas Kendrick arrived at the Tower of London to set up a top secret operation: German prisoners'cells were to be bugged and listeners installed behind the walls to record and transcribe their private conversations. This mission proved so effective that it would go on to be set up at three further sites—and provide the Allies with crucial insight into new technology being developed by the Nazis. In this astonishing history, Helen Fry uncovers the inner workings of the bugging operation. On arrival at stately-homes-turned-prisons like Trent Park, high-ranking German generals and commanders were given a'phony'interrogation, then treated as'guests,'wined and dined at exclusive clubs, and encouraged to talk. And so it was that the Allies got access to some of Hitler's most closely guarded secrets—and from those most entrusted to protect them.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A Goodreads Choice Awards semifinalist Florida Book Awards Silver Medalist Featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, New York Newsday, and on Today! Best Nonfiction Books to Read in 2019—Woman's Day The Best Nonfiction Books Coming Out This Year—BookBub “A nonfiction thriller.”—The Wall Street Journal From New York Times and international bestselling author of the “gripping” (Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times bestselling author) Into the Lion's Mouth comes the extraordinary true story of Odette Sansom, the British spy who operated in occupied France and fell in love with her commanding officer during World War II—perfect for fans of Unbroken, The Nightingale, and Code Girls. The year is 1942, and World War II is in full swing. Odette Sansom decides to follow in her war hero father's footsteps by becoming an SOE agent to aid Britain and her beloved homeland, France. Five failed attempts and one plane crash later, she finally lands in occupied France to begin her mission. It is here that she meets her commanding officer Captain Peter Churchill. As they successfully complete mission after mission, Peter and Odette fall in love. All the while, they are being hunted by the cunning German secret police sergeant, Hugo Bleicher, who finally succeeds in capturing them. They are sent to Paris's Fresnes prison, and from there to concentration camps in Germany where they are starved, beaten, and tortured. But in the face of despair, they never give up hope, their love for each other, or the whereabouts of their colleagues. In Code Name: Lise, Larry Loftis paints a portrait of true courage, patriotism, and love—of two incredibly heroic people who endured unimaginable horrors and degradations. He seamlessly weaves together the touching romance between Odette and Peter and the thrilling cat and mouse game between them and Sergeant Bleicher. With this amazing testament to the human spirit, Loftis proves once again that he is adept at writing “nonfiction that reads like a page-turning novel” (Parade).

In September 1940 a beautiful young woman arrived by seaplane and rubber dinghy on the shores of Scotland accompanied by two men – one of Germany's many attempt to penetrate British defences and infiltrate spies into the UK. This seems to be one of the few established facts in the otherwise mysterious tale of Vera Eriksen. Even the origins of the woman described as ‘the most beautiful spy'remain hazy, as does her ultimate fate. David Tremain delves into the archives, and in doing so begins to reveal glimpses of her fascinating life story: her career as a dancer in Paris; a tumultuous and violent dalliance with a White Russian officer of uncertain identity; her time in England with the Duchesse de Château-Thierry, an Abwehr agent; the suspicious and untimely death of her husband, and a rumoured pregnancy. The Beautiful Spy also grapples with perhaps the biggest mystery of all: what happened to Vera after she was released by the British?

Drawing on extensive interviews and archival research, this biography uncovers the motivations and ideals that informed Smiley's commitment to covert action and intelligence during the Second World War and early part of the Cold War, often among tribally based societies. With particular reference to operations in Albania, Oman and Yemen, it addresses the wider issues of accountability and control of clandestine operations.

Master of Deception is a biography of Peter Fleming, elder brother of Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond. Peter Fleming worked as a travel writer and journalist, serving with distinction throughout World War II and played a crucial role in British intelligence operations in the Far East. This biography ranges from the personal life of Fleming such as his marriage to Celia Johnson, a famous actor of the time, to his extensive military intelligence career which took him from Norway and Greece to the Far East. Framed through the life of Peter Fleming this book offers an in-depth study of British intelligence operations in the Far East during World War II.

The author of The Kompromat Conspiracy reveals the truth behind Great Britain's secret World War II group. What did SOE really achieve during the Second World War? Why were so many agents parachuted into enemy hands? Who chose to back Communist guerrillas in Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, Albania, Greece and Malaya in preference to other anti-Axis movements? In this newly revised edition, Nigel West strips away the secrecy that has surrounded the Special Operations Executive since it was officially wound up in 1946, and reveal the breathtaking political naivety, operational incompetence, and ruthless manipulation. Despite the heroism of individual agents who suffered appalling privation to further the organization's dubious objectives, there is an underlying tragedy of dreadful proportions. Secret War is a detailed analysis of SOE's structure and performance and describes its successes and failures across the globe. The book casts doubt on the official histories authorized by the Cabinet Office, offers evidence of the setbacks that jeopardized D-Day, and gives an account of the paramilitary units dropped behind enemy lines immediately after the invasion, which saved SOE's reputation. This book is a highly provocative but authoritative history of the organization that existed for less than six years but had a lasting impact on the world's postwar development. “Secret War is important, even necessary in political terms.” —Financial Times

