The Secret War - Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas, 1939-1945

"Monumental." --New York Times Book Review

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

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.

But who really pulled the strings, and what secrets actually changed the course of the war?

The Spymasters and Their Agents: Meet the worldwide cast of characters, from spymasters like William Donovan and Stewart Menzies to notorious agents like Richard Sorge, Kim Philby, and the mysterious 'Cicero'. The Codebreakers of Bletchley Park: Go inside the secret world of Alan Turing and the codebreakers who battled to crack the German Enigma machine and unlock the vital 'Ultra' intelligence that shaped Allied strategy. A Global Espionage History: Examine the successes and failures of every major power's intelligence services—including Britain's MI6, America's OSS, Germany's Abwehr, and the Soviet NKVD—in an unprecedented global context. Guerrilla Warfare and Resistance: Discover the untold stories of partisans and resistance movements, and Hastings's unflinching assessment of how much these secret armies actually contributed to the final outcome of the war.