Undercover Tales of World War II

William B. Breuer

Description

Critical acclaim for William B. Breuer
"A first-class historian." --The Wall Street Journal

Vendetta!
"A wealth of insights."--Los Angeles Times Book Review

Unexplained Mysteries of World War II
"Anyone interested in twists of fate should find this book fascinating." --Library Journal

Feuding Allies
"A valuable resource . . . highly recommended."--Booklist

* A bloc of hard-core American Nazis carries out elaborate plans to sabotage war efforts and keep the United States neutral.
* A wily Japanese "tailor" single-handedly steals the secrets to the United States Gray Code.
* A French boy and his "blind" music teacher penetrate, in broad daylight, the German forbidden zone at Port-en-Bessein.

Just beneath the surface of the legendary events of World War II lurks a vast, shadowy, high-stakes realm of espionage and intelligence, where the most successful operations are the ones we've never heard about . . . until now. With his trademark blend of dynamic storytelling and meticulous detail, William Breuer reveals seventy clandestine operations that affected the course of the war. Vivid and fast-paced, this far-reaching treasury of vanishing spies, mysterious kidnappings, and bizarre subplots is a unique and riveting addition to the World War II literature.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Segunda Guerra Mundial
• William Breuer
• Military
• World War II
• History
• Seconde Guerre mondiale

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2000
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780471674078
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Undercover Tales
of World War II
Also by William B. Breuer
An American Saga
Bloody Clash at Sadzot
Captain Cool
They Jumped at Midnight
Drop Zone Sicily
Agony at Anzio
Hitler s Fortress Cherbourg
Death of a Nazi Army
Operation Torch
Storming Hitler s Rhine
Retaking the Philippines
Nazi Spies in America
Devil Boats
Operation Dragoon
The Secret War with Germany
Hitler s Undercover War
Sea Wolf
Geronimo!
Hoodwinking Hitler
Race to the Moon
J. Edgar Hoover and His G-Men
The Great Raid on Cabanatuan
MacArthur s Undercover War
Feuding Allies
Shadow Warriors
War and American Women
Unexplained Mysteries of World War II
Vendetta! Castro and the Kennedy Brothers
Undercover Tales of World War II
William B. Breuer
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Copyright 1999 by William B. Breuer. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc. Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone]. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley Sons, Inc., 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158-0012, [phone], fax [phone], E-Mail: [e-mail].
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Breuer, William B.
Undercover tales of World War II / William B. Breuer.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-471-37944-1 (paper)
1. World War, 1939-1945-Secret service. 2. Espionage-
History-20th century. I. Title.
D810.S7B685 1999
940.54 86-dc21
98-24119
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedicated to Four-star General Edwin H. Burba, Jr. (Ret.), who fought with great courage and distinction as a junior officer in Vietnam, was seriously wounded, yet rose to the top in his profession
Contents
Author s Note
Part One-A Gathering Tempest
Black-Bag Jobs and Madam X
Hitler s Crony a U.S. Secret Agent
Me No Here, No Movies!
Hitler s Mystery Spy in London
Stealing a Supersecret Bombsight
Espionage Target: The Panama Canal
The Gestapo Comes to New York
Practicing Nazi Psychology in the United States
A Gentleman Farmer Flies to London
An Unsportsmanlike Murder Scheme
Part Two-Outbreak of War
Take Possession of the [British Captives]
Agent X Conspires with the Pope
The Spy Was a Clip Artist
Denmark s Patriotic Burglar
Deceit in the Desert
The Jewish Pal of the Nazis
The FBI Undercover in South America
War of Nerves against England
The F hrer s Concrete Crocodiles
Tuned in to the Luftwaffe
Hosting a Boy Scout Official
We Came to Blow Up America!
The Bogus Traitor of Flekkefjord
A One-Man Cloak-and-Dagger Agency
Part Three-Conflict Spreads to the Pacific
One Briton s Revenge
Spies inside a U.S. Embassy
The Evangelists of New York Harbor
Confrontation at a Montana Airport
Clandestine Payoffs in Mexico
Urgent: Hide the Suez Canal
A Covert Cruise in the Pacific
Four Frogmen against Two Battleships
The Superspy at Pearl Harbor
An American Turncoat in Washington
Part Four-The Turning Tide
The World s Richest Spymaster
The Plot to Blow Up the Pan Am Clipper
Lady Luck Flies with the F hrer
Rommel s Secret Informant
The Scientist Who Knew Too Much
The Dogs of Torigni
Conspiracy in Casablanca
Outfoxing the Desert Fox
Smuggling Two Men out of Morocco
The Creeps and the Atomic Scientists
Part Five-Beginning of the End
The Spy Who Refused to Die
Blowing Up a Locomotive Works
The Mystery Man of Algiers
Top Secret: Parachuting Mules
America s Fifteen Thousand Secret Snoopers
Coercing Surrender of the Italian Fleet
Deception Role for the Panjandrum
Bedeviling the Gestapo in Toulouse
An X-Craft Calls on the Tirpitz
A French Boy and His Music Teacher
An Atomic Alert on New Year s Eve
Ghost Voices over Europe
Close Call in a Secret Room
Masking the Chicago Skyline
Part Six-The Lights Go On Again
A U.S. Colonel s Private Airline
Kidnapping a German General
Blasting a Japanese Headquarters
Mad Dash in an Explosive-Laden Car
A Special Job for Scarface Otto
Sneaking onto Utah Beach
X2 Agents in Cherbourg
Covert Targets: Germany s Atomic Scientists
Alias Gregor and Igor
Dodging the Gestapo in the Ruhr
A Murder Job for Two Specialists
T Force Hunts for Chemical Weapons

