SELECTED AS A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK Born and raised in America, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six and living in Germany when she witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. She began holding secret meetings in her apartment, forming a small band of political activists set on helping Jews escape, denouncing Hitler and calling for revolution. When the Second World War began, she became a spy, couriering top-secret intelligence to the Allies. In this astonishing work of non-fiction, Harnack’s great-great-niece Rebecca Donner draws on extensive archival research, fusing elements of biography, political thriller and scholarly detective story to tell a powerful, epic tale of an enigmatic woman nearly erased by history.

The “lively and engrossing” (The Wall Street Journal) story of how OSS spymaster Allen Dulles built an underground network determined to take down Hitler and destroy the Third Reich. Agent 110 is Allen Dulles, a newly minted spy from an eminent family. From his townhouse in Bern, Switzerland, and in clandestine meetings in restaurants, back roads, and lovers’ bedrooms, Dulles met with and facilitated the plots of Germans during World War II 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 “absorbing and bracing” (The Seattle Times) 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. Agent 110 is “a doozy of a dossier on Allen Dulles and his early days spying during World War II” (Kirkus Reviews). “Miller skillfully weaves a double narrative of Dulles’ machinations and those of the German resistance” (Booklist) to bring 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.

Filled with revelations and replete with telling detail, this riveting book lifts the curtain on the United States' secret intelligence operations in the war against Nazi Germany.

This book is based on the unprecedented declassification of thousands of US intelligence files.

For three years during World War II, future Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles commanded the OSS mission in Bern, Switzerland. From Hitler's Doorstep provides an annotated selection of his reports to Washington from 1942 to 1945. Dulles was a leading source of Allied intelligence on Nazi Germany and the occupied nations. The messages presented in this volume were based on information received through agents and networks operating in France, Italy, Austria, Eastern Europe, and Germany itself. They deal with subjects ranging from enemy troop strength and military plans to political developments, support of resistance movements, secret weapons, psychological warfare, and peace feelers. The Dulles reports reveal his own vision of grand strategy and presage the postwar turmoil in Europe. One of the largest collections of OSS records ever published, these telegrams and radiotelephone transmissions from the National Archives provide an exciting account of the course of the European war, offer insight on the development of American intelligence, and illuminate the origins of the Cold War. They will interest diplomatic and military historians as well as specialists on modern Europe. This volume is almost unique as document-based intelligence history and serves as a badly needed bridge between diplomatic history and intelligence studies.

Even paranoids have enemies. Hitler's most powerful foes were the Allied powers, but he also feared internal conspiracies bent on overthrowing his malevolent regime. In fact, there was a small but significant internal resistance to the Nazi regime, and it did receive help from the outside world. Through recently declassified intelligence documents, this book reveals for the first time the complete story of America's wartime knowledge about, encouragement of, and secret collaboration with the German resistance to Hitler?including the famous July 20th plot to assassinate the Fuehrer.The U.S. government's secret contacts with the anti-Nazi resistance were conducted by the OSS, the World War II predecessor to the CIA. Highly sensitive intelligence reports recently released by the CIA make it evident that the U.S. government had vast knowledge of what was going on inside the Third Reich. For example, a capitulation offer to the western Allies under consideration by Count von Moltke in 1943 was thoroughly discussed within the U.S. government. And Allen Dulles, who was later to become head of the CIA, was well informed about the legendary plot of July 20th. In fact, these secret reports from inside Germany provide a well-rounded picture of German society, revealing the pro- or anti-Nazi attitudes of different social groups (workers, churches, the military, etc.). The newly released documents also show that scholars in the OSS, many of them recruited from ivy-league universities, looked for anti-Nazi movements and leaders to help create a democratic Germany after the war.Such intelligence gathering was a major task of the OSS. However, OSS director ?Wild Bill? Donovan and others favored subversive operations, spreading disinformation, and issuing propaganda. Unorthodox and often dangerous schemes were developed, including bogus ?resistance newspapers,? anti-Nazi letters and postcards distributed through the German postal service, sabotage, and fake radio broadcasts from ?German generals? calling for uprisings against the regime.This is much more than a documentary collection. Explanatory footnotes supply a wealth of background information for the reader, and a comprehensive introduction puts the documents into their wider historical perspective. Arranged in chronological order, these intelligence reports provide a fascinating new perspective on the story of the German resistance to Hitler and reveal an intriguing and previously unexplored aspect of America's war with Hitler.

A searing account of a dark “chapter in U.S. Cold War history . . . to help the anti-Soviet aims of American intelligence and national security agencies” (Library Journal). Even before the final shots of World War II were fired, another war began—a cold war that pitted the United States against its former ally, the Soviet Union. As the Soviets consolidated power in Eastern Europe, the CIA scrambled to gain the upper hand against new enemies worldwide. To this end, senior officials at the CIA, National Security Council, and other elements of the emerging US national security state turned to thousands of former Nazis, Waffen Secret Service, and Nazi collaborators for propaganda, psychological warfare, and military operations. Many new recruits were clearly responsible for the deaths of countless innocents as part of Adolph Hitler’s “Final Solution,” yet were whitewashed and claimed to be valuable intelligence assets. Unrepentant mass murderers were secretly accepted into the American fold, their crimes forgotten and forgiven with the willing complicity of the US government. Blowback is the first thorough, scholarly study of the US government’s extensive recruitment of Nazis and fascist collaborators right after the war. Although others have approached the topic since, Simpson’s book remains the essential starting point. The author demonstrates how this secret policy of collaboration only served to intensify the Cold War and has had lasting detrimental effects on the American government and society that endure to this day.