The Secret War audiobook

The Lloyd Report on German oil resources estimated that by December 1940 the aerial bombing campaign had achieved a 15% cut in German oil availability. This would have been news to the Nazi leadership, who at the time were unaware that the allies were engaged in a systematic bombing campaign. Intelligence on the state of the German economy, as Max Hastings discusses in The Secret War was one of the weakest areas, little helped by the all-important interception and decryption of Axis communications. Additionally, the RAF was the agency which probably had the weakest use of intelligence.The other area of allied espionage which was lacking was ‘humint’ – intelligence derived from human sources i.e. spies and informants in Germany. Hastings outlines how the Russians were so much more effective in harnessing dissidents in Germany, mostly through ideological commitment to the Communist cause. Despite this, however, this magisterial history of espionage, cryptology and resistance (emphasis on the first two) firmly presents the allied intelligence as far more effective. Britain in particular benefitted considerably from its ability to extend its pool of talent beyond the military and established intelligence services for the duration, recruiting a range of brilliant talent from academic institutions. Additionally, the culture of openness meant that the results of intelligence were able to be honestly reported to the military and politicians. Although they did not always take the notice they should have there were none of the aberrations of the Soviet and Nazi leadership, where unpalatable truths had to be suppressed, or in the instance of events such as the many predictions of Barbarossa, willfully ignored.Max Hastings book is sweeping, without being encyclopedic. As befitting a veteran journalist and author of over twenty books, his prose is well written without being intrusive and the research is broad, encompassing secondary works, memoirs and research in the Russian archives. Hastings applies a sensible amount of skepticism to the almost compulsive mix of fact and fiction in most of the spies accounts. He also avoids the temptation to become enthralled by the drama and derring do, and repeatedly steps back to look at how much realistic operational or strategic benefit was derived. The answer usually was not that much. He is especially dismissive of much of the sabotage and ‘behind the lines’ activity of OSS and SOE. Hastings finds many shortcomings of MI6, and is very dismissive of its head Stewart Menzies. He relates how someone who knew him at school could not believe “‘how so unbelievably stupid a man could have ended up in such a position”. The main reason MI6 had any credibility whatsoever was the fact that the Ultra sigint programme was under its control, although Hastings gives little credit to Menzies for its success. He offers a balanced view of the value of Ultra as well. Many historians have allowed themselves to wax superlative about Bletchley Park, making claims such as that it was the single most important breakthrough in winning the war. Hastings points out how fitful its beginning was, and “that the signals intelligence war, certainly in its early stages, was less lopsided in the Allies’ favour than popular mythology suggests”. A significant theme is that raw sigint wasn’t enough on its own. Often doubts developed about its apparent flaws when correct information was later rendered irrelevant when individuals like Hitler changed their mind. Additionally, even timely information about events such as the impending invasion of Crete failed to make a difference to events. Then of course all the intel in the world was valueless if there was insufficient force to take advantage of it. Hastings reminds us, for example that “it is quite mistaken to view the Battle of the Atlantic exclusively as a struggle between Bletchley and the B-Dienst – here, as everywhere else, hard power was vital”. There are some areas that receive surprisingly little coverage – for example the “Double Cross” programme and the pre-D Day deception, however Hastings argues that they have been well covered elsewhere. A lot of the material on the Soviet side will be fresh for most general readers, and the limited Japanese information can be attributed to the lack of primary research as he points out. This book provides a fresh, well written and balanced assessment of the Secret War, and is highly recommended..

