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MI9: The British Secret Service That Fostered Escape and Evasion 1939-1945, and Its American Counterpart
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September 20, 2009It is interesting to compare aspects of this book with Churchill's Wizards, which describes how the military struggled to adapt to how warfare had changed in the 20th century. The idea of camoflague, for example, was seen as ungentlemanly and went against the strongly-held military beliefs in neatness, authority, and honour.
Similarly, the authors here explain how the view of surrender and capture changed during the 1914-18 and 1939-45 wars. Surrender had previously been considered so ignoble that even well into the Great War there was no official support for escape by POWs, an attitude that persisted in the USSR and Japan during the Second World War.
This is not to say that prisoners did not escape on their own enterprise. Winston Churchill, for example, escaped his prison camp during the Boer War, and the experiences of the many others who escaped (particularly during the First World War) provided vital material for those concerned with escape and evasion during the Second World War. Christopher Clayton-Hutton, when charged with creating escape & evasion aids, began by obtaining copies of every book written by Great War escapers about their experiences (before commissioning boys at his former public school to read and précis them for him). These works also served to increase the profile of escape for men fighting in 1939-45. Works like The Escaping Club romanticised escaping into something of a Boys' Own adventure, much as their later companions like The Great Escape and Escape from Colditz achieved after the war.
However, the changing nature of warfare during the 20th century meant that long-held military attitudes had to change, at least in the West. For example, the development of high explosive shells removed the stigma of a wound in the back; it became clearly pointless to expect an individual soldier with a rifle to take on a tank. Aerial warfare created the new phenomenon of isolated aircrew dropping far behind enemy lines, while the huge cost of training them meant it suddenly became far more valuable to recover them from enemy territory.
You cannot fail to be impressed by the ingenuity and persistence shown by many whose tales this book tells, whether captured or evading servicemen, civilian helpers, or workers in agencies such as MI9. In Colditz, for example, the prisoners knew much more about electricity than the guards. When it was turned off every evening, the prisoners simply tapped into it, using it to power a system of coloured lights (stolen from Christmas decorations left in an attic) used to signal locations and movements of Germans within the camp.
The book strives to avoid stereotyping and over-generalising. Not all Allied prisoners were particularly bothered about escaping, by a long way; many were afflicted with the lethargy and apathy of gefangenitis. Many German guards fulfilled their duties while behaving decently towards prisoners. Despite Hitler's order to handcuff thousands of Canadian prisoners in a reprisal, many of those charged with doing so were so reluctant that all-day manacling quickly turned into an hour, then in many camps an NCO would bring the cuffs into a hut and leave them on the table. As a side note, the Colditz inmates escaped this, because they had already shown a strong ability to make escaping tools out of any metal they could lay their hands on.
Foot and Langley never fail to emphasise the bravery and selflessness of those helpers who risked, and often lost, their lives to help Allied escapers and evaders get back home. It also emphasises the huge role of the USSR in the war, which is often overlooked with the war cast as fought and won primarily by the Anglo-American coalition. When describing the deplorable conditions Allied prisoners of war experienced in the European theatre (Asia was a different story), the authors remind us of the far worse horrors experienced by Slavic prisoners, captured special forces, and those "helpers" caught by the Gestapo. Out of 6 1/4 million Soviet prisoners taken by the Axis, nearly 5 million were killed, and the USSR viewed those who surrendered so poorly that they sent most of those who survived and were repatriated to execution or life-long gulag imprisonment. They were no gentler with escapers and evaders from their Allies' forces during the war: tempting as an escape through the USSR was from some locations, it was officially warned against, as the Soviets would typically kill or imprison stray Allied escapers they encountered. Sergeant Nussbacher, an British serviceman dropped into Hungary, reported to the Red Army after the liberation of Budapest, asking to know how he could further help them. His reward was arrest, severe torture, and imprisonment in an NKVD penal camp. Contrast this with the efforts made by even some German and Austrian civilians to aid nominally enemy servicemen stranded in the Reich.
The book as a whole is very interesting, but it presupposes a certain level of knowledge. If you are not an expert in this subject area, be prepared to flounder in the sea of names, acronyms, and cryptonyms. Its organisation means it jumps about somewhat between place and time. Suddenly you're back somewhere you left 100 pages ago, and you're expected to remember all about one of the hundreds of names mentioned several chapters previously.
The limitations of the authors' source material, which they freely acknowledge, are almost as frustrating for the reader as they obviously were for the writers. Several of the critical files they mention as needed to supply details or answer questions were due to be opened in 2009-10; whether we will ever hear about their contents, I don't know. Despite that, the authors have thoroughly exploited what material they could access, and have woven a coherent narrative that does not fail to highlight what is not yet publicly known. The book gives a broad and thorough overview of the work of MI9 and escape & evasion across all theatres of operations, and brings humanity to the story through its use of individual examples and anecdotes.
Similarly, the authors here explain how the view of surrender and capture changed during the 1914-18 and 1939-45 wars. Surrender had previously been considered so ignoble that even well into the Great War there was no official support for escape by POWs, an attitude that persisted in the USSR and Japan during the Second World War.
