Download or read book The Secret History of PWE written by David Garnett and published by St Ermins. This book was released on 2002 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of all Britain's secret intelligence organizations, the least known is the Political Warfare Executive, developed to conduct psychological warfare against the Nazis. The PWE's history has now been declassified by the Cabinet Office and released, 50 years after it had been completed and consigned to Whitehall's secret archives. David Garnett's book tells of how such resourceful intellects as Richard Crossman, Sefton Delmer, Leonard Ingrams, and Valentine Williams waged a covert campaign against the enemy, using such unorthodox, ingenious methods as black propaganda and "false flag" radio broadcasts. It also reveals the internal conflicts with the BBC, Special Operations Executive, and the Secret Intelligence Service. At best a handbook of how to undermine an adversary and at worst a tale of breathtaking incompetence and political infighting, this volume aims to add a missing dimension to recent disclosures of Britain's covert wartime operations.
Download or read book Secret History written by Simon Ball and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2020-04-16 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As John le Carré's fictional intelligence men admit, it was the case histories - constructed narratives serving shifting agendas - that shaped the British intelligence machine, rather than their personal experience of secret operations. Secret History demonstrates that a critical scrutiny of internal "after action" assessments of intelligence prepared by British officials provides an invaluable and original perspective on the emergence of British intelligence culture over a period stretching from the First World War to the early Cold War. The historical record reflects personal value judgments about what qualified as effective techniques and organization, and even who could rightfully be called an intelligence officer. The history of intelligence thus became a powerful form of self-reinforcing cultural capital. Shining an intense light on the history of Britain's intelligence organizations, Secret History excavates how contemporary myths, misperceptions, and misunderstandings were captured and how they affected the development of British intelligence and the state.
Download or read book The Bondian Cold War written by Martin D. Brown and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Bond, Ian Fleming’s irrepressible and ubiquitous ‘spy,’ is often understood as a Cold Warrior, but James Bond’s Cold War diverged from the actual global conflict in subtle but significant ways. That tension between the real and fictional provides perspectives into Cold War culture transcending ideological and geopolitical divides. The Bondiverse is complex and multi-textual, including novels, films, video games, and even a comic strip, and has also inspired an array of homages, copies, and competitors. Awareness of its rich possibilities only becomes apparent through a multi-disciplinary lens. The desire to consider current trends in Bondian studies inspired a conference entitled ‘The Bondian Cold War,’ convened at Tallinn University, Estonia in June 2019. Conference participants, drawn from three continents and multiple disciplines – film studies, history, intelligence studies, and literature, as well as intelligence practitioners – offered papers on the literary and cinematic aspects of the ‘spy’, discussed fact versus fiction in the Bond canon, went in search of a global Bond, and pondered gender and sexuality across the Bondiverse. This volume of essays inspired by that conference, suitable for students, researchers, and anyone interested in Cold War culture, makes vital contributions to understanding Bond as a global phenomenon, across traditional divisions of East and West, and beyond the end of the Cold War from which he emerged.
Download or read book Propaganda and Persecution written by Renée Poznanski and published by University of Wisconsin Pres. This book was released on 2024 with total page 630 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renée Poznanski's magisterial history of the French Resistance during World War II offers a comprehensive exploration of the most significant issue in that period's social imaginary: the "Jewish question." With extraordinary nuance, she analyzes the discourse around Jews and Judaism that pervaded the Resistance's propaganda and debates, while closely examining the fate of Jews under Vichy and after. Poznanski argues that Jews in France suffered a double persecution: one led by the Vichy government, the other imposed by the Nazis. Marginalization and exclusion soon led to internment and deportation to terrifying places. Meanwhile, a propaganda war developed between the Resistance and the official voice of Vichy. Poznanski draws on a breathtaking array of sources, especially clandestine publications and French-language BBC transmissions, to show how the Resistance both fought and accommodated the deeply entrenched antisemitism within French society. Her close readings of propaganda texts against public opinions probe ambiguities and silences in Resistance writing about the persecution of the Jews and, in parallel, the numerous and detailed denunciations that could be read in the Jewish clandestine press. This extensive synthesis extends to the post-Liberation period, during which the ongoing persecution of Jews in Europe and North Africa would be portrayed as secondary to the suffering of the nation. The winner of the 2009 Henri Hertz Prize by the Chancellerie des Universités de Paris, Sorbonne, Propaganda and Persecution makes major contributions to the study of the Resistance and of antisemitism. Lenn J. Schramm's English translation brings Poznanski's dynamic prose to life.
