Intelligence Operations & Units During WW2

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

We will have to move this over to the movies thread soon, this is supposed to be the Intelligence Ops thread :)

[Dj]

Well guess I have to help poor Aus out. I have never watched Combat either. It is what it is. Most of the rest of the list I have. I used to love watching Rat Patrol, nothing like seeing Jeeps with 50 cals taking on Panzers. LOL.

[Feliks]

Shocking

But yeah Rat Patrol was boss. Mainly I just like any show from that era which was shot outdoors. I despised the look of any tv show which was filmed inside on soundstages or with laff-tracks, know whut I mean? All the best ones were shot outside. And even today they still do that 'shot in our Burbank studio' junk. Why? Cheaper, I suppose.

Rat Patrol (and Black Sheep Squadron too), were just bizarre. But they sure looked like fun and had snappy theme music. Shows like that are great because there's always a clear, direct enemy in every episode. Simple and lucid: commander briefs the men on the mission, men go out and kick butt. No mucking about. You knew who's butt was gonna get kicked (clue: not the Yanks'!)

Whereas in a show like, 'Wild Wild West' you never knew who the enemy was gonna be. And it always took a while to find out. But again, excellent for outdoor photography in that show as well. Private locomotive too, ore-ida!

[Dj]

Feliks wrote: "Shocking

But yeah Rat Patrol was boss. Mainly I just like any show from that era which was shot outdoors. I despised the look of any tv show which was filmed inside on soundstages or with laff-tra..."

To bad Wild Wild West got taken to the cleaners it the Movie. What an awful reboot and it had so much promise. I mean really Giant Robotic Spider, come on, how can you mess that up?

By the By, my favorite WWII movie is still Casablanca, despite not having any shooting at all really, followed by Kelly's Hero's. Lots of shooting and stars in that one. The Western Gunfight scene at the end was awesome.

[Feliks]

Why would anyone even think of turning Bill Conrad's old, old, old tv show 'Wild Wild West' into a modern-day movie. What on earth for? Who would be the audience? Who would even remember James and Artemus and Loveless except people who would despise the idea of an adaptation? Heh! I can't believe my ears. I suggest it could only ever work as a tv show because it was all a steampunk gadget-gimmick knockoff of James Bond in the first place. Plus it had only caucasian male stars. It was a spoof, if anything. Strange, strange, strange decisions being made on the West Coast these daze..there's probably some angle I don't know about which somehow made it sound good to someone at the time..

Oh well..whoops..sorry for these 'negative waves' man..heh

(love those guys)

[Manray9]

Feliks wrote: "Why would anyone even think of turning Bill Conrad's old, old, old tv show 'Wild Wild West' into a modern-day movie. What on earth for? Who would be the audience? Who would even remember James and ..."

Feliks: You mean Robert Conrad. William Conrad was Cannon on TV and Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke on radio.

[Feliks]

Ouff! My bad. Thanks. Yea, I always have Bill's name on my mind associated with the surname 'Conrad'. I'm a big fan of Gunsmoke, that's my problem.

[Dj]

Manray9 wrote: "Feliks wrote: "Why would anyone even think of turning Bill Conrad's old, old, old tv show 'Wild Wild West' into a modern-day movie. What on earth for? Who would be the audience? Who would even reme..."

Robert Conrad was also Pappy on Baa Baa Black Sheep.

[Feliks]

He sure was. He'd gained a few pounds by then though. Not unusual, but I really think he loved being the lean James West in-the-vest.

Perhaps a better western show from that general era was David Carradine (and sometimes his real life brother Keith) in 'Kung Fu'. Now that was excellent. You always learned something, as well as being entertained. And there was some authenticity in the stunts.

[Geevee, Assisting Moderator British & Commonwealth Forces]

'Aussie Rick' wrote: "Not familiar with 'Combat'!!!!

Geez Geevee I'm very disappointed :)"

You have to blame it on the BBC and ITV and not me!! I do remember watching Hogan's Heroes though which I enjoyed.

Ha ha Feliks my Dad would have watched it with me had it been on!!! (Note extra exclamation marks LOL).

[Feliks]

A likely story!!!! I think we all guess how things really stood! Like you were never grounded and had tv privileges revoked? Pull the other one!

Oh well. 'The wilder the colt, the better the horse', as Matt Dillon would say...

-feliks

[Doubledf99.99]

Feliks wrote: "He sure was. He'd gained a few pounds by then though. Not unusual, but I really think he loved being the lean James West in-the-vest.

Perhaps a better western show from that general era was David ..."

