Intelligence Operations & Units During WW2

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

That's a good response Robert and I am sure he will enjoy your book.

[A.L.]

Last week I finished Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945 . I thought it was great! If anyone's interested, here's a link to my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Geevee, Assisting Moderator British & Commonwealth Forces]

Great review A.L. and these might be of interest given your comment at the end:

by Bruce Marshall

Bravest Of The Brave: The True Story Of Wing Commander 'Tommy' Yeo Thomas, Soe Secret Agent, Codename 'The White Rabbit' by Mark Seaman

[A.L.]

Thanks, Geevee! Santa is supposed to bring me the one by Bruce Marshall.

[Manray9]

A.L. wrote: "Thanks, Geevee! Santa is supposed to bring me the one by Bruce Marshall."

That Santa -- he's a heck of a guy!

[Geevee, Assisting Moderator British & Commonwealth Forces]

And we are all pleased to keep him employed!

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

Great review A.L. :)

[A.L.]

Thanks Rick. And yes, Geevee and Manray9, it's fun to keep Santa busy!

[Jerome]

Another upcoming release:
Release date: July 22, 2014

by Peter Duffy

Description:
The never-before-told tale of the German-American who spearheaded a covert mission to infiltrate New York's Nazi underground in the days leading up to World War II;the most successful counterespionage operation in US history.

From the time Adolf Hitler came into power in 1933, German spies were active in New York. In 1937, a German national living in Queens stole the blueprints for the country's most precious secret, the Norden Bombsight, delivering them to the German military two years before World War II started in Europe and four years before the US joined the fight. When the FBI uncovered a ring of Nazi spies in the city, President Franklin Roosevelt formally declared J. Edgar Hoover as America';s spymaster with responsibility for overseeing all investigations. As war began in Europe in 1939, a naturalized German-American was recruited by the Nazis to set up a radio transmitter and collect messages from spies active in the city to send back to Nazi spymasters in Hamburg. This German-American, William G. Sebold, approached the FBI and became the first double agent in the Bureau's history, the center of a sixteen-month investigation that led to the arrest of a colorful cast of thirty-three enemy agents, among them a South African adventurer with an exotic accent and a monocle and a Jewish femme fatale, Lilly Stein, who escaped Nazi Vienna by offering to seduce US military men into whispering secrets into her ear.

A riveting, meticulously researched, and fast-moving story, Double Agent details the largest and most important espionage bust in American history.

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

Thanks for the detials on that new release Jerome.

[A.L.]

Thanks, Jerome! I'm adding it to my to-read list.

[Jerome]

Another:

by Sinclair McKay
Description:
Behind the celebrated code-breaking at Bletchley Park lies another secret. Before the German war machine’s messages could be decoded – turning the course of the war in a campaign like the Desert War – thousands more young men and women had to locate and monitor endless streams of radio traffic around the clock, and transcribe its Morse code with a speed few have ever managed since.

They were part of the “Y”- (for “Wireless”) Service: the Listening Service – an organisation just as secret as Bletchley Park during the war, but nowadays still little-known and unrecognised. Without it, however, the Allies would have known nothing of the enemy’s military intentions. Now, in the follow-up to his Sunday Times-bestselling The Secret Life of Bletchley Park, through dozens of interviews with surviving veterans, Sinclair McKay chronicles the history and achievements of this remarkable group of people.

Whereas Bletchley Park was a claustrophobically close community crammed into a single Buckinghamshire mansion, the Listening Service went wherever the war went – which was all over the world. Its listeners might be posted to bustling Cairo to listen in to Rommel’s Eighth Army, or Casablanca in Morocco, or Karachi for the Burma campaign, or in one case even the idyllic Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean to monitor Japan – or they might be sent to congenial Scarborough or Douglas in the Isle of Man to listen in to German submarines.

To men and women often hardly out of school such exotic postings were life-changing adventures – even the journey out could be an epic voyage of troopships, flying boats and Indian railways – and the challenges not merely arduous night shifts of 12 hours of dizzying concentration, but heat so intense the perspiration ran into your shoes, or snakes in the filing cabinets. In all of them it bred self-reliance and broad horizons rare to their generation, while many found lifelong romance in their far-flung corner of the world. Now the hidden story of the Y-Service and its vital contribution to the war effort can be told at last.

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

Another good book, thanks for the add Jerome.

[Jerome]

And another:
Release date: September 6, 2014

by John Bryden (no photo)
Description:
It has long been accepted that there were no German spies at large in Britain during the Second World War, but captured German documents and newly released MI5 files reveal that the famed double-cross system was, in fact, a German triple-cross and that the Soviets had also penetrated the Security Service. When British Intelligence discovered this information, it secretly turned the situation to its advantage during the Battle of Britain. The newly released documents also show that the German Secret Intelligence chief contrived to keep Britain in the war and may have had a direct hand in helping to lure the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor.

These revelations and others like them make Fighting to Lose the most fascinating new book about the Second World War to be published for many years. Based mainly on primary source research, Bryden reveals that German Intelligence knew about Britain's radar network before the Battle of Britain and presents new evidence that President Roosevelt deliberately left the U.S. Pacific Fleet open to Japanese attack in order to get America into the war.

[A.L.]

Sounds interesting, Jerome! Added to my to-read list.

[Mike]

This sounds like a rattling good read, with some challenging evidence. Thanks Jerome.

Your mentioning Japan reminds me of a favourite: Nine Lives: True Spy Stories from Mata Hari to Kim Philbyby Fitzroy MacLean - no mean spy himself probably. It's mainly not about World War Two, but does have an excellent chapter on Richard Sorge, of Red Orchestra fame - the man who established that Japan was not going to attack Russia in 1941-42, information that allowed Stalin to withdraw crucial reinforcements from the East and send them into the battle for Moscow. This may have changed the course of the war. But what is enjoyable about the book (called Take Nine Spies in the US) is Maclean's depiction of the spies' characters - including Sorge, who had a predilection for trouble and should never have lasted as long as he did. Fascinating stuff.

[Jerome]

Yet another:
Release date: June 3, 2014

by Clint Richmond
Description:
In 1938, Hazel Frome, the wife of a powerful executive at Atlas Powder Company, a San Francisco explosives manufacturer, set out on a cross-country motor trip with her twenty-three-year-old daughter, Nancy. When their car broke down in El Paso, Texas, they made the most of being stranded by staying at a posh hotel and crossing the border to Juarez for shopping, dining, and drinking. A week later, their near-nude bodies were found in the Chihuahuan Desert. Though they had been seen on occasion with two mystery men, there were no clues as to why they had apparently been abducted, tortured for days, and shot execution style.

El Paso sheriff Chris Fox, a lawman right out of central casting, engaged in a turf war with the Texas Rangers and local officials that hampered the investigation. But the victims' detours had placed them in the path of a Nazi spy ring operating from the West Coast to Latin America through a deep-cover portal at El Paso. The sleeper cell was run by spymasters at the German consulate in San Francisco. In 1938, only the inner circle of the Roosevelt White House and a few FBI agents were aware of the extent to which German agents had infiltrated American industry.

Fetch the Devil is the first narrative account of this still officially unsolved case. Based on long forgotten archives and recently declassified FBI files, Richmond paints a convincing portrait of a sheriff's dogged investigation into a baffling murder, the international spy ring that orchestrated it, and America on the brink of another world war.

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

Sounds interesting, thanks for the add Jerome.

[Mike, Assisting Moderator US Forces]

Sounds very interesting, add TBR.

[Jerome]

Another:
Release date: October 1, 2014

by Mark Simmons
Description:
This is the story of the most successful German spy of World War II, the Albanian Elyesa Bazna—an untrained opportunist. While working as a valet to the British ambassador to Turkey in Ankara Bazna photographed top secret material, which he sold to the Germans for vast sums. He became the most highly paid spy in history. However he never got to enjoy his ill-gotten gains, for the British banknotes he demanded came from "Operation Bernhard," the counterfeiting project set up by the SD, the Nazi foreign espionage department. Cicero even stumbled across "Operation Overlord," code-name for D-Day. Because of in-fighting between various German departments, full use was never made of the information. Having accessed recently released British Secret Service files, Mark Simmons analyzes all the eyewitness accounts, and captures the feverish atmosphere of neutral Ankara, a hotbed of spies and intrigue.

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

Another good add Jerome :)

[A.L.]

Thanks, Jerome! Another for my to-read list!

[Manray9]

Jerome wrote: "Another:
Release date: October 1, 2014

by Mark Simmons
Description:
This is the story of the most successful German s..."

There is an old movie, entitled "5 Fingers," from 1952 starring James Mason, Danielle Darrieux and Michael Rennie based on the Operation Cicero case. Mason plays the valet spying for the Germans.

[Jerome]

Another:

by Hervie Haufler
Description:
In 1940, Hitler infiltrated England with spies to gather intelligence and disrupt Allied plans. But unbeknownst to the Germans, the entire network had been captured and "turned" into double agents who reported to the British while sending misinformation to the Germans about Allied defenses and strategy. Now, after decades of secrecy, comes the first complete account of the British network that ran this "phony war."

Readers will meet "Tricycle," the model for Ian Fleming's James Bond and "Tate," who so expertly deceived the Germans that he was awarded the Iron Cross. And the greatest double agent of all, who convinced the Germans he was their principal spy in the U.K.-even as he helped the Allies pull off the greatest deception in the history of warfare.

[Jerome]

And another:

by Raymond J Batvinis
Description:
The world was at war, America precariously poised on the sidelines. But already a second secret war was well underway with the United States very much in the thick of it. While he fought on the home front to consolidate the FBI's intelligence gathering power, J. Edgar Hoover was conducting an all-out campaign to make his agency America's first foreign espionage service--a campaign that would lead to an uneasy alliance with British intelligence in a brilliantly successful operation to undermine Germany throughout the Second World War. While pieces of the story have been told before, only now, in this work by FBI historian and former agent Raymond Batvinis, does this crucial chapter in the history of World War II, and of the FBI, received its full due.

Taking up the tale begun in his acclaimed "Origins of FBI Counterintelligence," Batvinis mines a wealth of heretofore untapped resources to expose Hoover's remarkable connivances and accomplishments in concert--and occasionally contention--with the Allies in outsmarting German intelligence. "Hoover's Secret War" opens up a world of spy rings, secret and double agents, surveillance, codes and ciphers, wire taps, microdots, mail drops, invisible ink, radio transmissions, and deception and disinformation as it tracks the warring nations spreading their intelligence tentacles throughout Europe and North and South America. As it documents the rocky evolution of the FBI's relationship with Britain's vaunted M15 and M16, the book brings to light the feud between Hoover and William Stephenson, director of the British Secret Intelligence Service's U. S. operation, BSC.

Batvinis reveals how the agency gained access to ULTRA intelligence, thanks to the British decryption of the ENIGMA code, along with the strenuous efforts to keep the Germans in the dark about it. He uncovers eye-opening details of the FBI's participation in the famed "Double-Cross System, which effectively "turned" German agents against the Fatherland, among them a flamboyant, larger-larger-than-life playboy, a world famous French flyer, and a lecherous Dutchman. Batvinis tells for the first time how the Bureau manipulated these agents, and how it transmitted deceptive information critical to the Normandy landings, the Allied invasion of the Marshall Islands, and the atomic bomb program, among other matters. Rich with secrets and surprises worthy of the finest spy fiction, this true story of espionage and counterintelligence gives us our first clear look at the secret second world war, and a significant moment in history--for the FBI, for America, and for the world.

[Jerome]

Another:

by David Armstrong
Description:
At Close Quarters reveals the truth behind Grant-Taylor and his shooting method. It details for the first time why Grant-Taylor kept his true identity secret, his actual origins, his secret wartime service and how he went onto influence the Commanding Officer of the post war SAS regiment in the area of close quarter battle and special operations.

[Lee]

Thanks for the notice to "At close quarters", it's on the TBR list, and will probably flag it for my shooting friends, too.

[Jerome]

Another:

by James Hayward
Description:
On the eve of the outbreak of the Second World War the double-agent Arthur Owens, codenamed SNOW, is summoned to Berlin and appointed Hitler's chief spy in Britain. Days later he finds himself in Wandsworth prison, betrayed by the wife he traded for a younger model, and forced to transmit false wireless messages for MI5 to earn his freedom - and avoid the hangman's noose. A vain and devious anti-hero with no moral compass, Owen's motives were status, money and women. He mixed fact with fiction constantly, and at times insisted that he was a true patriot, undertaking hazardous secret missions for his mother country; at other times, Owens saw himself as a daring rogue agent, outwitting British Intelligence and loyal only to the Fatherland. Yet in 1944, as Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, Hitler was caught unawares, tricked into expecting the invasion across the Pas de Calais in a strategic deception played out by Owens and the double-cross agents of MI5. For all his flaws, Agent Snow became the traitor who saved his country.

