THE WORLD WAR TWO GROUP discussion
LAND, AIR & SEA
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Intelligence Operations & Units During WW2
A March 2017 release:
by Scott MillerDescription:
This is the secret and suspenseful account of how OSS spymaster Allen Dulles led a network of Germans conspiring to assassinate Hitler and negotiate surrender to bring about the end of World War II before the Soviet’s advance.
Agent 110 is Allen Dulles, a newly minted spy from an eminent family. From his townhouse in Bern, and in clandestine meetings in restaurants, back roads, and lovers’ bedrooms, Dulles met with and facilitated the plots of Germans who were trying to destroy the country’s leadership. Their underground network exposed Dulles to the political maneuverings of the Soviets, who were already competing for domination of Germany, and all of Europe, in the post-war period.
Scott Miller’s fascinating Agent 110 explains how leaders of the German Underground wanted assurances from Germany’s enemies that they would treat the country humanely after the war. If President Roosevelt backed the resistance, they would overthrow Hitler and shorten the war. But Miller shows how Dulles’s negotiations fell short. Eventually he was placed in charge of the CIA in the 1950s, where he helped set the stage for US foreign policy. With his belief that the ends justified the means, Dulles had no qualms about consorting with Nazi leadership or working with resistance groups within other countries to topple governments.
Now Miller brings to life this exhilarating, and pivotal, period of world history—of desperate renegades in a dark and dangerous world where spies, idealists, and traitors match wits and blows to ensure their vision of a perfect future.
I knew a few former German officers, even some SS generals Dulles brought into the CIA fold after the war. Good interviews and stories,
Did you know Gehlen or von Braun, by chance?
No unfortunately, but I knew some men who worked for both. One of them worked for Amt Blank and Organization Gehlen/CIA after the war, Lt. Gen. Walter Krupinski, who was a great friend and a 197 victory Luftwaffe ace. See his interview in The German Aces Speak I.
A July 2017 release:
by Mihir BoseDescription:
Silver was the codename for the only quintuple spy of the Second World War, spying for the Italians, Germans, Japanese, Soviets and the British. The Germans awarded him the Iron Cross, Germany’s highest military decoration, and paid him £2.5 million in today’s money. In reality Silver deceived the Nazis on behalf of the Soviets and the British. In 1942 the Russians decided to share Silver with the British, the only time during the war that the Soviets agreed to such an arrangement. This brought him under the control of Peter Fleming who acted as his spy master. Germans also gave Silver a transmitter which broadcast misleading military information directly to Abwehr headquarters in Berlin. Silver was one of many codenames for a man whose real name was Bhagat Ram Talwar, a Hindu Pathan from the North West Frontier province of then British India. Between 1941 and 1945 Silver made twelve trips from Peshawar to Kabul to supply false information to the Germans, always making the near-200-mile journey on foot over mountain passes and hostile tribal territory.
Geevee wrote: "carl wrote: "If you couldn't read my last post it was because you didn't read thehow to in :WWII Spycraft: Invisible Ink"
Nice one Carl (or is that Agent Transparent?)"
No. It's someone called C Thru.
A September release:
by Christopher CatherwoodDescription:
One of Churchill's most controversial decisions during the Second World War was to switch SOE support in Yugoslavia in 1943 from the Cetniks loyal to the exiled Royal Government to backing Tito and his Communist Partisan guerrillas. It led to a Communist regime in Yugoslavia which lasted until Tito's death in 1980, and the nationalistic sentiments he had suppressed exploding into ethnic violence in the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
Until now the story has been that SOE was infiltrated by Communists in Cairo and that Fitzroy Maclean, Churchill's personal delegate to Tito, was hoodwinked by the Communist leader, and that Churchill was duped into abandoning the royalists. However, the recently deposited papers of Sir Bill Deakin, Churchill's former assistant and an SOE operative in Yugoslavia, reveal that the decision was based upon absolutely solid evidence and in Britain's best military interests. The official history of SOE in Yugoslavia was never written, but Deakin was the main adviser to the person deputed to write it and Christopher Catherwood was the first person to examine the papers deposited in Washington. These papers reveal that Churchill made his decision based on evidence not just from SOE, but also from MI3, SIS and SIGINT at Bletchley Park. Christopher Catherwood can now demonstrate that one of Churchill s most significant and consequential decisions of the Second World War was not the terrible mistake that historians have portrayed it.