Also, Conrad was pretty good in Centennial, one of the first of the TV mini series..

[Geevee, Assisting Moderator British & Commonwealth Forces]

Feliks wrote: "A likely story!!!! I think we all guess how things really stood! Like you were never grounded and had tv privileges revoked? Pull the other one!

Oh well. 'The wilder the colt, the better the hors..."

I now think I should go and watch Combat - has it stood the test of time Feliks?

[Feliks]

I think you would enjoy it a lot. Vic Morrow is always a lot of fun. You might become a big fan of it--little late to the party but that doesn't matter. Combat is not far-fetched silliness like 'Rat Patrol'. It's good drama. I don't even think there is another American tv series based on the theme of men-at-war, which has as much respect. There were other shows which came later, like MASH--but thats not WWII.

[carl]

The Rat Patrol had the perpetual foe - German officer played by Hans Gudegast, often seen rocking his halftrack out of a ditch in pursuit
of the cursed jeeps.

Years later I was watching 'Young & the Restless' ,well you know,
for a girlfriend, and there he was, a regular on that show.

[Geevee, Assisting Moderator British & Commonwealth Forces]

Thanks Feliks and Carl. I shall lookout for it. I did watch MASH as a kid and was perennially disappointed as there was no "action".

[Feliks]

The early MASH shows had helicopters, and were shot outdoors, which I always love. But yeah you're right-- you never even saw a gun fired at all in that program. Invisible snipers were the worst threat, at most. They had action though--those great pranks they played on Frank!

p.s. You're still a kid! Now, hit the showers, pilgrim!

:p

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

Folks any further discussion about movies, TV shows, etc. will need to continue in the movie/documentary thread:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

This thread is for posts on Intel Ops & Units of WW2, thanks for your compliance :)

[Feliks]

You're right, I'm sorry. I'll refrain.

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

Many thanks, please continue your discussion in the TV thread, its been quite good so far :)

[Geevee, Assisting Moderator British & Commonwealth Forces]

Ooops caught and guilty sir!

[Jerome]

A June 2016 release:

by Susan Williams
Description:
A thrilling account of the extraordinary efforts of Allied intelligence in gaining control of Belgian Congo's uranium mines and keeping them from Hitler and Stalin.

This book is the true story of American spies in Africa in the Second World War, which until now has never been researched or told. It is set against the background of one of the most tightly guarded secrets of the war -- America's struggle to secure enough high quality uranium to build atomic bombs. These efforts were focused on the Shinkolobwe Mine in the Belgian Congo, which was described within the Manhattan Project as the 'most important deposit of uranium yet discovered in the world'. Uranium from this mine was used to build the bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. Given the very real possibility that Germany was also working on an atomic bomb, it was an urgent priority for the US to prevent uranium from the Congo being diverted to the enemy. This task was given to the newly-created Office of Strategic Services in Washington, which sent some of their best Secret Intelligence agents under cover to the Belgian Congo to track the ore and to hunt for Nazi collaborators. Their assignment was made even tougher by the complex colonial reality and by tensions with British officials.

Spies in the Congo tells the story of the men -- and one woman -- who were sent on this dangerous wartime mission.

[Jerome]

An April 2016 release:

by Howard Blum
Description:
The New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Dark Invasion, channels Erik Larson and Ben Macintyre in this riveting biography of Betty Pack, the dazzling American debutante who became an Allied spy during WWII and was hailed by OSS chief General “Wild Bill" Donovan as “the greatest unsung heroine of the war.”

Betty Pack was charming, beautiful, and intelligent—and she knew it. As an agent for Britain’s MI-6 and then America’s OSS during World War II, these qualities proved crucial to her success. This is the remarkable story of this “Mata Hari from Minnesota” (Time) and the passions that ruled her tempestuous life—a life filled with dangerous liaisons and death-defying missions vital to the Allied victory.

For decades, much of Betty’s career working for MI-6 and the OSS remained classified. Through access to recently unclassified files, Howard Blum discovers the truth about the attractive blond, codenamed “Cynthia,” who seduced diplomats and military attachés across the globe in exchange for ciphers and secrets; cracked embassy safes to steal codes; and obtained the Polish notebooks that proved key to Alan Turing’s success with Operation Ultra.

Beneath Betty’s cool, professional determination, Blum reveals a troubled woman conflicted by the very traits that made her successful: her lack of deep emotional connections and her readiness to risk everything. The Last Goodnight is a mesmerizing, provocative, and moving portrait of an exceptional heroine whose undaunted courage helped to save the world.

