When Hitler was striving for recognition and relevance in the political turmoil of the early Weimar years in Germany he gave little thought to the world on the other side of the Atlantic other than to nurture a constant nagging resentment over President Wilson’s role in the post-war evisceration of Germany at Versailles in 1919. It was the United States, however, that had bankrolled the German economy to substantially boost industrial production and employment in the 1920s and the evidence of American wealth and economic power was hard to ignore. Even when the Nazis took over in Germany after the elections of March 1933, Hitler’s narrow vision was still concentrated on consolidating his power base in Germany itself and quickly thereafter expanded to take in the countries of Eastern Europe. What impressions he had of American culture and society were encapsulated in the trivialities and stereotypes of Hollywood movies depicting the ‘wild west’ or the deprivations of the Great Depression. Despite its economic power, nothing in Hitler’s world view envisaged the United States as a potential player in European politics, but the Germans intelligence services that he inherited were not so easily convinced. They had been aware of American power and influence since before the First World War and for them, spying on the United States was nothing more than a continuation of their efforts to prevent that country thwarting German ambitions. There had been spectacular successes in the past, such as the espionage attack that had wreaked massive destruction in the Black Tom Island explosion on 30 July 1916. But overall, the German agencies had gone to great lengths and considerable expense without achieving their ambitions and failed to prevent American participation in the war. With another war in prospect, the Germans once again made plans to influence American policy and do what they could to keep their forces out of European affairs. Spying for Hitler traces the history of German espionage in the United States and describes, in detail, the personnel involved and operations they conducted all through the 1930s and early 1940s. It examines the training of German agents and the espionage techniques they employed. The way in which the FBI reacted to the threat, in particular, from the Griebl-Lonkowski spy ring, shows how Hoover’s ‘Feds’ were initially slow to appreciate the danger, but soon learned the lessons. This was later to put them on a sounder footing to counter further attempts to infiltrate agents into the United States. This was most spectacularly displayed in Operation Pastorius, when saboteurs were landed on the American East Coast from U-boats. This book also examines the way in which the Germans used ‘sleeper’ agents and also describes how the FBI successfully ‘turned’ German agents to feed disinformation to Abwehr headquarters in Berlin. It describes how espionage missions played out and the fate of those involves.

The first full account of Hitler's extensive intelligence network-and the dramatic story of how Germany lost the battle of the secret services in World War II.

A remarkable tale of espionage and intrigue—the true story of Hitler’s intelligence chief and his role in the conspiracy to assassinate the Führer. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was appointed by Adolf Hitler to head the Abwehr (the German secret service) eighteen months after the Nazis came to power. But Canaris turned against the Fu¨hrer and the Nazi regime, believing that Hitler would start a war Germany could not win. In 1938 he was involved in an attempted coup, undermined by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. In 1940 he sabotaged the German plan to invade England, and fed General Franco vital information that helped him keep Spain out of the war. For years he played a dangerous double game, desperately trying to keep one step ahead of the Gestapo. The SS chief, Heinrich Himmler, became suspicious of Canaris and by 1944, when Abwehr personnel were involved in the attempted assassination of Hitler, he had the evidence to arrest Canaris himself. Canaris was executed a few weeks before the end of the war. In a riveting true story of intrigue and espionage, Richard Bassett reveals how Admiral Canaris’s secret work against the German leadership changed the course of World War II.

The story of the intelligence war in South Africa during the Second World War is one of suspense, drama and dogged persistence. In 1939, when the Union of South Africa entered the war on Britain's side, the German government secretly reached out to the political opposition, and to the leadership of the anti-war movement, the Ossewabrandwag. The Nazis' aim was to spread sedition in South Africa and to undermine the Allied war effort. The critical strategic importance of the sea route round the Cape of Good Hope meant that the Germans were also after naval intelligence. Soon U-boat packs were sent to operate in South African waters, to deadly effect. With the help of the Ossewabrandwag, a network of German spies was established to gather important political and military intelligence and relay it back to the Reich. Agents would use a variety of channels to send coded messages to Axis diplomats in neighbouring Mozambique. Meanwhile, police detectives and MI5 agents hunted in vain for illegal wireless transmitters. Hitler's Spies presents an unrivalled account of the German intelligence networks that operated in wartime South Africa. It also details the hunt in post-war Europe for witnesses to help the government bring charges of high treason against key Ossewabrandwag members.

Why did the US intelligence services fail so spectacularly to know about the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities following World War II? As Vince Houghton, historian and curator of the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, shows us, that disastrous failure came just a few years after the Manhattan Project's intelligence team had penetrated the Third Reich and knew every detail of the Nazi 's plan for an atomic bomb. What changed and what went wrong? Houghton's delightful retelling of this fascinating case of American spy ineffectiveness in the then new field of scientific intelligence provides us with a new look at the early years of the Cold War. During that time, scientific intelligence quickly grew to become a significant portion of the CIA budget as it struggled to contend with the incredible advance in weapons and other scientific discoveries immediately after World War II. As The Nuclear Spies shows, the abilities of the Soviet Union's scientists, its research facilities and laboratories, and its educational system became a key consideration for the CIA in assessing the threat level of its most potent foe. Sadly, for the CIA scientific intelligence was extremely difficult to do well. For when the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb in 1949, no one in the American intelligence services saw it coming.

The heart-pounding history of how Pope Pius XII -- often labeled "Hitler's Pope" -- was in fact an anti-Nazi spymaster, plotting against the Third Reich during World War II. The Vatican's silence in the face of Nazi atrocities remains one of the great controversies of our time. History has accused wartime pontiff Pius the Twelfth of complicity in the Holocaust and dubbed him "Hitler's Pope." But a key part of the story has remained untold. Pope Pius in fact ran the world's largest church, smallest state, and oldest spy service. Saintly but secretive, he sent birthday cards to Hitler -- while secretly plotting to kill him. He skimmed from church charities to pay covert couriers, and surreptitiously tape-recorded his meetings with top Nazis. Under his leadership the Vatican spy ring actively plotted against the Third Reich. Told with heart-pounding suspense and drawing on secret transcripts and unsealed files by an acclaimed author, Church of Spies throws open the Vatican's doors to reveal some of the most astonishing events in the history of the papacy. Riebling reveals here how the world's greatest moral institution met the greatest moral crisis in history.

A 2018 FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE “[Hitler in Los Angeles] is part thriller and all chiller, about how close the California Reich came to succeeding” (Los Angeles Times). No American city was more important to the Nazis than Los Angeles, home to Hollywood, the greatest propaganda machine in the world. The Nazis plotted to kill the city's Jews and to sabotage the nation's military installations: Plans existed for murdering twenty-four prominent Hollywood figures, such as Al Jolson, Charlie Chaplin, and Louis B. Mayer; for driving through Boyle Heights and machine-gunning as many Jews as possible; and for blowing up defense installations and seizing munitions from National Guard armories along the Pacific Coast. U.S. law enforcement agencies were not paying close attention--preferring to monitor Reds rather than Nazis--and only attorney Leon Lewis and his daring ring of spies stood in the way. From 1933 until the end of World War II, Lewis, the man Nazis would come to call “the most dangerous Jew in Los Angeles,” ran a spy operation comprised of military veterans and their wives who infiltrated every Nazi and fascist group in Los Angeles. Often rising to leadership positions, they uncovered and foiled the Nazi's disturbing plans for death and destruction. Featuring a large cast of Nazis, undercover agents, and colorful supporting players, the Los Angeles Times bestselling Hitler in Los Angeles, by acclaimed historian Steven J. Ross, tells the story of Lewis's daring spy network in a time when hate groups had moved from the margins to the mainstream.