Bodyguard of Lies: The Extraordinary True Story Behind D-Day
Language: English
Pages: 960
ISBN: 1599213834
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
How this astonishing surprise was achieved is the subject of Bodyguard of Lies, one of the most exciting volumes ever written about the Second World War. Telling the most complete story of the biggest and most complicated intelligence operation in the history of war, Bodyguard of Lies presents a large and fascinating cast of heroes and rogues and sweeps through dozens of dramatic stories of plot and counterplot, stealth and treachery, lies and deceits. It provides the full story behind Churchill's agonizing decision not to warn the city of Coventry that it was about to be destroyed, and follows the deadly cat-and-mouse games between Allied agents in France and the Gestapo, the near fiasco of Montgomery's "double," who could not be kept sober, and the heroic but doomed efforts of the anti-Hitler German underground to eliminate the Fuehrer, including the role of the chief of the German intelligence service in passing secrets over to the British. These and many more explosive stories, of code-breakers and deceivers, of plots and ruses at the highest and lowest levels, make up the tapestry of this monumental book.
the collapse of the Polish government, the key cryptographers involved in Enigma were evacuated from Poland together with the Polish General Staff and the British military mission of Colonel Colin Gubbins. They crossed the Polish frontier into Rumania, and the cryptographers were detached by MI-6 and sent-as had been agreed upon-to Chateau Vignolle to work with the French. But for these precautions, the Germans would almost certainly have discovered that the Poles had penetrated Enigma. Yet,
handling of the Venia Incident in which two chiefs of MI-6 in Europe had been kidnapped by German agents shortly after the outbreak of war. It would also be said afterward that Menzies was quite without the intellectual qualities necessary to appreciate the importance of what he had unleashed that August Bank Holiday. But he was not the upper-class drone that his enemies-and there were plenty of those-thought he was. When "The Bomb" began to provide the first Ultras of consequence, not only did
which MI-6 hid and worked for so long. It was he who played a major although undetected part in seeing that the government reenacted (in 1911) the draconian Official Secrets Act of 1889, which effectively muzzled any public inquiry into the work of the service-and made it the grandest of crimes so to do. And it was Smith-Cumming who believed that the service was not only an instrument for gathering other people's secrets but also for making mischief among the King's enemies. Any act was
and Ultra revealed all the British needed to know to cut that link almost completely. With the approval of Churchill, who had the last word in all Ultra matters, Montgomery requested and received an unprecedented air and naval campaign against Rommel's shipping. It was an effective campaign: in August, 30 per cent of Rommel's supplies were sent to the bottom; in September, another 30 per cent went the same way; in October, the figure rose to 40 per cent. Troops, tanks, guns, ordnance, trucks,
a rebellion against Hitler without the cooperation of the German General Staff. But throughout its life, not more than a very few of the more progressive, enlightened and intelligent German officers sup- — — — or, indeed, were even aware of it. Between 1934 and 1938, most of the generals and colonels who were thought to be involved were little more than aging grumblers complaining at the Herrenklub the central citadel of German military and conservative power of the intrusion of the "gutter"