[Jerome]

A March 2016 release:

by Paul Paillole
Description:
Ten years after the publication of his Services Speciaux (1935-1945), Paillole took up his pen once again in order to shed further light on the critical role that the French Secret Service played in the infiltration of German agencies. In this first English edition of The Spy in Hitler s Inner Circle, Paillole brings us to the very heart of the world of espionage and counterintelligence, providing unique insight into the key figures that led to the decoding of the Enigma machine at Bletchley and the ultimate collapse of Hitler s Third Reich, most notably through Hans-Thilo Schmidt, France s German spy embedded in the very heart of the Third Reich. In compelling narrative style Paillole details how Schmidt delivered intelligence to France right from the source of the German Cipher Office. Schmidt, whose brother Rudolf occupied one of the highest postings in the Third Reich, commander of 2nd Panzer Army in Russia, created an intelligence network between France, Poland and England, and successfully transmitted crucial details about Hitler s strategic plans. From information about Germany s rearmament and the reoccupation of the Rhineland, to fundamental technical intelligence about the Enigma machine, Schmidt s contributions are key to the Allied victory in the intelligence war, despite the fact that France largely ignored his communications. Revealed here are the most secret aspects of the secret war, the war of numbers.

By way of Hans-Thilo Schmidt Paillole sheds further light on the interaction of secret agents working inside the German government, bringing attention to the cooperation between the French, English and Polish agencies surrounding the challenges of decoding the Enigma machine. We learn the innermost details of the roles that men such as Gustave Bertrand, Rudolphe Lemoine, and Richard Sorge played in this dramatic history and ultimately the pivotal role that Bletchley s Alan Turing was able to perform as a result. Paillole brings renewed focus onto one of the most important espionage affairs of the war and sheds new light on already existent Anglo-Saxon and Polish historiography, revealing new aspects of the participation of Enigma during the decisive phases of the Second World War: the Battle of France, the Battle of Britain, the Battle of the Atlantic, the Battle of Libya and the Battle of Normandy.

[Geevee, Assisting Moderator British & Commonwealth Forces]

Thanks Jerome.

[Manray9]

The Washington Post featured this review of --

Disciples: The World War II Missions of the CIA Directors Who Fought for Wild Bill Donovan by Douglas Waller

Looks pretty good.

The review:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...

[Manray9]

My current book is --

Wild Bill Donovan by Douglas Waller

A couple interesting tidbits include --

The U.S. was so unprepared for war that prior to the Torch landings in North Africa, Donovan's OSS planners had to rummage through the archives of the National Geographic Society to find photos of key locations throughout North Africa.

American anthropologist Carleton Coon worked for Donovan during WW II. He developed the "explosive turd" -- a small bomb which looked like a mule dropping and would blow out vehicle tires if run over.

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

Great titbits of information Manray9, thanks for sharing.

[happy]

I read this a couple of yrs ago - thought it was a pretty good look at the man.

Thnx for the tidbits Manray9

[Manray9]

From Douglas Waller's --

Wild Bill Donovan

Donovan was hard-nosed, but with a sense of humor:

Donovan's plane stopped in Cairo...Donovan had earlier sent a stuffed-shirt admiral the Pentagon had foisted on him to the Middle East for an inspection tour. The admiral had reported back that the Cairo station was the finest group of officers he had ever met. "I want to know what you did to him!" Donovan asked suspiciously. The admiral had been terrorizing stations all over the theater, Kingsley explained, so when he arrived in Cairo they convinced him to go with them to a nightclub, where they tanked him up with martinis and has a belly dancer escort him back to their quarters. The admiral woke up the next morning stretched out on a dining room table, his head throbbing, with no memory of his night with the belly dancer. He was no trouble after that. Donovan roared with laughter.

I guess that constituted a "dirty trick?"

[Sue]

New York Times - WWII Hero Credits Luck and Chance in Foiling Hitler’s Nuclear Ambitions

NOV. 20, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/21/wor...

ALESUND, Norway — For a man who saved the world, or at least helped ensure that Adolf Hitler never got hold of a nuclear bomb, 96-year-old Joachim Ronneberg has a surprisingly unheroic view of the forces that shape history.

“There were so many things that were just luck and chance,” he said of his 1943 sabotage mission that blew up a Norwegian plant vital to Nazi Germany’s nuclear program. “There was no plan. We were just hoping for the best,” Mr. Ronneberg, Norway’s most decorated war hero, added.

The leader and only living member of a World War II commando team that destroyed the Nazis’ only source of heavy water, a rare fluid needed to produce nuclear weapons, Mr. Ronneberg has had his exploits celebrated in a 1965 blockbuster movie, “The Heroes of Telemark,” starring Kirk Douglas, been showered with military medals and been honored, belatedly, with a statue and museum display in his hometown here on Norway’s west coast.