Download or read book SOE s Ultimate Deception written by Fredric Boyce and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2009-03-12 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the closing months of the Second World War, General Eisenhower exhorted the Western Allied forces to redouble their efforts to break the German will to resist. In considering this appeal, General Gubbins, whose Special Operations Executive was making a significant contribution to the liberation of occupied territory, was faced with a fundamental difficulty in the case of Germany. Although opposition to Nazism was present in some areas, it was neither organised nor pro-Allied. Then someone had the idea of creating an entirely fictional German resistance movement and 'selling it' to the Nazi security authorities. From January until April 1945, SOE rained propaganda leaflets on the hapless population fleeing the ruins of their cities and the oncoming Allied ground forces; they broadcast messages to the 'resistance'; they planted the most scandalous lies about eminent Nazis; and at the end they even dropped four agents on fictitious missions. This imaginative response to Ike's exhortation and the sheer audacity of the operation itself demand to be told to a wider audience.
Download or read book Revisiting the Colonial Past in Morocco written by Driss Maghraoui and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-07-18 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the concept of ‘colonial cultures,’ this book analyses how these cultures both transformed, and were transformed by, their various societies. Challenging both the colonial vulgate, and the nationalist paradigm, Revisiting the Colonial Past in Morocco, examines the lesser known specificities of particular moments, practices and institutions in Morocco, with the aim of uncovering a ‘new colonial history.’ By examining society on a micro-level, this book raises the profiles of the mass of Moroccans who were highly influential in the colonial period yet have been excluded from the historical record because of a lack of textual source material. Introducing social and cultural history, gender studies and literary criticism to the more traditional economic, political and military studies, the book promotes a more complex and nuanced understanding of Moroccan colonial history. Employing new theoretical and methodological approaches, this volume encourages a re-assessment of existing work and promotes a more interdisciplinary approach to the colonial history of Morocco. Revisiting the Colonial Past in Morocco is a highly topical and useful addition to literature on the subject and will be of interest to students and scholars of History, Imperialism and more generally, Middle Eastern Studies.
Download or read book The Black Art written by Lee Richards and published by www.psywar.org. This book was released on 2010 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As well as the open propaganda of the British Government produced during the Second World War, like the foreign language radio broadcasts of the BBC and the aerial propaganda leaflets dropped by the RAF over Occupied Europe, a secret underground propaganda battle was also fought. ‘The Black Art’ documents this history of Britain’s clandestine psychological warfare conducted against the Nazi’s Third Reich. This black propaganda was the work of several secret intelligence organisations including the Political Warfare Executive and Special Operations Executive. Using previously undiscovered primary source material ‘The Black Art’ charts the progress of and catalogues the range of propaganda leaflets covertly distributed across Occupied Europe and beyond to subvert the morale of German soldiers and civilians. The propaganda included such ruses as malingering instructions to fake the symptoms of illness, tips for desertion to neutral countries, parody postage stamps, advice on sabotaging a U-boat, counterfeit ration coupons, identity documents and newspapers plus numerous other falsely attributed leaflets and stickers. Over 350 illustrations are included.
