The secret war : spies, ciphers, and guerrillas 1939-1945 Cover Image

The secret war : spies, ciphers, and guerrillas 1939-1945 / Max Hastings.

Summary:

From one of the foremost historians of the period and the acclaimed author of Inferno and Catastrophe: 1914, The Secret War is a sweeping examination of one of the most important yet underexplored aspects of World War II—intelligence—showing how espionage successes and failures by the United States, Britain, Russia, Germany, and Japan influenced the course of the war and its final outcome. Spies, codes, and guerrillas played unprecedentedly critical roles in the Second World War, exploited by every nation in the struggle to gain secret knowledge of its foes, and to sow havoc behind the fronts. In "The Secret War," Max Hastings presents a worldwide cast of characters and some extraordinary sagas of intelligence and resistance, to create a new perspective on the greatest conflict in history.

Record details

ISBN: 9780062259271
ISBN: 006225927X
ISBN: 9780062441560
ISBN: 0062441566
Physical Description: xxvii, 610 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 24 cm
Edition: First U.S. edition.
Publisher: New York, New York : Harper, An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2016.

Content descriptions

General Note:	First published in a different form in the United Kingdom in 2015.
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 579-585) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Before the deluge. Seekers after truth ; The British: gentlemen and players ; The Russians: temples of espionage -- The storm breaks. The "fiction flood" ; Shadowing Canaris -- Miracles take a little longer: Bletchley. "Tips" and "cillis" ; Flirting with America -- The dogs that barked. "Lucy's" people ; Sorge's warnings ; The orchestra plays ; The deaf man in the Kremlin -- Divine winds. Mrs Ferguson's tea set ; The Japanese ; The man who won Midway -- Muddling and groping: the Russians at war. Centre mobilises ; The end of Sorge ; The second source ; Gourevitch takes a train -- Britain's secret war machine. The sharp end ; The brain ; At sea -- 'Mars': the bloodiest deception. Gehlen ; "Agent Max" -- The orchestra's last concert -- Guerrilla. Resisters and raiders ; SOE -- Hoover's G-men, Donovan's wild men. Adventurers ; Ivory towers ; Allen Dulles: talking to Germans -- Russia's partisans: terrorising both sides -- Islands in the storm. The Abwehr's Irish jig ; No man's land -- A little help from their friends. "It stinks, but somebody has to do it" ; American traitors -- The knowledge factories. Agents ; The jewel of sources ; Production lines ; Infernal machines -- 'Blunderhead': the English patient -- Eclipse of the Abwehr. Hitler's Bletchleys ; "Cicero" ; The fantasists ; The "good" Nazi -- Battlefields. Wielding the Ultra wand ; Suicide spies ; Tarnished triumph -- Black widows, few white knights. Fighting Japan ; Fighting each other ; The enemy: groping in the dark -- 'Enormoz' -- Decoding victory.