M.R.D. Foot, the official historian of Britain’s wartime sabotage and intelligence service, the Special Operations Executive, which organized Mr. Ronneberg’s mission, described the raid on a Norsk Hydro plant producing heavy water in Nazi-occupied Norway as a “coup” that “changed the course of the war” and deserved the “gratitude of humanity.”

[Geevee, Assisting Moderator British & Commonwealth Forces]

Thanks Sue an interesting post for members.

[Manray9]

From: Wild Bill Donovan by Douglas Waller

Much has been said and written in the West about the French resistance and the maquis during WW II, but Waller points out:

...the OSS dropped seventy-five commando teams and two thousand tons of arms, food, and equipment into northern Italy, whose partisan force grew to 85,000...the partisans eventually succeeded in taking forty thousand prisoners, killing or wounding thousands more, and liberating over a hundred cities and towns, including Genoa, Milan, Venice, and Turin.

I guess the French just had better PR?

[Geevee, Assisting Moderator British & Commonwealth Forces]

Some interesting statistics Manray9 and if you add in SOE's work too the Italian anti-fascist resistance did play its part. I wonder why this is less well known.

[Manray9]

Geevee wrote: "Some interesting statistics Manray9 and if you add in SOE's work too the Italian anti-fascist resistance did play its part. I wonder why this is less well known."

I suspect it's been down played because many of the Italian partisan groups were Communists.

[Colin]

Most of the French partisan groups, and the most effective, were also communists, such as the Maquisard.

[Geevee, Assisting Moderator British & Commonwealth Forces]

And perhaps that political stance was only natural given who they were fighting and how National Socialism and Communism confronted each other across Europe. The experience in Yugoslavia, Albania and Greece for example shows that whilst the local groups were diverse they were rather murderous to each other despite being communist (or at least not fascist) as the allegiance was in part linked to local leaders and historic alliances/divisions.

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

I don't think this November 2015 release has been mentioned before, if so I'm sorry, but I am sure its bound to interest a few here in the group:

Ghost Patrol: A History of the Long Range Desert Group, 1940-1945 by John Sadler
Description:
The origins of most of the west's Special Forces can be traced back to the Long Range Desert Group which operated across the limitless expanses of the Libyan Desert, an area the size of India, during the whole of the Desert War from 1940 1943. After the defeat of the Axis in North Africa they adapted to serve in the Mediterranean, the Greek islands, Albania, Yugoslavia and Greece. They became the stuff of legend. The brainchild of Ralph Bagnold, a pre-war desert explorer, featured, in fictional terms in The English Patient, who put all of his expertise into the creation of a new and, by the standards of the day, highly unorthodox unit. Conventional tactical thinking shunned the deep heart of the vast desert as it was thought to be a different planet, a harsh, inhospitable wilderness where British forces could not possibly survive even less operate effectively. Bagnold, Pat Clayton and Bill Kennedy Shaw created a whole new type of warfare. Using specially adapted vehicles and the techniques they'd learned in the 30s, recruiting only men of the right temperament and high levels of fitness and endurance, the first patrols set out bristling with automatic weapons. The 30-cwt Chevy truck and the famous Jeep have become iconic, the LRDG, in a dark hour, was the force which took the fight to the enemy, roving over the deep desert a small raider s paradise, attacking enemy convoys and outposts, destroying aircraft and supplies, forcing the Axis to expend more and more resources protecting their vulnerable lines. Their work was often dangerous, always taxing, exhausting and uncomfortable. They were a new breed of soldier. The Axis never managed to equip any similar unit, they never escaped their fear of the scorching wilderness. Once the desert war was won they transferred their skills to the Mediterranean sector, re-training as mountain guerrillas, serving in the ill-fated Dodecanese campaign, then in strife torn Albania, Yugoslavia and Greece, fighting alongside the mercurial partisans at a time the Balkans were sliding towards communist domination or civil war. In addition LRDG worked alongside the fledgling SAS and they established, beyond all doubt, the value of highly trained Special Forces, a legacy which resonates today.

[Mike, Assisting Moderator US Forces]

'Aussie Rick' wrote: "I don't think this November 2015 release has been mentioned before, if so I'm sorry, but I am sure its bound to interest a few here in the group:

[bookcover:Ghost Patrol: A History of the Long Ran..."

Grew up watching The Rat Patrol, this one will be on my shelf at some point!

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

A classic series Mike!

