"...presents an excellent and concise narrative of the Abwehr's global intelligence network. West draws from hundreds of firsthand debriefing and summary reports including disclosed sources not previously available to scholars."—American Intelligence Journal Modern historians have consistently condemned the Abwehr, Germany’s military intelligence service, and its SS equivalent, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), as incompetent and even corrupt organizations. However, newly declassified MI5, CIA and US Counterintelligence Corps files shed a very different light on the structure, control and capabilities of the German intelligence machine in Europe, South America, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. It is usually stated that, under Admiral Canaris, the Abwehr neglected its main functions, its attention being focused more on trying to bring down Hitler. Yet Canaris greatly expanded the Abwehr from 150 personnel into a vast world-wide organisation which achieved many notable successes against the Allies. Equally, the SD’s tentacles spread across the Occupied territories as the German forces invaded country after country across Europe. In this in-depth study of the Abwehr’s rise to power, 1935 to 1943, its activities in Russia, the Baltic States, Ukraine, Japan, China, Manchuko and Mongolia are examined, as well as those in Thailand, French Indo-China, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, and the Arab nations. In this period, the Abwehr built a complex network of individual agents with transmitters operating from commercial, diplomatic and consular premises. Before, and in the early stages of the war, it later became apparent, the Abwehr was controlling a number of agents in Britain. Indeed, it was only after the war that the scale of the Abwehr’s activities became known, the organisation having of around 20,000 members. For the first time, the Abwehr’s development and the true extent of its operations have been laid bare, through official files and even of restored documents previously redacted. The long list of operations and activities of the Abwehr around the world includes the efforts of an agent in the USA who was arrested after a bizarre attempt to obtain a quantity of blank American passports by impersonating a senior State Department official, Edward Weston, an Under-Secretary of State. Also, former U.S. Marine, Kurt Jahnke, who was recruited to collect information about the American munitions production and send it on to Germany. These are just two of the numerous and absorbing accounts in this all-embracing study.

A groundbreaking history of women in British intelligence, revealing their pivotal role across the first half of the twentieth century From the twentieth century onward, women took on an extraordinary range of roles in intelligence, defying the conventions of their time. Across both world wars, far from being a small part of covert operations, women ran spy networks and escape lines, parachuted behind enemy lines, and interrogated prisoners. And, back in Bletchley and Whitehall, women’s vital administrative work in MI offices kept the British war engine running. In this major, panoramic history, Helen Fry looks at the rich and varied work women undertook as civilians and in uniform. From spies in the Belgian network “La Dame Blanche,” knitting coded messages into jumpers, to those who interpreted aerial images and even ran entire sections, Fry shows just how crucial women were in the intelligence mission. Filled with hitherto unknown stories, Women in Intelligence places new research on record for the first time and showcases the inspirational contributions of these remarkable women.

"Nigel West has presented the most complete account of the Abwehr to date. It will serve as a valuable reference work." — Studies in Intelligence As the Second World War progressed and defeat for Hitler’s Third Reich in all theatres became ever more certain, the tight Abwehr network, built so effectively by its head, Admiral Canaris, began to unravel. High-level defections to the Allies and bitter disputes with the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) added to a collapse in morale. Most notably was the increasing opposition within the officer ranks of the Army to Hitler fermented by Canaris and his deputy Generalmajor Hans Oster. The final years of the Abwehr were marked by the Abwehr’s efforts to undermine the regime, which came to a bloody conclusion following the Valkyrie assassination attempt of 20 July 1944. This saw the arrest of many Abwehr officials and the execution of Canaris and Oster. In this penetrating study of the final years of the Abwehr, Nigel West, a world-renowned specialist in the field, pieces together the gradual decline in the organization’s role and importance with Hitler and his acolytes paying little heed to reports that were increasingly cautionary. Among the many previously undisclosed stories are details gleaned from recently opened files which tell of a hitherto unknown spy-swap. This was the exchange of Berthold Shulze-Holthus, a German spy detained in Iran, for Ferdinand Rodriguez, a British radio operator captured in France. This was the only such exchange that took place during the whole of the Second World War – though the fact that the swap took place at all suggests that a previously unsuspected degree of communication existed between the Allies and Nazi Germany. Perhaps most tantalizingly of all, is the new night light thrown upon the role the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, had, in league with the Abwehr, in the Valkyrie bombing which almost killed Hitler.