I have a chapter on that in my book German Anti-Partisan Warfare, I interviewed Milovan Djilas, aid to Tito and Germans. I also met Veronica Maclean, his widow.
An October release:
by Liza Mundy Description:
Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than ten thousand women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of code-breaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them. A strict vow of secrecy nearly erased their efforts from history; now, through dazzling research and interviews with surviving code girls, bestselling author Liza Mundy brings to life this riveting and vital story of American courage, service, and scientific accomplishment.
A September release:
by Ann ToddDescription:
OSS Operation Black Mail is the story of a remarkable woman who fought World War II on the front lines of psychological warfare. Elizabeth “Betty” P. McIntosh spent eighteen months serving in the Office of Strategic Services in what has been called the “forgotten theater,” China-Burma-India, where she met and worked with characters as varied as Julia Child and Ho Chi Minh. Her craft was black propaganda, and her mission was to demoralize the enemy through prevarication and deceit, and ultimately, convince him to surrender. Betty and her crew ingeniously obtained and altered personal correspondence between Japanese soldiers and their families on the home islands of Japan. She also ordered the killing of a Japanese courier in the jungles of Burma to plant a false surrender order in his mailbag.
By the time Betty flew the Hump from Calcutta to China, she was acting head of the Morale Operations branch for the entire theater, overseeing the production of thousands of pamphlets and radio scripts, the generation of fiendishly clever rumors, and the printing of a variety of faked Japanese, Burmese, and Chinese newspapers. Her strategy involved targeting not merely the Japanese soldier but the man within: the son, the husband, the father. She knew her work could ultimately save lives, but never lost sight of the fact that her propaganda was a weapon and her intended target the enemy.
This is not a typical war story. The only beaches stormed are the minds of an invisible enemy. Often a great deal of time and effort was expended in conception and production, and rarely was it known if even a shred reached the hands of the intended recipient. The process was opaque on both ends: the origin of a rumor or radio broadcast obscured, the target elusive. For Betty and her friends, time on the “front lines” of psychological warfare in China-Burma-India rushed by in a cascade of creativity and innovation, played out on a stage where a colonial world was ending and chaos awaited.
A December release:
by Emilio Grandío SeoaneDescription:
This book reveals the development, strategy and extraordinary success of Britains secret services in Francos Spain during the Second World War. The main claim of this study is that British pressure, exercised above all through their intelligence services, led Franco to distance himself from the Axis cause and eventually embrace that of the Allies.
Starting from a virtually non-existent base, the British rapidly built up a complex intelligence network in Spain that stretched from Corunna to Barcelona and from Bilbao to Gibraltar. As Spain was a non-belligerent, spy networks -- including those of the Germans, Italians, Portuguese and British -- proliferated in the Iberian Peninsula. Double-agents abounded within these networks; each one knew what the others were up to. The British exploited this two-way traffic to let Franco know that if he did not accede to their demands, they would back a restoration of the Bourbon monarchy under Don Juan. This pressure culminated in the meeting of 1943 between Franco and the British Ambassador, Sir Samuel Hoare, at the dictators country retreat in Galicia, the British underlining their purpose by flying warplanes close by the estate. Following this meeting, Franco almost immediately began to move away from the Axis powers and towards the Allies.
The British swiftly dismantled their intelligence networks given that they had achieved their aim. Franco's expulsion of the German naval forces from Spanish ports and the denazification of the regime explains the benevolent attitude of the Allies towards the Spanish dictatorship after the war. Throughout this whole process, the British secret service, as this extensively researched study uncovers, played a crucial role.
And an October release:
by Helen FryDescription:
Behind the locked doors of three mansions in London’s exclusive Kensington Palace Gardens neighborhood, the British Secret Service established a highly secret prison in 1940: the London Cage. Here recalcitrant German prisoners of war were subjected to “special intelligence treatment.” The stakes were high: the war’s outcome could hinge on obtaining information German prisoners were determined to withhold. After the war, high-ranking Nazi war criminals were housed in the Cage, revamped as an important center for investigating German war crimes.
This riveting book reveals the full details of operations at the London Cage and subsequent efforts to hide them. Helen Fry’s extraordinary original research uncovers the grim picture of prisoners’ daily lives and of systemic Soviet-style mistreatment. The author also provides sensational evidence to counter official denials concerning the use of “truth drugs” and “enhanced interrogation” techniques. Bringing dark secrets to light, this groundbreaking book at last provides an objective and complete history of the London Cage.
I found a book about a particular code-breaking woman over the weekend that might be of interest to members of the group over the weekend. This is the cover:
The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine who Outwitted America's Enemies by Jason FagoneHere is the synopsis from the Goodreads page for the book:
Joining the ranks of Hidden Figures and In the Garden of Beasts, the incredible true story of the greatest codebreaking duo that ever lived, an American woman and her husband who invented the modern science of cryptology together and used it to confront the evils of their time, solving puzzles that unmasked Nazi spies and helped win World War II
In 1912, at the height of World War I, brilliant Shakespeare expert Elizebeth Smith went to work for an eccentric tycoon on his estate outside Chicago. The tycoon had close ties to the U.S. government, and he soon asked Elizebeth to apply her language skills to an exciting new venture: code-breaking. There she met the man who would become her husband, groundbreaking cryptologist William Friedman. Though she and Friedman are in many ways the "Adam and Eve" of the NSA, Elizebeth's story, incredibly, has never been told
In The Woman Who Smashed Codes, Jason Fagone chronicles the life of this extraordinary woman, who played an integral role in our nation's history for forty years. After World War I, Smith used her talents to catch gangsters and smugglers during Prohibition, then accepted a covert mission to discover and expose Nazi spy rings that were spreading like wildfire across South America, advancing ever closer to the United States. As World War II raged, Elizabeth fought a highly classified battle of wits against Hitler's Reich, cracking multiple versions of the Enigma machine used by German spies. Meanwhile, inside an Army vault in Washington, William worked furiously to break Purple, the Japanese version of Enigma--and eventually succeeded, at a terrible cost to his personal life.Fagone unveils America's code-breaking history through the prism of Smith's life, bringing into focus the unforgettable events and colorful personalities that would help shape modern intelligence.
Blending the lively pace and compelling detail that are the hallmarks of Erik Larson's bestsellers with the atmosphere and intensity of The Imitation Game, The Woman Who Smashed Codes is page-turning popular history at its finest.
Paul wrote: "I found a book about a particular code-breaking woman over the weekend that might be of interest to members of the group over the weekend. This is the cover:[bookcover:The Woman Who Smashed Codes..."
Adding to the to-read list, and hoping the inside is better edited than the blurb. (I don't think 1912 was the height of WWI.)
Good point A.L.! :)
Another October release:
by Carolinda Witt Description:
With Britain braced for a German invasion, MI5 recruited an ex RNAS officer, come confidence trickster, called Walter Dicketts as a double agent. Codenamed Celery, Dicketts was sent to Lisbon with the seemingly impossible mission of persuading the Germans he was a traitor and then extract crucial secrets. Once there, the Nazis spirited him off to Germany. With his life on the line, Dicketts had to outwit his interrogators in Hamburg and Berlin before returning to Britain as, in the Nazis' eyes, a German spy. Despite discovering he had been betrayed as an MI5 plant before he even left for Germany, Celery somehow got back to Lisbon. After that he persuaded an Abwehr Officer to defect, and spent nine months undercover in Brazil.
A mixture of hero and crook, Dicketts was worldly and intelligent, charming and charismatic. Sometimes rich and sometimes poor, his private life was a web of complexity and deception. Using family and official records, police records, newspaper articles and memories, the author unravels the tangled yet true story of Double Agent Celery.
A December release:
by David DuftyDescription:
A groundbreaking work of Australian military history, The Code-Breakers of Central Bureau tells the story of the country’s significant code-breaking and signals-intelligence achievements during the Second World War. It reveals how Australians built a large and sophisticated intelligence network from scratch, how Australian code-breakers cracked Japanese army and air force codes, and how the code-breakers played a vital role in the battles of Midway, Milne Bay, the Coral Sea, Hollandia, and Leyte.
The book also reveals Australian involvement in the shooting down of Admiral Yamamoto near Bougainville in 1943, and how on 14 August 1945, following Japan’s offer of surrender, an Australian intelligence officer established the Allies’ first direct radio contact with Japan since the war had begun.