This is not to say that prisoners did not escape on their own enterprise. Winston Churchill, for example, escaped his prison camp during the Boer War, and the experiences of the many others who escaped (particularly during the First World War) provided vital material for those concerned with escape and evasion during the Second World War. Christopher Clayton-Hutton, when charged with creating escape & evasion aids, began by obtaining copies of every book written by Great War escapers about their experiences (before commissioning boys at his former public school to read and précis them for him). These works also served to increase the profile of escape for men fighting in 1939-45. Works like The Escaping Club romanticised escaping into something of a Boys' Own adventure, much as their later companions like The Great Escape and Escape from Colditz achieved after the war.
However, the changing nature of warfare during the 20th century meant that long-held military attitudes had to change, at least in the West. For example, the development of high explosive shells removed the stigma of a wound in the back; it became clearly pointless to expect an individual soldier with a rifle to take on a tank. Aerial warfare created the new phenomenon of isolated aircrew dropping far behind enemy lines, while the huge cost of training them meant it suddenly became far more valuable to recover them from enemy territory.
You cannot fail to be impressed by the ingenuity and persistence shown by many whose tales this book tells, whether captured or evading servicemen, civilian helpers, or workers in agencies such as MI9. In Colditz, for example, the prisoners knew much more about electricity than the guards. When it was turned off every evening, the prisoners simply tapped into it, using it to power a system of coloured lights (stolen from Christmas decorations left in an attic) used to signal locations and movements of Germans within the camp.
The book strives to avoid stereotyping and over-generalising. Not all Allied prisoners were particularly bothered about escaping, by a long way; many were afflicted with the lethargy and apathy of gefangenitis. Many German guards fulfilled their duties while behaving decently towards prisoners. Despite Hitler's order to handcuff thousands of Canadian prisoners in a reprisal, many of those charged with doing so were so reluctant that all-day manacling quickly turned into an hour, then in many camps an NCO would bring the cuffs into a hut and leave them on the table. As a side note, the Colditz inmates escaped this, because they had already shown a strong ability to make escaping tools out of any metal they could lay their hands on.
Foot and Langley never fail to emphasise the bravery and selflessness of those helpers who risked, and often lost, their lives to help Allied escapers and evaders get back home. It also emphasises the huge role of the USSR in the war, which is often overlooked with the war cast as fought and won primarily by the Anglo-American coalition. When describing the deplorable conditions Allied prisoners of war experienced in the European theatre (Asia was a different story), the authors remind us of the far worse horrors experienced by Slavic prisoners, captured special forces, and those "helpers" caught by the Gestapo. Out of 6 1/4 million Soviet prisoners taken by the Axis, nearly 5 million were killed, and the USSR viewed those who surrendered so poorly that they sent most of those who survived and were repatriated to execution or life-long gulag imprisonment. They were no gentler with escapers and evaders from their Allies' forces during the war: tempting as an escape through the USSR was from some locations, it was officially warned against, as the Soviets would typically kill or imprison stray Allied escapers they encountered. Sergeant Nussbacher, an British serviceman dropped into Hungary, reported to the Red Army after the liberation of Budapest, asking to know how he could further help them. His reward was arrest, severe torture, and imprisonment in an NKVD penal camp. Contrast this with the efforts made by even some German and Austrian civilians to aid nominally enemy servicemen stranded in the Reich.
The book as a whole is very interesting, but it presupposes a certain level of knowledge. If you are not an expert in this subject area, be prepared to flounder in the sea of names, acronyms, and cryptonyms. Its organisation means it jumps about somewhat between place and time. Suddenly you're back somewhere you left 100 pages ago, and you're expected to remember all about one of the hundreds of names mentioned several chapters previously.
The limitations of the authors' source material, which they freely acknowledge, are almost as frustrating for the reader as they obviously were for the writers. Several of the critical files they mention as needed to supply details or answer questions were due to be opened in 2009-10; whether we will ever hear about their contents, I don't know. Despite that, the authors have thoroughly exploited what material they could access, and have woven a coherent narrative that does not fail to highlight what is not yet publicly known. The book gives a broad and thorough overview of the work of MI9 and escape & evasion across all theatres of operations, and brings humanity to the story through its use of individual examples and anecdotes.
June 13, 2023
An invaluable anthology of source material to any enthusiast researching WW2 and repatriation of service personnel from behind enemy lines.
April 9, 2020
Written from the British perspective, the book is dense with details about World War II prison escapes as well as evasions from capture on the part of military personnel who found themselves behind enemy lines. However, it is badly written. The authors use passive voice to a punishing degree, and they put words and phrases in strange sequences that make them almost incomprehensible. They must be read carefully a second time to tease out their meaning. These read as if they might be a little more intelligible if spoken rather than written. Perhaps they might be more familiar to the British ear. The chapters lack sufficient structure. Each section consists largely of hundreds of anecdotes of escapes and evasions strung end to end with no break in between. Thousands of names of military personnel appear in the book. The authors often refer to a name cited a few paragraphs back, but by then the reader has forgotten what the person did, especially since he references other names in between. I could not read the entire text--the endless stream of names, places, and incidents was just too mind-numbing. The style of the book is too colloquial. If this were well structured and written in a standard English style, it would be a minor classic.
October 7, 2014
This is an interesting read and gives a very different perspective to the Second World War. At times there is way too much detail as a historical facts but I guess this was the aim of the co-authors. Well worth reading but it will take you some time.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews