Double Cross: The True Story of The D-Day Spies

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Patterson donated over thirty-five million in funds to Manhattan Collage, University of Wisconsin, and Vanderbilt University. He has also established several hundred scholarships at different universities and colleges located across the country. He has also helped the U.S. forces read, enabling the donation of over a million books to overseas soldiers and those serving at home. In 1941, the Interallié was the most important spy network in Nazi-occupied France. Indeed, as one British intelligence officer remarked, it was virtually the only one, “our sole source of information from France” in the early part of the war. The network consisted of scores of informers, agents, and subagents, but ultimately the Interallié was the creation of one spy, a man to whom conspiracy and subterfuge were second nature, who regarded espionage as a vocation. His French collaborators knew him as Armand Borni; he also used the code name “Walenty,” or Valentine. His real name was Roman Czerniawski, and in a very short time, through sheer energy, conviction, and a soaring sense of his own worth, he had become the most valuable British spy in France. But even the most cursory reader of Macintyre's account has to be chilled by the stupidity of it all. A counter-argument could be made that the agents themselves were the greatest threat to D-Day. With total air, naval and code-breaking superiority by the summer of 1944, the allies had effectively sealed Britain off. Left to their own devices, the Germans had no idea what was going on and were obliged to spread ever thinner forces across dozens of possible invasion locations from Norway to the Pyrenees. The Double Cross spies were, variously, courageous, treacherous, capricious, greedy, and inspired. They were not obvious heroes, and their organization was betrayed from within by a Soviet spy. One was so obsessed with her pet dog that she came close to derailing the entire invasion. All were, to some extent, fantasists, for that is the very essence of espionage. Two were of dubious moral character.One was a triple, and possibly a quadruple, agent."

Double Crossed: A Code of Honour, A Complete Betrayal Double Crossed: A Code of Honour, A Complete Betrayal

You only need to look at Mexico and realize that collaboration definitely exists there and America is no exception. Playboys, loyalists and people whose lives had otherwise been irreversibly impacted by the spreading German occupancy eventually found themselves as members of a team whose primary responsibility was to lead the Nazi leadership into thinking that the D-Day assault would take place in any number of places other than Normandy, whose proximity to Britain's coastline made it an obvious choice. Among the misdirected targets were the Mediterranean, Norway and the northern coast of France. Following a July 1940 conference in Kiel, the Abwehr (German intelligence) began an espionage campaign against Britain involving intelligence gathering and sabotage. Spies were sent over from Europe in various ways; some parachuted or were delivered by submarine. Others entered the country on false passports or posing as refugees. [2] Public perception in Britain was that the country was full of well-trained German spies, who were deeply integrated into society. There was widespread "spy-mania", as Churchill put it. The truth was that between September and November 1940 fewer than 25 agents arrived in the country; mostly of Eastern European extraction, they were badly trained and poorly motivated. [2]I am a big fan of the mighty Ben Macintyre, so it was only a matter of time before I'd read Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies. Monoplane – Paul Jeannin 6th Army Group - French - prior codenames Jacques and Twit; German codename: Normandie. Former radio operator on the French liner Normandie. [15] But it so nearly wasn't. Macintyre brings alive the tension as the web of deceit was spun, from the near misses as agents were arrested, to the appalling handling of agent Treasure, over petty amounts of money. He describes their character, flaws and ultimately courage of the job that they performed. Macintyre must have sifted through hundreds of secret documents to shine a light on these people, and their handlers, who probably saved thousands of lives on both sides as the allies got a foothold in France. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.

Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies - Goodreads

I read this book just after reading "In the Garden of Beasts.", second in my trilogy of WWII stories recently read. In this book, you know the ending is a little better. It focuses on the spies involved in misleading the Germans as to where the D-Day invasion would occur. It worked. How much the double agents information was critical to the success of the operation may never be fully known...such is the nature of espionage...but the evidence shows it worked well, better even than the British had hoped it would, in some cases. The outcome of the second world war was decided by many millions of people first making and then handling industrial equipment to kill one another on an inconceivably terrible scale. By the summer of 1944 the allies had used high technology to destroy the German air force and navy and to infiltrate German communications. The Atlantic wall – on which Rommel had spent so much time, resource and slave labour – was flattened in a morning and the allies began the grim process of liberating France. Right at the outermost fringes of the war a handful of people on both sides engaged in poorly supervised and deluded fantasies about spying, which were mostly pointless but sometimes had horrible results for the sometimes brave individuals involved. Double Cross is a good example of its genre, but it is unclear whether it is a genre that should thrive.

MI5 חבורת מרגלים כפולים הזויים לחלוטין שרכשו את ליבם של הגרמנים ותרמו למאמץ המלחמתי. גלריית הדמויות נעה בין נער שעשועים סרבי שהקדיש את עיתותיו לנשים ובזבוזים שרדפו את סוכנות הביון הבריטית עוד זמן רב לאחר תום המלחמה, פטריוט לאומן פולני שהפך למרגל כפול, משולש ומרובע, נערת שעשועים מהמרת משועממת, מגדל תרנגולות ספרדי ורוסיה צרפתייה שאיימה על כל מערך הבגידה הכפול בשל כלבה שנדרס (או לא - לא ברור מה קרה איתו). ועם כל אלה ניצחנו את המלחמה. This was a wonderful read. I loved reading some of the bonkers messages the agents sent to their German case officers, and hearing about their various exploits.