Based on recently de-classified MI5 files and previously unpublished sources, Double Agent Snow is the story of a secret Battle of Britain, fought by Snow and his opposing spymasters, Thomas 'Tar' Robertson of MI5 and Nikolaus Ritter of the Abwehr, as well as the tragic love triangle between Owens, his wife Irene, and his mistress Lily Funnell. The evocative, fast-paced narrative moves from seedy south London pubs to North Sea trawlers, from chic Baltic spa resorts to Dartmoor gaol, populated by a colourful rogue's gallery of double-cross agents.

[Jerome]

An August release:

by Adrian O'Sullivan
Description:
A pioneering investigation into the secret world of wartime Persia (Iran), meticulously sourced and based on six years of extraordinarily wide and deep research in the German, British, and American archives. This study exposes the problems, pressures, and personalities among the competing German intelligence services that targeted Persia, and it describes the highly effective methods employed by the implacable Allied security forces that resisted them. It tells a riveting tale: there are parachutists, gold, guns, dynamite, double agents, mistresses, and Byzantine intrigues galore in this compelling historical narrative. At the same time, as a serious academic study and a penetrating analysis of catastrophic intelligence failure, Adrian O'Sullivan's book is a highly significant contribution to Second World War intelligence history.

[Geevee, Assisting Moderator British & Commonwealth Forces]

Thanks Jerome - for me this is a untapped area so I will look out of this.

[Jerome]

I haven't read anything on this, either. It does sound interesting.

[Geevee, Assisting Moderator British & Commonwealth Forces]

Blimey just checked at it is £60.00!

[Jerome]

Blast, what a bummer. It's $85 here in the states.

[Manray9]

Jerome wrote: "Blast, what a bummer. It's $85 here in the states."

I see an ILL request in the near future.

[carl]

This book has a chapter or so on each of the middle east intrigues. I'm sure not as in depth as $85, but more accessible ...

The Brandenburger Commandos: Germany's Elite Warrior Spies in World war II

[Colin]

I interveiwed a couple of these men, commanded by Waffen SS Lt. Adrian von Folkersam, when they took the oil field at in the Caucasus dressed as Soviet soldiers. Folkersam, in fluent Russian told the relief colunm of tankers and infantry to go in the wrong direction, where the Stukas picked them off. The commandos secured the oil field rapidly.

[carl]

Good tale Colin. From what I read that was one of the Brandenburger traits, show up at a bridge or important crossroad, send everyone every where, complete the coup.

[Colin]

Correct. Otto Skorzeny stole the idea (the bastard) during the Ardennes Offensive) to confuse Allied units dressed as American soldiers.

[Selena]

In my research, I have just found several books about the MIS, specifically the MISLS (Military Intelligence Service Language School) at Fort Snelling where Japanese-American soldiers were trained.

Piercing the Fog: Intelligence and Army Air Forces Operations in World War II

Ganbatte: A Nisei's Story

Nisei Linguists: Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service During World War II

Japanese American Veterans of Minnesota

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

Thanks for those links Selena, I am sure a few members will be checking them out.

[Selena]

Just saw this book on the HuffPost: Double Agent: The First Hero of World War II and How the FBI Outwitted and Destroyed a Nazi Spy Ring.

[Geevee, Assisting Moderator British & Commonwealth Forces]

Mixed reviews but sounds worth a punt Selena, thanks for posting.

[Jerome]

An April 2015 release:

by Phyllis Birnbaum
Description:
Aisin Gioro Xianyu (1907--1948) was the fourteenth daughter of a Manchu prince and a legendary figure in China's bloody struggle with Japan. After the fall of the Manchu dynasty in 1912, Xianyu's father gave his daughter to a Japanese friend who was sympathetic to his efforts to reclaim power. This man raised Xianyu, now known as Kawashima Yoshiko, to restore the Manchus to their former glory. Her fearsome dedication to this cause ultimately got her killed.

Yoshiko had a fiery personality and loved the limelight. She shocked Japanese society by dressing in men's clothes and rose to prominence as Commander Jin, touted in Japan's media as a new Joan of Arc. Boasting a short, handsome haircut and a genuine military uniform, Commander Jin was credited with various daring exploits, among them riding horseback as leader of her own army during the Japanese occupation of China.

