DevilMoon
passive stalker?
Registered: Jul 2000
Location: zanzibar
Posts: 10408 |
What are you reading?
I am reading A Man Called Intrepid: The Secret War
I think I bought this book a while ago at a friends of the library sale or something. My copy is from 1977 and the front and back covers are held on from the inside with tape. Anyway, this book starts in the post World War I era and follows the rearming of Germany and the political attitudes of England at the time. Since the first Wold War Churchill was able to keep some of the British intelligence community together even though he held no official post. He was able to get direct permission from the King, who was concerned about the Germans and about the stance of the British government. During Chamberlain's time as Prime Minister Churchhill was already secretly training citizens to resist the Nazis and was also communicating and sharing information with President Roosevelt. The British were concerned about their intelligence operations being captured if the Germans invaded the island so they set up the British Secuity Coordination office in New York so that there was an external base from which to direct activity. The book follows the training of secret agents in Canada, the breaking of Enigma codes, secret sabotage missions and the clandestine support that Roosevelt lent to Britian from the onset of the war. The man called Intrepid is Sir William Stephenson, who was the head of BSC. Stephenson was a soldier from Canada in World War I where he was declared 'crippled for life' after surviving two gas attacks. Then he omitted those facts when applying for a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps, which was largely thought to be a suicide job. He ended up winning the Distinguished Flying Cross after downing 28 planes, including the Red Baron's brother. Stephenson became a successful industrialist after the first war and used his contacts to keep tabs on German influences in business, helping to root out shadow corporations and publicly shame companies such as Ford and Standard Oil for doing business with Nazi Germany. The book covers the propaganda, the appeasers, the sympathizers, the 'fifth column' in the US and England. It has the story of how Berlin brilliantly double crossed Stalin by playing on his paranoia. They knew he thought he had Nazi spies among his military leaders, so they prepared four fake documents detailing widespread cooperation and arrainged to have them discovered. Stalin's fears were confirmed and he had almost all of his military leaders shot, leaving Russia with nobody to command their armies. The allies planted fake stories from 'a famous Hungarian astrologer' predicting disaster for some high ranking Germans. The article caused the downfall of some of them due to Hitler's belief in astrology.
Anyway, the book is full of behind the scenes information from World War II, which is gleaned from BSC papers and William Stephenson. It is also interesting who pops up along the way. Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, H.G. Wells, George Orwell, Nelson Rockefeller and Joe Kennedy (among others) all play parts in the book.
It has some pretty bad reviews on Amazon, but I like it so far.
D
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11-09-2001 05:57 PM
And no, not penthouse....yet