A family man who ran afoul of the Nazis, Josef Jakobs was ill-prepared for an espionage mission to England. Captured by the Home Guard after breaking his ankle, Josef was interrogated at Camp 020, before being prosecuted under the Treachery Act 1940 and executed on 15 August 1941.An open and shut case? MI5's files suggest otherwise.Faced with the threat of a German invasion in 1940/41, MI5 used promises and threats to break enemy agents, extract intelligence and turn some into double agents, challenging the validity of the ‘voluntary'confessions used to prosecute captured spies. But, more than that – was Josef set up to fail? Was he a sacrifice to test the double-cross system?The Spy in the Tower tells the untold story of one of Nazi Germany's failed agents, and calls into question the legitimacy of Britain's wartime espionage trials and the success of its double-cross system.

This book describes and analyzes the history of the Mediterranean'Double-Cross System'of the Second World War, an intelligence operation run primarily by British officers which turned captured German spies into double agents. Through a complex system of coordination, they were utilized from 1941 to the end of the war in 1945 to secure Allied territory through security and counter-intelligence operations, and also to deceive the German military by passing false information about Allied military planning and operations. The primary questions addressed by the book are: how did the double-cross-system come into existence; what effects did it have on the intelligence war and the broader military conflict; and why did it have those effects? The book contains chapters assessing how the system came into being and how it was organized, and also chapters which analyze its performance in security and counter-intelligence operations, and in deception.

'Riveting...A true-life mix of James Bond, Lawrence of Arabia and'Casablanca.''-The Wall Street JournalThe astonishing untold story of the author's father, the lone American on a four-person team of Allied secret agents dropped into Nazi-occupied France, whose epic feats of irregular warfare proved vital in keeping German tanks away from Normandy after D-Day.When Daniel Guiet was a child and his family moved country, as they frequently did, his father had one possession, a tin bread box, that always made the trip. Daniel was admonished never to touch the box, but one day he couldn't resist. What he found astonished him: a.45 automatic and five full clips; three slim knives; a length of wire with a wooden handle at each end; thin pieces of paper with random numbers on them; several passports with his father's photograph, each bearing a different name; and silk squares imprinted with different countries'flags, bearing messages in unfamiliar alphabets. The messages, he discovered much later, were variations on a theme: I am an American. Take me to the nearest Allied military office. You will be paid.Eventually Jean Claude Guiet revealed to his family that he had been in the CIA, but it was only at the very end of his life that he spoke of the mission during World War II that marked the beginning of his career in clandestine service. It is one of the last great untold stories of the war, and Daniel Guiet and his collaborator, the writer Tim Smith, have spent several years bringing it to life. Jean Claude was an American citizen but a child of France, and fluent in the language; he was also extremely bright. The American military was on the lookout for native French speakers to be seconded to a secret British special operations commando operation, dropping clandestine agents behind German lines in France to coordinate aid to the French Resistance and lead missions wreaking havoc on Germany's military efforts across the entire country. Jean Claude was recruited, and his life was changed forever. Though the human cost was terrible, the mission succeeded beyond the Allies'wildest dreams.Scholars of Mayhem tells the story of Jean Claude and the other three agents in his'circuit,'codenamed Salesman, a unit of Britain's Special Operations Executive, the secret service ordered by Churchill to'Set Europe ablaze.'Parachuted into France the day after D-Day, the Salesman team organized, armed, and commanded an underground army of 10,000 French Resistance fighters. National pride has kept the story of SOE in France obscure, but of this there is no doubt: While the Resistance had plenty of heart, it was SOE that gave it teeth and claws. Scholars of Mayhem adds brilliantly to that picture, and further underscores what a close-run thing the success of the Allied breakout from the Normandy landings actually was.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The dramatic, untold history of the heroic women recruited by Britain's elite spy agency to help pave the way for Allied victory in World War II“Gripping. Spies, romance, Gestapo thugs, blown-up trains, courage, and treachery (lots of treachery)—and all of it true.”—Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake In 1942, the Allies were losing, Germany seemed unstoppable, and every able man in England was on the front lines. To “set Europe ablaze,” in the words of Winston Churchill, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), whose spies were trained in everything from demolition to sharpshooting, was forced to do something unprecedented: recruit women. Thirty-nine answered the call, leaving their lives and families to become saboteurs in France. In D-Day Girls, Sarah Rose draws on recently de­classified files, diaries, and oral histories to tell the thrilling story of three of these remarkable women. There's Andrée Borrel, a scrappy and streetwise Parisian who blew up power lines with the Gestapo hot on her heels; Odette Sansom, an unhappily married suburban mother who saw the SOE as her ticket out of domestic life and into a meaningful adventure; and Lise de Baissac, a fiercely independent member of French colonial high society and the SOE's unflap­pable “queen.” Together, they destroyed train lines, ambushed Nazis, plotted prison breaks, and gathered crucial intelligence—laying the groundwork for the D-Day invasion that proved to be the turning point in the war.Rigorously researched and written with razor-sharp wit, D-Day Girls is an inspiring story for our own moment of resistance: a reminder of what courage—and the energy of politically animated women—can accomplish when the stakes seem incalculably high.Praise for D-Day Girls“Rigorously researched... [a] thriller in the form of a non-fiction book.”—Refinery29“Equal parts espionage-romance thriller and historical narrative, D-Day Girls traces the lives and secret activities of the 39 women who answered the call to infiltrate France.... While chronicling the James Bond-worthy missions and love affairs of these women, Rose vividly captures the broken landscape of war.”—The Washington Post“Gripping history... thoroughly researched and written as smoothly as a good thriller, this is a mesmerizing story of creativity, perseverance, and astonishing heroism.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

The untold story of Bletchley Park's key role in the success of the Normandy campaign Since the secret of Bletchley Park was revealed in the 1970s, the work of its codebreakers has become one of the most famous stories of the Second World War. But cracking the Nazis'codes was only the start of the process. Thousands of secret intelligence workers were then involved in making crucial information available to the Allied leaders and commanders who desperately needed it. Using previously classified documents, David Kenyon casts the work of Bletchley Park in a new light, as not just a codebreaking establishment, but as a fully developed intelligence agency. He shows how preparations for the war's turning point—the Normandy Landings in 1944—had started at Bletchley years earlier, in 1942, with the careful collation of information extracted from enemy signals traffic. This account reveals the true character of Bletchley's vital contribution to success in Normandy, and ultimately, Allied victory.

Behind Enemy Lines: The World War Two Diary of British Secret Agent Hugh Dormer, first published in 1948 as Hugh Dormer's Diaries, is the gripping war-time account of Captain Hugh Everard Dormer, D.S.O., Irish Guards. Dormer twice parachuted into Nazi-occupied France with the objective of destroying an important shale oil processing plant. After each mission, Dormer made his way back to England by crossing into Spain on foot via the Pyrenees Mountains. Following the Normandy invasion, Dormer commanded a British tank crew which was shelled at close-range by a German tank. Dormer and two crewmen managed to escape the burning tank but Dormer was killed by machine-gun fire as he and the crewmen attempted to escape across an open meadow (the other two men were wounded and taken prisoner). Dormer, who was only 25 years old at the time of his death, was remembered fondly by all those who served with him, and had hoped to become a priest following the war. His dedication and heartfelt belief in the moral justness of the Allied cause provide a timeless story of courage and inspiration.

Alongside the open conflict of World War II there were other, hidden wars - the wars of communication, in which success depended on a flow of concealed and closely guarded information.Smuggled written messages, secretly transmitted wireless signals, or months of eavesdropping on radio traffic meant operatives could discover in advance what the enemy intended to do. This information was passed on to those who commanded the armies, the fleets and the bomber formations, as well as to the other secret agents throughout the world who were desperately trying to infiltrate enemy lines. Vital information that turned the tide of battle in North African desert and on the Pacific Ocean proved to have been obtained by the time-consuming and unglamorous work of cryptanalysts who deciphered the enemy's coded messages, and coded those for the Allies.From the stuffy huts of Bletchley Park to the battles in the Mediterranean, the French and Dutch Resistance movements and the unkempt radio operatives in Burma, the rarely-seen, outstanding stories collected here reveal the true extent of the'secret war'.The ongoing need for secrecy for decades after the war meant that the outstanding achievements of wartime cryptanalysts could not be properly recognised.With vivid first-hand accounts and illuminating historical research, VOICES OF THE CODEBREAKERS reveals and finally celebrates the extraordinary accomplishments of these ordinary men and women.

