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This thrilling account of WWII espionage by the former French secret service chief chronicles an Allied spy’s actions in the German Cipher Office. A spy for the French Secret Service during World War II, Hans-Thilo Schmidt was embedded in the nerve center of the Third Reich. From deep within Hitler’s most sensitive operations, Schmidt created an intelligence network between France, Poland, and England. In The Spy in Hitler’s Inner Circle, France’s former secret service chief, Paul Paillole, offers a revealing chronicle of how Schmidt helped the Allies infiltrate German agencies and crack their encryption system, the Enigma machine. Paillole details how Schmidt delivered intelligence to France right from the source of the German Cipher Office. Revealed here are the most secret aspects of the so-called war of numbers that led to Alan Turing’s historic codebreaking achievement at Bletchley Park. From information about Germany’s rearmament and the reoccupation of the Rhineland to fundamental technical intelligence about the Enigma machine, Schmidt’s contributions were key to the Allied victory in the intelligence war.
Spies, secret messages, and military intelligence have fascinated readers for centuries but never more than today, when terrorists threaten America and society depends so heavily on communications. Much of what was known about communications intelligence came first from David Kahn's pathbreaking book, The Codebreakers. Kahn, considered the dean of
Here is the ultimate inside history of twentieth-century intelligence gathering and covert activity. Unrivalled in its scope and as readable as any spy novel, A Century of Spies travels from tsarist Russia and the earliest days of the British Secret Service to the crises and uncertainties of today's post-Cold War world, offering an unsurpassed overview of the role of modern intelligence in every part of the globe. From spies and secret agents to the latest high-tech wizardry in signals and imagery surveillance, it provides fascinating, in-depth coverage of important operations of United States, British, Russian, Israeli, Chinese, German, and French intelligence services, and much more. All t...
Winner of an Outstanding Academic Title Award from CHOICE MagazineMost available cryptology books primarily focus on either mathematics or history. Breaking this mold, Secret History: The Story of Cryptology gives a thorough yet accessible treatment of both the mathematics and history of cryptology. Requiring minimal mathematical prerequisites, the
The New York Times Bestseller by the Author of A Man Called Intrepid Ideal for fans of Nancy Wake, Virginia Hall, The Last Goodnight by Howard Blum, The Woman Who Smashed Codes, The Wolves at the Door by Judith Pearson, and similar works Shares the story of Vera Atkins, legendary spy and holder of the Legion of Honor Written by William Stevenson, the only person whom she trusted to write her biography She was stunning. She was ruthless. She was brilliant and had a will of iron. Born Vera Maria Rosenberg in Bucharest, she became Vera Atkins. William Stphenson, the spymaster who would later be known as “Intrepid”, recruited her when she was twenty-three. Vera spent most of the 1930s runnin...
This book examines the nature of the secret services and the role of the secret police in Britain, Russia, and Germany during the interwar years. It traces the growth of the secret services and police in these countries, indicating how they differed in their development. The SIS (MI6), MI5 and Special Branch in England appeared more like a Gentleman’s Club from Eton and Oxbridge, especially when compared to the German Gestapo, SS-SD, and Abwehr in Germany, and the Cheka, GPU, NKVD and KGB in Stalinist Russia. The British were short of money and resources, while the Germans were interested in establishing their services, and the Soviet Union poured in money, but with the emphasis on internal repression. It was the emerging signals of another World War which defined the shapes of their secret services, which later had long-term consequences for the Cold War.
Everyone knows the story of Enigma and secret codebreaking in the Second World War: the triumph of Bletchley Park over world-class cipher technology. Except that excellence in codebreaking was nearly betrayed by incompetence in codemaking. German codebreakers were effective and Allied codes and ciphers were weak. With both sides reading each other's codes, the biggest secret of all – that the codes had been broken – was now at risk. Sooner or later, on one side or the other, the cipher failures would become known, the systems would be changed and the most valuable source of intelligence would dry up. Were it not for obstinacy, overconfidence and ostrichism. On both sides. The Germans demanded that the traitors be rooted out; the British stifled cipher questions beneath a tangle of committees. The codebreakers' contest became a struggle to lose the cipher war. From the very outset, the Enigma secret was one of treachery, betrayal and deception. This is the story of the people who fought behind the scenes for cipher security – and of the Enigma traitors.
The complete story of how the German Enigma codes were broken. Perfect for fans of THE IMITATION GAME, the new film on Alan Turing's Enigma code, starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Breaking the German Enigma codes was not only about brilliant mathematicians and professors at Bletchley Park. There is another aspect of the story which it is only now possible to tell. It takes in the exploits of spies, naval officers and ordinary British seamen who risked, and in some cases lost, their lives snatching the vital Enigma codebooks from under the noses of Nazi officials and from sinking German ships and submarines. This book tells the whole Enigma story: its original invention and use by German forces and how it was the Poles who first cracked - and passed on to the British - the key to the German airforce Enigma. The more complicated German Navy Enigma appeared to them to be unbreakable.
This intriguing and revelatory history of cryptology ranges from the early days of code-making and code-breaking in ancient Egypt, Sparta, and Rome to the present day when it has slipped beyond the tight control of governments and now affects all our lives whenever we use our cell phones or connect to the internet. Subjects covered here include Mary Queen of Scots' cryptic messages when she was plotting against her cousin Elizabeth I; the codes used by George Washington for military and political purposes; and code-breaking during World Wars I and II, including the Enigma Machine. Those who invent codes and those who break them are fascinating characters. This is their story.
December, 1932 In the bathroom of a Belgian hotel, a French spymaster photographs top-secret documents – the operating instructions of the cipher machine, Enigma. A few weeks later a mathematician in Warsaw begins to decipher the coded communications of the Third Reich and lays the foundations for the code-breaking operation at Bletchley Park. The co-operation between France, Britain and Poland is given the cover-name 'X, Y & Z'. December, 1942 It is the middle of World War Two. The Polish code-breakers have risked their lives to continue their work inside Vichy France, even as an uncertain future faces their homeland. Now they are on the run from the Gestapo. People who know the Enigma secret are not supposed to be in the combat zone, so MI6 devises a plan to exfiltrate them. If it goes wrong, if they are caught, the consequences could be catastrophic for the Allies. Based on original research and newly released documents, X, Y & Z is the exhilarating story of those who risked their lives to protect the greatest secret of World War Two.