The Secret War Quotes

“Kenneth Strong of War Office Intelligence wrote: ‘We had a continuous stream of callers from the Services with an extraordinary variety of queries and requests. What were the most profitable targets for air attacks in this or that area, and what effect would these attacks have on the German Army? Was our information about these targets adequate and accurate? How was the German Army reacting to our propaganda campaigns? I found some quite fantastic optimism regarding the effects from propaganda. The dropping of leaflets was considered almost a major military victory.”
― Max Hastings, The Secret War: Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas, 1939-1945 – The New York Times Bestselling Account of Espionage That Shaped World War II

“One of Beria’s most cynical ruses was carried out in August 1941: NKVD agents disguised as Nazi parachutists were dropped into the Volga German autonomous region, to test the loyalty of its citizens. Villages where the new arrivals were offered shelter were liquidated wholesale; the entire region’s surviving population was eventually deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan.”
― Max Hastings, The Secret War: Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas, 1939-1945 – The New York Times Bestselling Account of Espionage That Shaped World War II

“in intelligence as in everything else related to conflict victory is gained not by the side that makes no mistakes, but by the one that makes fewer than the other side. By”
― Max Hastings, The Secret War: Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas, 1939-1945 – The New York Times Bestselling Account of Espionage That Shaped World War II

“Queen Elizabeth I’s Sir Francis Walsingham was one of history’s legendary spymasters. Much later came the romances of Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, of John Buchan’s Richard Hannay, of dashing ‘clubland heroes’ who played chess for England with a thousand live pieces across a board that spanned continents. A wartime British secret servant observed: ‘Practically every officer I met in that concern, at home and abroad, was, like me, imagining himself as Hannay.”
― Max Hastings, The Secret War: Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas, 1939-1945 – The New York Times Bestselling Account of Espionage That Shaped World War II

“During a July 1942 visit to Portugal and Spain, Schellenberg conducted negotiations with a Brazilian exile, Plínio Salgado, who promised great things for the German cause, but delivered nothing. The”
― Max Hastings, The Secret War: Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas, 1939-1945 – The New York Times Bestselling Account of Espionage That Shaped World War II