Download or read book How to Win an Information War written by Peter Pomerantsev and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2024-03-05 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of our leading experts on disinformation, this inventive biography of the rogue WWII propagandist Sefton Delmer confronts hard questions about the nature of information war: what if you can't fight lies with truth? Can a propaganda war ever be won? In the summer of 1941, Hitler ruled Europe from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. Britain was struggling to combat his powerful propaganda machine, crowing victory and smearing his enemies as liars and manipulators over his frequent radio speeches, blasted out on loudspeakers and into homes. British claims that Hitler was dangerous had little impact against this wave of disinformation. Except for the broadcasts of someone called Der Chef, a German who questioned Nazi doctrine. He had access to high-ranking German military secrets and spoke of internal rebellion. His listeners included German soldiers and citizens, as well as politicians in Washington DC who were debating getting into the war. And--most importantly--Der Chef was a fiction. He was a character created by the British propagandist Thomas Sefton Delmer, a unique weapon in the war. Then, as author Peter Pomerantsev seeks to tell Delmer's story, he is called into a wartime propaganda effort of his own: the US response to the invasion of Ukraine. In flashes forward to the present day, Pomerantsev weaves in what he's learning from Delmer as he seeks to fight against Vladimir Putin's tyranny and lies. This book is the story of Delmer and his modern investigator, as they each embark on their own quest to manipulate the passions of supporters and enemies, and to turn the tide of an information war, an extraordinary history that is informing the present before our eyes.
Download or read book Beyond Holy Russia written by Michael Hughes and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2014-02-19 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This biography examines the long life of the traveller and author Stephen Graham. Graham walked across large parts of the Tsarist Empire in the years before 1917, describing his adventures in a series of books and articles that helped to shape attitudes towards Russia in Britain and the United States. In later years he travelled widely across Europe and North America, meeting some of the best known writers of the twentieth century, including H.G.Wells and Ernest Hemingway. Graham also wrote numerous novels and biographies that won him a wide readership on both sides of the Atlantic. This book traces Graham’s career as a world traveller, and provides a rich portrait of English, Russian and American literary life in the first half of the twentieth century. It also examines how many aspects of his life and writing coincide with contemporary concerns, including the development of New Age spirituality and the rise of environmental awareness. Beyond Holy Russia is based on extensive research in archives of private papers in Britain and the USA and on the many works of Graham himself. The author describes with admirable tact and clarity Graham’s heterodox and convoluted spiritual quest. The result is a fascinating portrait of a man who was for many years a significant literary figure on both sides of the Atlantic.
Download or read book SOE The Scientific Secrets written by Fredric Boyce and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2011-11-08 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of Special Operations Executive (SOE) seems to spring a never-ending run of surprises, and here are some more. This book explores the mysterious world of the tools SOE used for their missions of subversion and sabotage. An often grim reality is confronted that is more akin with the world of James Bond and Q's workshop than previously believed. Written by two scientists, one of whom served in the SOE and one who was tasked with clearing up after it was disbanded; their insider knowledge presents a clear account of the way in which SOE's inventors worked. From high explosive technology to chemical and biological devices; from the techniques of air supply to incendiarism; from camouflage to underwater warfare; and from radio communications to weaponry. SOE: The Scientific Secrets is a revelation about the tools that allowed the murky world of spying and spies to operate during wartime.
Download or read book Operation Bribes written by Ángel Viñas and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-11-29 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This forensic study of recently opened documents in Britain’s National Archives reveals for the first time the details of an officially unnamed secret operation authorised by Winston Churchill in 1940 to keep Spain neutral in the Second World War through the financial manipulation of Spanish generals. Viñas focuses on the crucial roles played by the British ambassador in Madrid, Sir Samuel Hoare; the embassy’s naval attaché, Captain Alan Hillgarth and – hitherto unknown to Anglophone readers – the Spanish businessman, Juan March, perhaps one of the richest men in Spain at the time and a financial backer of the military conspirators sparking the Spanish Civil War in 1936. He identifies the likely recipients of the bribes, how they were paid and the influence they wielded on Spain’s dictator, General Francisco Franco, who together with his notorious foreign minister, Ramón Serrano Suñer, was minded to enter the war on the side of the Axis. With masterly analysis, this book places the bribes paid by Britain in the jigsaw puzzle of why, after all, Spain remained neutral. This volume is a pioneering and important contribution for scholars and students of Anglo-Spanish relations, Spanish-Axis relations and wider strategic aspects of the Second World War.
