WWII Espionage

[Talbot]

Two I just finished and can recommend....

Operation Mincemeat and Agent ZigZag. Both by Ben Macintyre

Opeartion mincemeat is the story of the decption the MI5 played on the Germans regarding the invasion of Sicily during WWII. You may recall the 1956film 'The Man Who Never Was'.

http://www.themanwhoneverwas.com/operationmincemeat.html

Agent Zigzag is the incredible wartime story of Eddie Chapman, a double agent for MI5 during WWII.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Chapman

Both highly entertaining and fascinating reading

 

[W4ASZ]

Duly noted

Thank you for the reading recommendations, Talbot.

 

[Chas]

Ah, yes...Major Martin. Only the Brits could dream this sort of thing up. The hiers of Sir Francis Walsingham were in fine form that day.

 

[AmateisGal]

Agent Zigzag is the incredible wartime story of Eddie Chapman, a double agent for MI5 during WWII.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Chapman

Both highly entertaining and fascinating reading

I spotted this when it came out and wondered how it was. Thanks for the recommendation!

 

[1961MJS]

Hi

Fans of WW2 espionage should read this:

You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger (Bluejacket Books) by Roger Hall

First Review on Amazon:

"Hall's book is his funny story volunteering for, training in, and working within America's WWII OSS unit (pre-cursor to the modern CIA). Like all good soldiers, Hall sought to escape the boredom, heat, and humidity of camp life for anything else. So, he volunteered for the OSS - only knowing that at least it was something different and possibly dangerous - oh my!

The book takes us through numerous training assignments of Hall's - patrolling, ambushing, parachuting, espionage basics, infiltration into civilian organizations, and more. Typical of most American WWII soldiers, he spent far more time training than he ever did in combat. The most interesting sections of the book are his parachute and espionage training. He describes both in fascinating detail. It is quite funny to see how amateurish much of his spy training was - I suppose that's why the CIA would have liked for the book not to be published.

Hall writes in an irrevent and playful style that makes his book both fun and easy to read. He is the type of original smart-ass that self-important superior officials love to hate. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, especially as it pokes fun at a rather serious business."

This one makes up for the extremely SERIOUS books that you normally read. I noted that this was recommended several years ago.

Later

 

[Talbot]

I spotted this when it came out and wondered how it was. Thanks for the recommendation!

I'm usually reluctant to recommend books, but these are both very good. I hope you enjoy them.

Interestingly, Ewen Montague, one of the protagonists of Operation Mincemeat, had a cameo in the film 'The Man Who Never Was'.

T

 

[W4ASZ]

News from Bletchley

OK, this is Intelligence, broadly speaking, and not Espionage, in the conventional sense.

I see those of us who enjoy original material will be in for a good time. This probably bodes well for another round of good WWII histories, and I'm all for it.

Three cheers for Hewlett-Packard !

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/10239623.stm

 

[WolfeMan]

My great grandfather was chief of planning for the OSS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_O'Meara

Wolfe

 

[byronic]

MI9 Escape & Evasion, 1939-45, by M.R.D. Foot

To be honest there's not a whole lot of espionage in this, but it does tell the story of MI9, a branch of the British Intelligence Services in WW2 that were mainly concerned with inventing & issuing escape equipment to secret agents, RAF crew and POW's.
Their purpose was to help personnel behind the lines escape (half the battle), and once free, to stay free (the other half of the battle).
Quite an interesting, and at times, exciting read. The author is MI9's official historian and is well qualified to be, as he escaped using one of their gadgets, a hacksaw blade hidden in a bootlace, which he used to saw through the iron bar in his cell window.
I remember listening to a radio interview at the end of which the author was asked a question:

'Finally Mr Foot, does MI9 still exist?'

His reply: 'No comment.'

 

[W4ASZ]

Shh ! The enemy is listening !