While trying to promote the Manchus, Yoshiko supported the puppet Manchu state established by the Japanese in 1932, which became one of the reasons she was executed for treason after Japan's 1945 defeat. The truth of Yoshiko's life is still a source of contention between China and Japan -- some believe she was exploited by powerful men, others claim she relished her role as political provocateur. China holds her responsible for unspeakable crimes, while Japan has forgiven her transgressions. This biography presents the most accurate and colorful portrait to date of the controversial princess spy, recognizing her truly novel role in conflicts that transformed East Asia.

[Jerome]

A recent release:

by Nigel West
Description:
As part of the infamous Double Cross operation, Jewish double agent Renato Levi proved to be one of the Allies’ most devastating weapons in World War Two. ln 1941, with the help of Ml6, Levi built an extensive spy-ring in North Africa and the Middle East. But, most remarkably, it was entirely fictitious. This network of imagined informants peddled dangerously false misinformation to Levi’s unwitting German handlers. His efforts would distort any enemy estimates of Allied battle plans for the remainder of the war. His communications were infused with just enough truth to be palatable, and just enough imagination to make them irresistible. ln a vacuum of seemingly trustworthy sources, Levi’s enemies not only believed in the CHEESE network, as it was codenamed, but they came to depend upon it. And, by the war’s conclusion, he could boast of having helped the Allies thwart Rommel in North Africa, as well as diverting whole armies from the D-Day landing sites. He wielded great influence and, as a double agent, he was unrivalled. Until now, Levi’s devilish deceptions and feats of derring-do have remained completely hidden. Using recently declassified files, Double Cross in Cairo uncovers the heroic exploits of one of the Second World War’s most closely guarded secrets.

[Jerome]

A May release:

by Rick Stroud
Description:
This is the story of how a small SOE unit led by Patrick Leigh Fermor kidnapped a German general on the Nazi-occupied island of Crete in 1944. For thirty-two days, they were chased across the mountains as they headed for the coast and a rendezvous with a Royal Navy launch waiting to spirit the general to Cairo.

Rick Stroud, whose Phantom Army of Alamein won plaudits for its meticulous research and its lightness of touch in the telling, brings these same gifts to bear in this new project. From the adrenalin rush of the kidnapping, to the help provided by the Cretan partisans and people, he explains the overall context of Crete's role in World War II and reveals the devastating consequences of this mission for them all.

There have been other accounts, but Kidnap in Crete is the first book to draw on all the sources, notably those in Crete as well as SOE files and the accounts, letters, and private papers of its operatives in London and Edinburgh.

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

Should be an interesting read, thanks for the details Jerome.

[Colin]

I read those SOE files years ago in the PRO in Kew Gardens, researching my anti-partisan warfare book. The kidnapping was a very bold operation indeed.

[Jerome]

A February 2016 release:

by Albert Lulushi
Description:
The OSS—Office of Strategic Services—created under the command of William Donovan, has been celebrated for its cloak-and-dagger operations during World War II and as the precursor of the CIA. As the "Oh So Social," it has also been portrayed as a club for the well-connected before, during, and after the war. Donovan's Devils tells the story of a different OSS, that of ordinary soldiers, recruited from among first- and second-generation immigrants, who volunteered for dangerous duty behind enemy lines and risked their lives in Italy, France, the Balkans, and elsewhere in Europe. Organized into Operational Groups, they infiltrated into enemy territory by air or sea and operated for days, weeks, or months hundreds of miles from the closest Allied troops. They performed sabotage, organized native resistance, and rescued downed airmen, nurses, and prisoners of war. Their enemy showed them no mercy, and sometimes their closest friends betrayed them. They were the precursors to today's Special Forces operators.

Based on declassified OSS records, personal collections, and oral histories of participants from both sides of the conflict, Donovan's Devils provides the most comprehensive account to date of the Operational Group activities, including a detailed narrative of the ill-fated Ginny mission, which resulted in the one of the OSS's gravest losses of the war.

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

Looks like an interesting book, thanks for posting the details Jerome.

[Colin]

I knew and interviewed Col. Aaron Bank, OSS and creator of US Army Special Forces. I have to look at that book. Many may remember the actor, Sorrell Booke (1930-1994) who played Boss Hogg in TV's The Dukes of Hazzard, had a theater degree from Yale, was a counterintelligence officer in Korea, and worked for the CIA under former OSS operators. He spoke Japanese, Korean, French, German, English.