Download or read book The Life and Mysterious Death of Poet and Intelligence Agent Stephen Haggard 1911 1943 written by Ross Davies and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2024-11-05 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Actor, memoirist, novelist, playwright and poet, Stephen Haggard was a highly individual figure in the English literature and theatre of the 1930s and Second World War. Haggard was born in Guatemala City in 1911, the son of a British colonial officer – who was a nephew of H. Rider Haggard – and his French-Canadian wife. He died in mysterious circumstances in 1943 while serving with British Army Intelligence in the Middle East. Ross Davies’s biography retraces Stephen Haggard’s brief yet vivid and crowded life and work. From a colonial childhood and education in England, the Haggard story moves on to prewar theatre studies in Munich, stardom on the London and New York stages and from there to service with the Army, the BBC, the Special Operations Executive and its rival Political Warfare Executive. Davies shows that Haggard felt verse to be his vital outlet, artistic and emotional, although he did not seek publication until the outbreak of Hitler’s war. Wartime poems such "The Tear" and "Lotus" struck a chord with the many other young men and women who had to set aside civilian life, and Haggard's widow Morna collected the verse for publication with his memoir I’ll Go to Bed at Noon (1944). In this book, Davies traces a fascinating life story that has been largely lost from view and makes a convincing case for Haggard's important contribution to the interwar literary and cultural scene.
Download or read book Kill the Fuhrer written by Denis Rigden and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2011-11-08 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Second World War, Britain's top secret Special Operations Executive plotted to assassinate Hitler. A small department of SOE known as Section X had the tantalisingly complex task of investigating how, when and where their plan could be executed. The section also plotted the killing of Goebbels, Himmler and other selected members of Hitler's inner circle. Only Section X and a handful of other SOE staff had any knowledge of these projects, codenamed Operation Foxley and Operation Little Foxleys. As history has shown, these schemes turned out to be pipe dreams. Even so, Section X, renamed the German Directorate in 1944, made a huge contribution to the Allied war effort through their organised sabotage and clandestine distribution of black propaganda. Denis Rigden describes Section X's efforts to discover as much as possible about the intended assassination targets, and questions whether a successful Operation Foxley would have helped or hindered the Allied cause. Based on top secret documents and private sources and illustrated with archive photographs, 'Kill the Fuhrer' is an intriguing insight into the shadowy world of Britain's wartime secret services.
Download or read book Sharing the Secret written by Nicholas van der Bijl and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While written under the auspices of the Trustees of the Military Intelligence Museum, Sharing the Secret is not an academic regimental history. Rather it gives a privileged glimpse into a necessarily publicity-shy organization that has been deeply involved in military intelligence operations since its inception in 1940 through to 2010. Understandably, little has been written about the Corps' work for Official Secret reasons.The development of Field Security and Protective Security and measures taken to protect the Army for espionage, sabotage, subversion and terrorism in peace and war are examined. These tasks were particularly important during the de-Nazification of Germany during the aftermath of the Second World War. Field Security led to the successful arrest of leading Nazis, including Himmler and Doenitz.The author, who served in the Corps for over 20 years and saw active service in Northern Ireland and the Falklands, gives fascinating examples of differing Intelligence techniques in action. These include the exploitation of Imagery Interpretation, Human Intelligence, including the interrogation of prisoners of war, the examination of enemy documents and the deployment of Signals Intelligence so that commanders have enough information to fight the battles. The support the Intelligence Corps gave to the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War is well covered, as are examples of Special Duties since 1945.The reader will appreciate that, as with any work relating to national intelligence and security, Sharing the Secret has been written under the restrictions of the era. That said, it provides a long-overdue insight into the contribution of members of the Intelligence Corps over seventy years of war and peace.As featured in Burnham & Highbridge News