 

[Story]

FORT WORTH -- There is no question that Jimmie Lee Long can keep a secret.
For decades, Long never told anyone, not her family, children or friends, that she spent World War II in a supersecure building in Washington, D.C., helping to break the Germans' code, known as Enigma.
"When anyone asked me what I did, 'I made coffee and sharpened pencils,'" she said.
As one of the first women admitted into the Navy in 1942, known as WAVES, Long worked as a code-breaker in a department that eventually became the National Security Agency. Hundreds of women served with her, their efforts classified and unsung for years.
Day after day, month after month, they operated machines deciphering the German military's messages, including many in response to the D-Day invasion 66 years ago. She even worked through the death of her first husband, Army flight officer Robert Powers, one of thousands of men killed in the opening hours of the invasion of France.
"I still feel that," she said. "We would have been married a year on the 18th of June."
Those at the Navy Intelligence Reserve Command, based at Naval Air Station Fort Worth, invited Long, 86, who lives in Arlington, to meet their commander, Rear Adm. Gordon Russell, and talk to the current generation of intelligence analysts. It was, they said, a rare chance for them to bond with their organization's history.

Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/0...n-woman-helped-break-coded.html#ixzz0qCM79e8d

 

[AmateisGal]

My great grandfather was chief of planning for the OSS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_O'Meara

Wolfe

WOW. The stories he could (and probably didn't) tell!

 

[W4ASZ]

Question for the Experts

One of my well-read friends advised that a new work of historical fiction sets forth the notion that the Germans in WWII had far greater success with their espionage in the U.S. than Director Hoover let on.

Is there any recent scholarly work, perhaps based on freshly declassified material, to support this idea, or is it just fiction ?

 

[Story]

One war too early, but a glimpse behind the curtain nonetheless.

How Britain's first spy chief ordered Rasputin's murder (in a way that would make every man wince)

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-murder-way-make-man-wince.html#ixzz0uoFgGjWe

 

[Story]

NEW YORK (AP) -- It was a night in early November during the infancy of the Cold War when the anti-communist dissidents were hustled through a garden and across a gully to a vehicle on a dark, deserted road in Budapest. They hid in four large crates for their perilous journey.

Four roadblocks stood between them and freedom.

What Zoltan Pfeiffer, a top political figure opposed to Soviet occupation, his wife and 5-year-old daughter did not know as they were whisked out of Hungary in 1947 was that their driver, James McCargar, was a covert agent for one of America's most secretive espionage agencies, known simply as the Pond.

Created during World War II as a purely U.S. operation free of the perceived taint of European allies, the Pond existed for 13 years and was shrouded in secrecy for more than 50 years. It used sources that ranged from Nazi officials to Stalinists and, at one point, a French serial killer.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SPY_AGENCY_THE_POND?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US

 

[AmateisGal]

One of my well-read friends advised that a new work of historical fiction sets forth the notion that the Germans in WWII had far greater success with their espionage in the U.S. than Director Hoover let on.

Is there any recent scholarly work, perhaps based on freshly declassified material, to support this idea, or is it just fiction ?

I'm no expert by far, but now I'm intrigued. Everything I've read on the German spies in the U.S. shows they were pretty darn incompetent. I don't know that there is any new scholarship to support the claim that they were more successful than they were, but I'm going to look...

 

[Chasseur]

One of my well-read friends advised that a new work of historical fiction sets forth the notion that the Germans in WWII had far greater success with their espionage in the U.S. than Director Hoover let on.

Is there any recent scholarly work, perhaps based on freshly declassified material, to support this idea, or is it just fiction ?

I would second what AmateisGal wrote, in general the scholarly concensus is that the German espionage in the US and particular the UK was not generally that successful. Unless something pretty recent has come out.

 

[AmateisGal]

Of course, if it's fiction, then he can write whatever he wants.

Daniel Silva's first book, The Unlikely Spy, tells the story of a German sleeper spy cell in the U.K. that almost ruined the secret of where the invasion was to take place. Never happened, but it made for a darn good thriller.

 

[W4ASZ]

I have read nothing, ever, that indicates that Herr Hitler's people had any success spying in the U.S. This would have to be something new, but I'll wager it just isn't at all.

Thanks for your time on this, Amateisgal and Chasseur.

 

[Lone_Ranger]

One of my well-read friends advised that a new work of historical fiction sets forth the notion that the Germans in WWII had far greater success with their espionage in the U.S. than Director Hoover let on.

Is there any recent scholarly work, perhaps based on freshly declassified material, to support this idea, or is it just fiction ?

In WWII they were not that successful. See Operation Pastorius.
http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq114-2.htm


also referenced here....

[YOUTUBE]<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/cjh2DAtky-o&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/cjh2DAtky-o&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>[/YOUTUBE]




During WWI they were a bit more successful. Google the "Black Tom" explosion.