This is a rich historical account of a secret and little-understood side of the war, interwoven with lively personalities and personal stories. It is the story of Australia’s version of Bletchley Park, of talented and dedicated individuals who significantly influenced the course of the Pacific War
Jerome wrote: "A December release: by David DuftyDescrip..."
Picked up my copy the other day Jerome, not sure when I will get around to reading it though :)
'Aussie Rick' wrote: "Jerome wrote: "A December release: by [author:David Dufty|5..."This is already out in Australia?
Sounds like a good read to add to my list. Thank you for posting
Yep, picked up a copy last week and hope to go to the local book launch with the author later this month.
Just noticed this discussion... this recent title of mine is spot on:
Assignment Bletchley: A WW2 Story of Navy Intelligence, Spies and Intrigue
A July 2018 release:
by Bernard O'ConnorDescription:
Over thirty female agents were sent out by the French section of Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Second World War. The youngest was 19 and the oldest 53. Most were trained in paramilitary warfare, fieldcraft, the use of weapons and explosives, sabotage, silent killing, parachuting, codes and cyphers, wireless transmission and receiving, and general spycraft. These women - as well as others from clandestine Allied organisations - were flown out and parachuted or landed into France on vital and highly dangerous missions: their task, to work with resistance movements both before and after D Day.
Bernard O'Connor uses recently declassified government documents, personnel files, mission reports, and memoirs to assess the success and failures of the the 38 including Odette Sansom, Denise Colin, and Cecile Pichard. Of the twelve who were captured, only two survived; the others were executed, some after being tortured by the sadistic officers of the Gestapo. This is their story.
Below is a link to the excellent website "Five Books." The subject is Ben Macintyre's selections of the five best books on spies. I have read his Nos. 3, 4 & 5 and agree that le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold "sets the standard for all spy literature." Andrew’s The Defence of the Realm looks pretty good. Soon it may join the Matterhorn that is my TBR pile.https://fivebooks.com/interview/best-...
I'm not much on spy books but that's an interesting link, thanks for sharing MR9.
The quiet passing of a brave French spy, Jeannie Rousseau, I have never heard of, but she was key to the discovery of Hitler's wonder weapon, the V2:http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0817...
http://wapo.st/2wi8acF
Just discovered this in a different group, seemed to fit the thread :
Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America by Annie Jacobsen
I read a book on 'Operation Paperclip' 10-20 years ago but I can't recall the name of the author. I will have to do some digging around to find the details.
'Aussie Rick' wrote: "I read a book on 'Operation Paperclip' 10-20 years ago but I can't recall the name of the author. I will have to do some digging around to find the details."I can't help you with Paperclip, I'm afraid, but for a different angle on the same opportunity take a look at Hitler's Uranium Club: The Secret Recordings at Farm Hall by Jeremy Bernstein. This covers the internment of ten German nuclear scientists and engineers at Farm Hall in Essex in the immediate post-war period, during which their conversations were systematically bugged. The first challenge was keeping them out of the hands of Paperclip!
Then, from the naval perspective, there was Assault Unit 30 described in Ian Rankin's Ian Fleming's Commandos: The Story of the Legendary 30 Assault Unit. This was a composite unit made up of intelligence officers, interrogators, technicians and marines with a brief to grab anything and anyone of naval intelligence value.
In the chaotic collapse of the Third Reich everyone was trying to grab what they could. Paperclip may well have been the most successful (though the Russians were pretty good too). I'm just looking at it from a Brit perspective.
A December release:
by Richard DuckettDescription:
In the mountains and jungles of occupied Burma during World War II, British special forces launched a series of secret operations, assisted by parts of the Burmese population. The men of the SOE, trained in sabotage and guerrilla warfare, worked in the jungle, deep behind enemy lines, to frustrate the puppet Burmese government of Ba Maw and continue the fight against Hirohito's Japan in a theatre starved of resources.
Here, Richard Duckett uses newly declassified documents from the National Archives to reveal for the first time the extent of British special forces' involvement - from the 1941 operations until beyond Burma's independence from the British Empire in 1948. Duckett argues convincingly that 'Operation Character' and 'Operation Billet' – large SOE missions launched in support of General Slim's XIV Army offensive to liberate Burma - rank among the most militarily significant of SOE's secret missions.
