1 THE SHARP END
8 ‘Mars’: The Bloodiest Deception
9 The Orchestra’s Last Concert
11 Hoover’s G-Men, Donovan’s Wild Men
3 ALLEN DULLES: TALKING TO GERMANS
12 Russia’s Partisans: Terrorising Both Sides
14 A Little Help from Their Friends
1 ‘IT STINKS, BUT SOMEBODY HAS TO DO IT’
16 ‘Blunderhead’: The English Patient
19 Black Widows, Few White Knights
3 THE ENEMY: GROPING IN THE DARK
This is a book about some of the most fascinating people who participated in the Second World War. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, civilians had vastly diverse experiences, forged by fire, geography, economics and ideology. Those who killed each other were the most conspicuous, but in many ways the least interesting: outcomes were also profoundly influenced by a host of men and women who never fired a shot. While even in Russia months could elapse between big battles, all the participants waged an unceasing secret war – a struggle for knowledge of the enemy to empower their armies, navies and air forces, through espionage and codebreaking. Lt. Gen. Albert Praun, the Wehrmacht’s last signals chief, wrote afterwards of the latter: ‘All aspects of this modern “cold war of the air waves” were carried on constantly even when the guns were silent.’ The Allies also launched guerrilla and terrorist campaigns wherever in Axis-occupied territories they had means to do so: covert operations assumed an unprecedented importance.
This
