The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939–1945 - Softcover

Hastings, Max

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007503911 ISBN 13: 9780007503919

Publisher: William Collins, 2015

Synopsis

‘As gripping as any spy thriller, Hastings’s achievement is especially impressive, for he has produced the best single volume yet written on the subject’ Sunday Times

‘Authoritative, exciting and notably well written’ Daily Telegraph

‘A serious work of rigourous and comprehensive history ... royally entertaining and readable’ Mail on Sunday

In ‘The Secret War’, Max Hastings examines the espionage and intelligence machines of all sides in World War II, and the impact of spies, code-breakers and partisan operations on events. Written on a global scale, the book brings together accounts from British, American, German, Russian and Japanese sources to tell the story of a secret war waged unceasingly by men and women often far from the battlefields but whose actions profoundly influenced the outcome.

Returning to the Second World War for the first time since his best-selling ‘All Hell Let Loose’, Hastings weaves into a ‘big picture’ framework, the human stories of spies and intelligence officers who served their respective masters. Told through a series of snapshots of key moments, the book looks closely at Soviet espionage operations which dwarfed those of every other belligerent in scale, as well as the code-breaking operation at Bletchley Park – the greatest intelligence achievement of the conflict – with many more surprising and unfamiliar tales of treachery, deception, betrayal and incompetence by spies of Axis, Allied or indeterminate loyalty.

About this title

Review:

‘As gripping as any spy thriller. Hastings understands, better than any previous historian, that this is as much a story about human nature as it is about the mechanics of code-breaking or spycraft ... he has the novelist’s eye for the telling detail ... this book works because Hastings is simply a very fine writer who is not afraid of making judgements ... Hastings’s achievement is especially impressive, for he has produced the best single volume yet written on the subject’ Lawrence Rees, Sunday Times

‘A total thriller with a full cast of killers, swashbucklers and beautiful adventuresses. The best history of war intelligence yet’ Simon Sebag Montefiore

‘This is his war and he writes with an easy assurance, scatter-gunning opinions ... Hastings is on form. He has set out to provide thought and discussion and, with his familiar robustness, shotgun at side, he has succeeded’ The Times

‘Authoritative, exciting and notably well written’ Daily Telegraph

‘A serious work of rigorous and comprehensive history ... royally entertaining and readable’ Mail on Sunday

‘Vintage Hastings: a vivid cast of characters, social observation and opinions forcefully expressed ... Given the national fixation with spies and special forces, Hastings’s book is a very necessary corrective’ Evening Standard

‘Lively and entertaining ... a rich gallery of rogues, eccentrics and brainstorming professors which ... Hastings can manipulate with wonderful deftness’ Observer

‘A compendious, crisply argued and witty assessment’ Financial Times

‘[Hastings] writes with infectious relish ... a magnificent parade of crooks, alcoholics and fantasists ... [he] has drawn fascinating fresh material ... A book that pulses along, yet is filled with acute insight into human ingenuity, frailty, and the ironies of evil’ Spectator

‘Magisterial ... an author at the top of his game’ Country Life

‘Hastings deploys a formidable arsenal to tell his human stories, plus a refreshing degree of scepticism’ Daily Telegraph

From the Back Cover:

From one of the foremost historians of the period and the acclaimed author of Inferno and Catastrophe: 1914, The Secret War is a sweeping examination of one of the most important yet underexplored aspects of World War II--intelligence--showing how espionage successes and failures by the United States, Britain, Russia, Germany, and Japan influenced the course of the war and its final outcome.

Spies, codes, and guerrillas played unprecedentedly critical roles in the Second World War, exploited by every nation in the struggle to gain secret knowledge of its foes, and to sow havoc behind the fronts. In The Secret War, Max Hastings presents a worldwide cast of characters and some extraordinary sagas of intelligence and resistance, to create a new perspective on the greatest conflict in history.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Collins
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0007503911
• ISBN 13: 9780007503919
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 640