Featuring a wealth of photographs and accompanying material never before published, including direct testimony recorded by veterans of the campaign and maps from the SOE files, The SOE in Burma tells a compelling story of courage and struggle in during World War II.
FREE Kindle edition for a limited time:
Since I'm giving this away for a limited time, I'm simply trying to reach as many potential readers as I can.FREE KINDLE ED.
If anyone is interested I finally go my thoughts on Ben Macintyre's Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies typed uphttps://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
also posted on the "What are you reading" thread
A September release:
by Christian JenningsDescription:
The codebreakers at Bletchley Park have been immortalized by films such as The Imitation Game and Enigma, but the Germans were also breaking Allied ciphers.
The Third Reich is Listening is the comprehensive account of the successes, the failures, and the science of Germany's code-breaking and signals intelligence operations from 1935 to 1945. This fast-moving blend of modern history and popular science is told through colorful personal accounts of the Germans at the heart of the story, including a former astronomer who worked out the British order of battle in 1940, a U-Boat commander on the front line of the Battle of the Atlantic, and the woman from the foreign ministry decrypting Japanese and Italian signals.
It investigates how and why a regime as technologically advanced as the Third Reich both succeeded, and failed, in its battle to break their enemy's codes and to use the resultant intelligence effectively, and why they failed to recognize the fact that the Allied had cracked the enigma code.
And an October release:
by Tim TateDescription:
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.
I have just finished Zig Zag: The Incredible Wartime Exploits Of Double Agent Eddie Chapman by Nicholas Booth, and posted a short review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... Interesting stuff - I knew, for example, that Hitler was paranoid about the possibility of Allied landings in Norway, but not that so much effort had been put into tweaking those fears. A worthwhile read.
Good review Derek, thanks for sharing your thoughts with the rest of the group.
Hitler had many reasons for invading Norway and Denmark, which were his first such actions on the Western Front. Strategically it made perfect sense.
Colin wrote: "Hitler had many reasons for invading Norway and Denmark, which were his first such actions on the Western Front. Strategically it made perfect sense."Yes - I was thinking of later on, when it was one of the misdirections (including Pas de Calais and even Portugal) used to divert attention from Normandy as a likely landing spot.
A December release:
by Dermot TuringDescription:
December, 1932: In the bathroom of a Belgian hotel, a French spymaster photographs secret documents – operating instructions of the cipher machine, Enigma. A few weeks later a mathematician in Warsaw begins to decipher the coded communications of the Third Reich and lay the foundations for the code-breaking operation at Bletchley Park. The co-operation between France, Britain and Poland is given the cover name ‘X, Y & Z’.
December, 1942: It is the middle of World War II. The Polish code-breakers are in France on the run from the Gestapo. People who know the Enigma secret are not supposed to be in the combat zone for fear of capture so MI6 devises a plan to exfiltrate them. If it goes wrong, if they are caught, they could give away the greatest secret of the war.
X, Y & Z describes how French, British and Polish secret services came together to unravel the Enigma machine. It tells of how, under the very noses of the Germans, Enigma code-breaking continued in Vichy France. And how code-breakers from Poland continued their work for Her Majesty’s Secret Service, watching the USSR’s first steps of the Cold War. The people of X, Y and Z were eccentric, colorful and caught up in world events that they could watch not control. This is their story…
Jerome wrote: "A December release: by Dermot TuringDescription:
December, 1932: In the bathroom of a Belgian hotel, a French..."
Thanks, I'm most interested in WW2 intelligence and France so this book looks good.
The publication of "London" last month, the 2nd in this series of WWII novels of intelligence and spies, has been very well received, as indicated by active sales for both in Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.
It's 1942, and Commander Anthony Romella, USN has his hands full with professional challenges. His romance with a WREN puts some icing on the cake.
Thanks, I like historical fiction so I'm adding that to my list.
An April release:
by André GerolymatosDescription:
Between 1941 and 1944, the Germans and the Italians imposed a brutal occupation of Greece. This, as well as the outbreak of famine, drove many Greeks to join a variety of resistance movements in the mountains. The British government anticipated the German occupation of Europe and created the Special Operations Executive (SOE). One directorate of the SOE was responsible for partisan activity in the mountains and another directorate focused on encouraging espionage and sabotage in Greek cities. Over 3000 Greeks and British operated espionage networks that made a significant contribution to the war effort in the Mediterranean.