Download or read book Churchill s Man of Mystery written by Gill Bennett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-10-05 with total page 862 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mysterious life and career of Desmond Morton, Intelligence officer and personal adviser to Winston Churchill during the Second World War, is exposed for the first time in this study based on full access to official records. After distinguished service as artillery officer and aide-de-camp to General Haig during the First World War, Morton worked for the Secret Intelligence Service from 1919-1934, and the fortunes of SIS in the interwar years are described here in unprecedented detail. As Director of the Industrial Intelligence Centre in the 1930s, Morton’s warnings of Germany’s military and industrial preparations for war were widely read in Whitehall, though they failed to accelerate British rearmament as much as Morton - and Churchill - considered imperative. Morton had met Churchill on the Western Front in 1916 and supported him throughout the ‘wilderness years’, moving to Downing Street as the Prime Minister’s Intelligence adviser in May 1940. There he remained in a liaison role, with the Intelligence Agencies and with Allied resistance authorities, until the end of the war, when he became a ‘troubleshooter’ for the Treasury in a series of tricky international assignments. Throughout Morton’s career, myth, rumour and deliberate obfuscation have created a misleading picture of his role and influence. This book shines a light into many hitherto shadowy corners of British history in the first half of the twentieth century. This book will be of great interest to scholars and informed lay readers with an interest in the Second World War, intelligence studies and the life of Winston Churchill.
Download or read book The Early Shortwave Stations written by Jerome S. Berg and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-10-04 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In July 1923, less than three years after Westinghouse station KDKA signed on, company engineer Frank Conrad began regular simulcasting of its programs on a frequency in the newly-discovered shortwave range. It was an important event in a technological revolution that would make dependable worldwide radio communication possible for the first time. In subsequent years, countless stations in practically all countries followed suit, taking to shortwave to extend reception domestically or reach audiences thousands of miles away. Shortwave broadcasting would also have an important role in World War II and in the Cold War. In this, his fourth book on shortwave broadcast history, the author revisits the period of his earlier work, On the Short Waves, 1923-1945, and focuses on the stations that were on the air in those early days. The year-by-year account chronicles the birth and operation of the large international broadcasters, as well as the numerous smaller stations that were a great attraction to the DXers, or long-distance radio enthusiasts, of the time. With more than 100 illustrations and extensive notes, bibliography and index, the book is also a valuable starting point for further study and research.
Download or read book Spying on Ireland written by Eunan O'Halpin and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-04-17 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Irish neutrality during the Second World War presented Britain with significant challenges to its security. Exploring how British agencies identified and addressed these problems, this book reveals how Britain simultaneously planned sabotage in and spied on Ireland, and at times sought to damage the neutral state's reputation internationally through black propaganda operations. It analyses the extent of British knowledge of Axis and other diplomatic missions in Ireland, and shows the crucial role of diplomatic code-breaking in shaping British policy. The book also underlines just how much Ireland both interested and irritated Churchill throughout the war. Rather than viewing this as a uniquely Anglo-Irish experience, Eunan O'Halpin argues that British activities concerning Ireland should be placed in the wider context of intelligence and security problems that Britain faced in other neutral states, particularly Afghanistan and Persia. Taking a comparative approach, he illuminates how Britain dealt with challenges in these countries through a combination of diplomacy, covert gathering of intelligence, propaganda, and intimidation. The British perspective on issues in Ireland becomes far clearer when discussed in terms of similar problems Britain faced with neutral states worldwide. Drawing heavily on British and American intelligence records, many disclosed here for the first time, Eunan O'Halpin presents the first country study of British intelligence to describe and analyse the impact of all the secret agencies during the war. He casts fresh light on British activities in Ireland, and on the significance of both espionage and cooperation between intelligence agencies for developing wider relations between the two countries.