“Highly detailed and fast-paced, Charles Glass's They Fought Alone is a must-read for those whose passion is the Resistance literature of World War II.” —Alan Furst, author of A Hero of FranceFrom the bestselling author of Americans in Paris and The Deserters, the astounding story of Britain's Special Operations Executive, one of World War II's most important secret fighting forcesAs far as the public knew, Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE) did not exist. After the defeat of the French Army and Britain's retreat from the Continent in June 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill created the top-secret espionage operation to'set Europe ablaze.'The agents infiltrated Nazi-occupied territory, parachuting behind enemy lines and hiding in plain sight, quietly but forcefully recruiting, training, and arming local French résistants to attack the German war machine. SOE would not only change the course of the war, but the nature of combat itself. Of the many brave men and women conscripted, two Anglo-American recruits, the Starr brothers, stood out to become legendary figures to the guerillas, assassins, and saboteurs they led.While both brothers were sent across the channel to organize against the Germans, their fates in war could hardly have been more different. Captain George Starr commanded networks of résistants in southwest France, cutting German communications, destroying weapons factories, and delaying the arrival of Nazi troops to Normandy by seventeen days after D-Day. Younger brother Lieutenant John Starr laid groundwork for resistance in the Burgundy countryside until he was betrayed, captured, tortured, and imprisoned by the Nazis in France and sent to a series of concentration camps in Germany and Austria. Feats of boldness and bravado were many, but appalling scandals, including George's supposed torture and execution of Nazis prisoners, and John's alleged collaboration with his German captors, overshadowed them all. At the war's end, Britain, France, and the United States awarded both brothers medals for heroism, and George would become one of only three among thousands of SOE operatives to achieve the rank of colonel. Yet, their battle honors did little to allay postwar allegations against them, and when they returned to England, their government accused both brothers of heinous war crimes.Here, for the first time, is the story of one of the great clandestine organizations of World War II, and of two heroic brothers whose ordeals during and after the war challenged the accepted myths of Britain's wartime resistance in occupied France. Written with complete and unrivaled access to only recently declassified documents from Britain's SOE files, French archives, family letters, diaries, and court records, along with interviews from surviving wartime Resistance fighters, They Fought Alone is a real-life thriller. Renowned journalist and war correspondent Charles Glass exposes a dramatic tale of spies, sabotage, and the daring men and women who risked everything to change the course of World War II.

Ernest Van Maurik, known to all simply as Van, joined the illustrious Artists Rifles regiment in the Territorial Army in 1936, but when war broke out he was commissioned into the Wiltshire Regiment. In the summer of 1940 the regiment was posted at Folkestone to defend the South Coast in the event of an invasion, during which time he undertook a course at Hythe Small Arms School and found himself involved with the SOE, the Special Operations Executive.This led to him to Scotland, first to the Commando Training School at Lochailort and then to Arisaig, where he became responsible for helping organise resistance to the Nazi regime in occupied countries. This involved the training of prospective agents in small arms, demolition and other special forces activities. At this time, he helped train a number of Czech soldiers who went on to participate in Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of SS-Obergruppenfhrer Reinhard Heydrich in Prague.Van was then transferred to the SOEs headquarters in Baker Street, London. There he was to work for notable figures such as Maurice Buckmaster and General Colin Gubbins. He also got to know a number of individuals who were to become famous agents, people such as Peter Churchill, Odette and Yeo-Thomas (The White Rabbit). His main work was to get agents both in and out of Occupied France but then it was his turn to go into the field.Van was initially sent to Malta to help with the dropping of agents into Yugoslavia. His next mission was to Switzerland via Occupied France to assist SOE agents in France and also deal with couriers from F Section SOE who used Switzerland as a channel for communicating with London.After many adventures, Van reached Switzerland where he carried out his task until the end of the war in Europe. He then was involved in assisting the investigation into the fate of the many SOE agents who had been captured by the Germans and were still missing.

'Tim Tate, in Hitler's British Traitors, [explores] the entire grimy landscape of British treachery during the Second World War and the astonishing rogues'gallery of traitors working to help Nazi Germany win. [He makes] excellent use of the vast trove of material declassified by MI5 in recent years.'- Ben Macintyre, The Times Hitler's British Traitors is the first authoritative account of a well-kept secret: the British Fifth Column and its activities during the Second World War. Drawing on hundreds of declassified official files – many of them previously unpublished – Tim Tate uncovers the largely unknown history of more than 70 British traitors who were convicted, mostly in secret trials, of working to help Nazi Germany win the war, and several hundred British Fascists who were interned without trial on evidence that they were working on behalf of the enemy. Four were condemned to death; two were executed. This engrossing book reveals the extraordinary methods adopted by MI5 to uncover British traitors and their German spymasters, as well as two serious wartime plots by well-connected British fascists to mount a coup d'etat which would replace the government with an authoritarian pro-Nazi regime. The book also shows how archaic attitudes to social status and gender in Whitehall and the courts ensured that justice was neither fair nor equitable. Aristocratic British pro-Nazi sympathizers and collaborators were frequently protected while the less-privileged foot soldiers of the Fifth Column were interned, jailed or even executed for identical crimes.

The official, never before told, account of Brooks's wartime service as an undercover agent. After the war, he continued to serve with MI6, and so was constrained not to relate any of his experiences. His is an exciting story; time and again he was faced by danger and incipient disaster. He brushed shoulders with some of the worst traitors of the Second World War, and was targeted by the Gestapo, who came within an ace of entrapping him.