Unfortunately the work of the spy and saboteur working in the shadows remained classified until the end of the twentieth century. The release of SOE documents in the twenty-first century provides an amazing insight into how intelligence operations were a critical part of the Allied victory of the Second World War. The aim of the book is to bring to life the stories of the ghosts of the shadow war.
I went through all of those SOE and OSS documents in my research, as well as the available Abwehr files, and managed a few interviews with participants. Read Mark Mazower, "Inside Hitler's Greece" also.
Alan Ogden has written a series of books tracking SOE operations. His most recent is Terror By Night: The official history of the SBS and the Greek Sacred Squadron 1943-1945. My library reported it was a limited edition, sold out before release but I hope to get a copy at some point.
Fingers crossed you can find a copy Liz :)
Jerome wrote: "An April release: by André GerolymatosDescription:
Between 1941 and 1944, the..."
More of a popcorn read than a serious study of SOE Ops
Patrick Fermor was something of an adventurer, ladies man and scholar. More to the point, he was a Major in SOE, Crete During WW II.
He and his team managed to kidnap and remove from Crete ,Major General Heinrich Kreipe . (Commander of the 22nd Air Landing Infantry Division). A neat little operation and one made into a movie based on the book
The author then Capt Moss was also a leader in the operation
When Kreipe was kidnapped, the Gremans turned that island upside down. I interviewed some vets of Operation Mercury, including max Schmeling (former heavyweight world boxing champ), and Baron Friedrich August von der Heydte, commanding 1st Bn 3rd Parachute Regt, under the regimental command of Col. Bruno Braeuer. Ironically, Haydte was first cousin to Claus von Stauffenberg and Friedrich's grandfather was my great great grandfather's cousin.
THE WORLD WAR TWO GROUP
Books mentioned in this topic
Code of Silence: How Australian Women Helped Win the War (other topics)Code of Silence: How Australian Women Helped Win the War (other topics)
The Other Codebreakers: Breaking the Non-Military Codes at Bletchley Park and Beyond (other topics)
G.I. G-Men: The Untold Story of the FBI’s Search for American Traitors, Collaborators, and Spies in World War II Europe (other topics)
G.I. G-Men: The Untold Story of the FBI’s Search for American Traitors, Collaborators, and Spies in World War II Europe (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Diana Thorp (other topics)Diana Thorp (other topics)
Harold Liberty (other topics)
Stephen Harding (other topics)
Richard Duckett (other topics)
More...
Description:
In the Spring of 1940, as Britain reeled from defeats on all fronts and America seemed frozen in isolation, one fear united the British and American leaders like no other: the Nazis had stolen a march on the Allies towards building the atomic bomb. So began the hunt for Hitler's nuclear weapons - nothing else came close in terms of priorities. It was to be the most secret war of those wars fought amongst the shadows. The highest stakes. The greatest odds.
Prior to the outbreak of the war the massive German chemicals conglomerate I.G. Farben - the future manufacturers of Zyklon-B, the gas used in the Nazi concentration camps - had started producing bulk supplies of deuterium oxide - heavy water - at the remote Norwegian plant of Vemork. This was the central target of three separate missions - Operations GROUSE, FRESHMAN and GUNNERSIDE - over the ensuing four years. As Churchill commented: 'The actual facts in many cases were equal to the most fantastic inventions of romance and melodrama. Tangle with tangle, plot and counter-plot, ruse and treachery, cross and double-cross, true agent, false agent, double agent, gold and steel, the bomb, the dagger and the firing party were interwoven in a texture so intricate as to be incredible yet true.'
Damien Lewis's new bestseller intercuts the hunt for the scientists, the raw materials and the plant, with the cloak and dagger intelligence game being played in the shadows. This relied in part on ENIGMA intercepts to guide the SOE's hand. Lewis delves into some of the most extraordinarily inventive and Machiavellian innovations at the SOE, and their related research and training schools, whereby the enemy were tricked, deceived, framed, blackmailed and double and triple-crossed, all in the name of stopping the Reich from getting the bomb