For the first time in one enthralling book, here is the incredible true story of the numerous attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler and change the course of history. Disraeli once declared that “assassination never changed anything,” and yet the idea that World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust might have been averted with a single bullet or bomb has remained a tantalizing one for half a century. What historian Roger Moorhouse reveals in Killing Hitler is just how close–and how often–history came to taking a radically different path between Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and his ignominious suicide. Few leaders, in any century, can have been the target of so many assassination attempts, with such momentous consequences in the balance. Hitler’s almost fifty would-be assassins ranged from simple craftsmen to high-ranking soldiers, from the apolitical to the ideologically obsessed, from Polish Resistance fighters to patriotic Wehrmacht officers, and from enemy agents to his closest associates. And yet, up to now, their exploits have remained virtually unknown, buried in dusty official archives and obscure memoirs. This, then, for the first time in a single volume, is their story. A story of courage and ingenuity and, ultimately, failure, ranging from spectacular train derailments to the world’s first known suicide bomber, explaining along the way why the British at one time declared that assassinating Hitler would be “unsporting,” and why the ruthless murderer Joseph Stalin was unwilling to order his death. It is also the remarkable, terrible story of the survival of a tyrant against all the odds, an evil dictator whose repeated escapes from almost certain death convinced him that he was literally invincible–a conviction that had appalling consequences for millions.

The first English-language monograph that covers the importance of Greenland during World War II. The wartime interest in Greenland was a direct result of its vital strategic position—if you wanted to predict the weather in Europe, you had to have men in place on the vast, frozen island. The most celebrated example of Greenland’s crucial contribution to Allied meteorological services is the correct weather forecast in June 1944 leading to the decision to launch the invasion of Normandy. In addition, both before and after D-Day a stream of weather reports from Greenland was essential for the Allied ability to carry out the bombing offensive against Germany. The Germans were aware of the value of Greenland from a meteorological point of view, and they repeatedly attempted to establish semi-permanent weather stations along the sparsely populated east coast of the island. This resulted in an epic cat-and-mouse game, in which US Coast Guard personnel assisted by a celebrated sledge patrol manned by Scandinavian adventurers struggled to locate and eliminate German bases before they could make any difference. It's a story seldom told, but the fact remains that Greenland was the only part of the North American continent in which German troops maintained a presence throughout almost the entirety of the war. At the same time, the US entry into the war triggered an enormous American effort to hastily establish the necessary infrastructure in the form of harbors and air bases that enabled Greenland to form a vital link in the effort to send men and supplies across the North Atlantic in the face of stern opposition from the German Navy. While Allied ships were passing through Greenland waters in massive numbers, planes were plying the so-called Snowball Route from Greenland over Iceland to the British Isles. This gave rise to number of tragic incidents, such as the sinking of the transport ship SS Dorchester off Greenland in February 1942, leading to the deaths of 674 out of 904 men on board, including the “Four Chaplains”—representing the Methodists, the Reformed Church, the Catholic Church, and Judaism—who gave up their life jackets to save others. In July the same year, in one of the most massive, forced landings in history, “the lost squadron,” six P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft and two Flying Fortresses, crash-landed on a Greenland glacier.

The astonishing story of how in 1942, in Egypt, Colonel Dudley Clarke's ingenious "A Force" thwarted the Nazis while inventing a whole new playbook of military deception. Cairo, 1942: If you had asked a British officer who Colonel Clarke was, they would have been able to point him out. Always ready with a drink and a story, Clarke was a well-known figure in Cairo social circles and nightlife. If you then asked what he did, you would have less success. Those who knew didn't tell—and almost no one really knew at all. Clarke thought of himself as developing a new kind of weapon. Its components? Rumor, stagecraft, a sense of fun. Its target? The mind of Erwin Rommel, Hitler's greatest general. Throughout history, military commanders have sought to mislead their opponents. Dudley Clarke set out to do it on a scale no one had imagined before. Even afterwards, almost no one understood the magnitude of his achievement. Drawing on recently released documents and hugely expanding on the louche portrait of Clarke as seen in SAS: Rogue Warriors, journalist and historian Robert Hutton reveals the amazing story of Clarke's "A Force,” the invention of the SAS and the Commandos, and the masterful hoodwinking of the Desert Fox at the battle of El Alamein. The Illusionist tells for the first time the dazzling tale of how, at a pivotal moment in the war, British eccentricity and imagination combined to thwart the Nazis and save innumerable lives—on both sides.

From 1919 onwards, there were many people who wanted to kill Hitler. But when he became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the desire became more urgent. After all, what do you do when the leader of your country has destroyed all political freedoms, annexed all power and is leading all of its people towards destruction? This is a story of all the plots against Hitler, of secret meetings in freezing fields, of bombs in briefcases, of conspiracies against the life of the Fuhrer, with a cast-list of soldiers, senior politicians, members of the resistance, schoolteachers, theologians, and even a humble carpenter. In all, there were more than 32 attempts against Adolf Hitler's life and this book documents every doomed effort to dismantle the Nazi machine by striking off its head.