Notes and Sources
Index
Author s Note
Hardly had the ink dried after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles that officially concluded World War I on June 28, 1919, than leaders of several nations began preparing for World War II.
Only months after Versailles, a flamboyant politician in Italy, Benito Mussolini, created an antidemocratic party, Fasci di Combattimento, dressed its members in black shirts, and seized control of the weak government two years later. Hoping to revive the glories of ancient Rome by expanding the Italian empire, Mussolini began building a modern army, navy, and air force.
Versailles restricted Germany to a Reichswehr (army) of only one hundred thousand civilian volunteers and prohibited it from having airplanes or tanks. In 1921, efforts were launched to circumvent these restraints. Instead of civilian volunteers, the ranks were filled with the cream of the wartime officer corps. A covert agreement was reached with the Soviet Union to manufacture tanks, aircraft, artillery, shells, and even poison gas for the Reichswehr.
In the late 1920s Japanese warlords, who had become the nation s dominant force, drew up the Tanaka Memorial, a grand design for widespread conquest in the Pacific and an eventual invasion of the United States.
Throughout the 1930s and during the six years of World War II, global powers sought to gain military, political, economic, and psychological advantage by a deluge of clandestine maneuvers, only some of which took place on the battlefield, but often reacted decisively on it. These secret actions involved spies, saboteurs, propagandists, traitors, thefts of plans, bribes, traps, code breaking, and plots to kidnap or murder persons in high places.
Most of these surreptitious events would have been rejected by Hollywood film producers as implausible-yet they happened, and they helped to shape the outcome of World War II.
During the past several years I have collected research materials from a wide variety of sources to re-create the intriguing, often baffling episodes that are told, generally in chronological order, in this book. Among these sources were personal and telephone interviews with participants or those who had been connected with a secret activity, official archives, media accounts, books and articles by responsible authors, declassified documents, and several amateur history buffs who have gathered a wealth of World War II information as a hobby.
WILLIAM B. BREUER
Chilhowee Mountain,
Tennessee
August 1998
Part One

A Gathering Tempest

Black-Bag Jobs and Madam X
As far as the outside world was concerned, the United States and Japan appeared to be on the friendliest of terms in the early 1930s. The two nations exchanged cultural missions, and a team of baseball all-stars from the United States, headed by the legendary Babe Ruth, each year played a series of exhibition games in Japan to packed stadiums. Behind the scenes, however, an ongoing undeclared war of wits between competing naval intelligence codebreakers was raging relentlessly.
In February 1933 a Japanese tailor, smiling and bowing graciously, called at the U.S. consulate at Kobe and explained that as a gesture of friendship between the two nations, he would be most happy to provide handmade suits at a quite low cost to those assigned to the diplomatic staff. After displaying cloth samples, the tailor took orders from several of the Americans, who knew a great value when they saw one.
In the weeks ahead, the pleasant, convivial tailor was a frequent visitor to the consulate, taking orders for suits and even doing odd jobs for the staff. He gained the Americans total trust and no longer had to show his special pass to the guard at the front door. He even had free run of an office that contained a safe, which, he learned by judicious inquiry, held a secret U.S. code.
Actually, the tailor belonged to the kempeitai, Japan s secret police force. Cagey but cautious, he bribed a junior member of the consulate staff to borrow the key to the safe, after which the spy had a wax imprint made. From this imprint a key was fashioned.
On a Saturday night in late April 1933, when the tailor knew that the consul and a few of his staffers would be at a local geisha house, a squad of kempeitai men, thoroughly briefed in advance and provided with a detailed drawing of the consulate floor plan, pulled a black-bag job, as a surreptitious entry is called in the espionage business. With ease, they pried open the office door, used the spy s key to open the safe, and removed a book containing the U.S. State Department s Gray Code.
Like a well-oiled machine, the burglars rapidly photographed each page, then replaced the book in the safe, being exceptionally careful to put it precisely where it had been lying. Then the intruders sneaked out of th