[Sue]

C.S. Lewis Was a Secret Government Agent
A recent discovery unveils an unknown chapter in the life the famous Oxford Don.
Harry Lee Poe/ December 10, 2015

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2...

Until now, the general public and the world of scholarship had no idea that C. S. Lewis began his wartime service by undertaking a mission for MI6.

However Lewis came to the attention of MI6, it needed Lewis in the wake of the German invasion of Norway and Denmark on April 9, 1940. Though the British sent troops to Norway to counter the German invasion, it was too late to intervene in Denmark, whose subjugation was accomplished in only one day. One month later on May 10, 1940, German forces invaded the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, and by June 22 the French government had capitulated, leaving Britain to fight on alone.

On that same morning in May, however, the British did the next best thing they could do to help Denmark and the rest of Europe: They launched a surprise invasion of Iceland, which was part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Iceland’s strategic significance in the North Atlantic had been known since the Viking voyages a thousand years earlier. Iceland sits along the arc of islands that include Britain, Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland. Each island became a staging ground for pushing farther westward. In the Battle of the Atlantic, Iceland could have provided Germany with a strategic naval and air base. Instead, thanks to the British invasion, Iceland provided the ideal base for seaplanes to search for the German naval vessels that prowled the Atlantic sinking the merchant fleet with its crucial supplies.

Though British control of Iceland was critical, Britain could not afford to deploy its troops to hold the island when greater battles loomed elsewhere, beginning with the struggle for North Africa. Holding Iceland depended upon the goodwill of the people of Iceland who never had asked to be invaded by the British. If Britain retained Icelandic goodwill, then Churchill could occupy the island with reserve troops rather than his best fighting forces.

This was the strategic situation in which C. S. Lewis was recruited. And his mission was simple: To help win the hearts of the Icelandic people.

The Work of a Literary Secret Agent

The Joint Broadcasting Committee recruited C. S. Lewis to record a message to the people of Iceland to be broadcast by radio within Iceland.

And what did an Oxford don have to say that might help turn the tide of war in Britain’s darkest hour? He spoke on the subject “The Norse Spirit in English Literature.” Lewis provided a touchstone between the Norse people and the English, which Lewis made clear in his first recorded statement. He said that he did not know why he had been asked to address the people of Iceland, but that he agreed to do it in order to repay a great debt. He explained that his imaginative life had been awakened by Norse mythology when he was 14. He went on to explain how his love of Norse mythology only deepened when he began to learn the Icelandic language at Oxford.

This beginning may surprise people familiar with Lewis, because Lewis was not prone to publicly share information about his personal life. His introduction anticipates his spiritual autobiography Surprised by Joy by almost 15 years. He first fell in love with Norse mythology when he came across some of Arthur Rackham’s illustrations for Wagner’s Ring published in 1911. He began to learn Old Icelandic in 1926 when J. R. R. Tolkien started a small group called the Coalbiters to read the old sagas together in the original tongue.

After this introduction, Lewis proceeded to praise the Icelandic tongue as one of the most poetic on earth. Rather than a private view of his own, Lewis argued that successive generations of English writers have felt this affinity with the old Norse tales and that this influence has found its way into the greatest of English literature. He cited Sir William Temple, William Morris, Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, Fielding, and Thomas Grey as examples of what he meant. The literature of England, inspired by the Norse, views self-important office holders as knaves and fools. By implication, the English had come to Iceland to repay a great debt and help fend off the knave and fool who ran Germany.

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

From Lirim:

Mine gotta be trilogy by Ben Macintyre (Agent Zigzag, Operation Mincemeat and Double Cross).

What's yours?

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

Geevee:

I've read the first two Lirim and thought they were very good.

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

Reply by Don:

Another fascinating story is "Spy/Counterspy" the autobiography of Dusko Popov...if you can find it.

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

For those interested in further and in-depth discussions on WW2 Spy books one of our group members; Feliks, has an excellent group covering this very topic:

https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

[Geevee, Assisting Moderator British & Commonwealth Forces]

That's a good recommendation AR.

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

I'm sure Feliks won't mind :)

[Doubledf99.99]

Mike wrote: "'Aussie Rick' wrote: "I don't think this November 2015 release has been mentioned before, if so I'm sorry, but I am sure its bound to interest a few here in the group:

[bookcover:Ghost Patrol: A H..."

"Let's Shake it!"

[Elinor]

May I humbly suggest my own novel Bird's Eye View, about a woman who becomes an interpreter of aerial photographs? In my opinion this was a fascinating branch of Intelligence.

['Aussie Rick', Moderator]

Good recommendation Elinor.