Shelves-full of history books have been written about the triumphs of Allied intelligence in World War II. The Ultra Secret. The Man Who Never Was. Operation Mincemeat. Agent Zigag. Double Cross. A Man Called Intrepid. I’ve read all these and more. (There are hundreds more.) Now comes British journalist and historian Max Hastings with a revisionist view in The Secret War. With his eyes focused on the harsh realities of that all-consuming conflict, Hastings debunks the myths that inspired these books and takes their exaggerations down a peg with a long-lacking sense of perspective. The effect is sobering. This is revisionist history at its best. Anyone who seeks to understand how World War II was really waged should read this book without delay.Revisionist history: myths debunkedHastings reviews some of the many fanciful reports that have come out over the years about British and American espionage in World War II. For example, he savages William Stevenson’s self-aggrandizing tale in A Man Called Intrepid, calling the book “wildly fanciful.” Among the more obvious lies in Stevenson’s book is the fact that no one but he himself ever called himself Intrepid. And, as Hastings makes clear, Stevenson’s work coordinating British intelligence in the United States had virtually no impact whatsoever on the war.He is less harsh in his oblique references to other books, but he makes clear that the many bestselling titles exaggerate the importance of the spies they made famous. Even the legendary Alan Turing comes under the microscope: Hastings asserts that another young mathematical genius who also worked at Bletchley Park was equally important in cracking the Enigma Code. More significantly, that celebrated breakthrough itself made less of a contribution to the Allied victory than other successes in deciphering Axis codes. (He cites in particular the German and Japanese naval codes.) “Bletchley was an increasingly important weapon,” Hastings notes, “but it was not a magic sword.”Signals versus human intelligenceThe overarching theme in The Secret War is the primacy of signals intelligence. Hastings contends that breakthroughs in deciphering codes by the British, Russians, and Americans contributed far more decisively to the successful outcome of the war than any missions undertaken by spies. And, except in Russia from 1943 onward, the efforts of Resistance movements in Europe were even less significant (although they played a large role in fostering popular morale). There is one possible exception, the work of the improbably colorful agents portrayed in Ben McIntyre’s Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies. But even this undeniable success story has to be tempered by the realization that signals intelligence played a large role in setting up and supporting the operation. On all sides, enormous numbers of people were engaged in listening to, decoding, interpreting, and reporting on intelligence gained by radio.However, “One of the themes in this book is that the signals intelligence war, certainly in its early stages, was less lopsided in the Allies’ favor than popular mythology suggests.”How much did secret intelligence actually contribute to the war’s outcome?Viewing the big picture, Hastings is skeptical about the effectiveness of intelligence of any sort. As he notes, “Perhaps one-thousandth of 1 per cent of material garnered from secret sources by all the belligerents in World War II contributed to changing battlefield outcomes.” In the course of The Secret War, he cites just four strategically significant battles where intelligence turned the tide: the North Atlantic war under the sea, the American victory over the Japanese at Midway, the unexpected Russian offensive at Kursk, and the misdirection about the Allied landing at Normandy rather than the Pas de Calais.Viewed from 30,000 feet and the passage of more than seventy years, “nowhere in the world was intelligence wisely managed and accessed.” Though Stalin and Hitler were both notoriously disdainful of secret intelligence, as was the Japanese military, the Americans and the British also failed to make genuinely effective use of the information turned up by their spies and code-breakers.Other revelationsPerhaps understandably, in writing about Allied intelligence in the war, American and British authors have focused on the work of MI6, MI5, the OSS, and the enormous team of academics at Bletchley Park. However, Hastings makes clear that the Soviet Union was far more successful in uncovering actionable espionage than either of its chief Western Allies. “Some Russian deceptions,” he writes, “dwarf those of the British and Americans.” Hastings’ account of Stalin’s intelligence operations is particularly revealing. So, too, is his skeptical exploration of both German and Japanese secret intelligence. The FBI also comes under fire: “All intelligence services seek to promote factional interests and inflate their own achievements, but the wartime FBI carried this practice to manic lengths . . . The FBI’s incompetence was astonishing.”About the authorMax Hastings is a prominent British journalist, editor, historian, and author. He has served as editor-in-chief of the Daily Standard and The Daily Telegraph and has presented historical documentaries on the BBC.

Hastings' magisterial and epic overview of the secret war which underlaid the Second World War is a tremendous and essential single volume with much in it for the general reader as well as for those with greater knowledge.He examines, with typical fluency and great style, the global conflict with special emphasis on codebreakers, spies and guerillas.I was particularly pleased to see the emphasis given to German successes in reading British codes, an area often overlooked.As Hastings puts it: "Hitler's codebreakers, especially in the first half of the war, could claim some important successes. In North Africa until June 1942, Rommel knew as much about the British Eighth Army as his enemies knew about the Afrika Korps, and the latter’s commander used his information better."And he examines the role played, initially by British decrypts of Enigma code traffic and later - and perhaps more importantly - of German teleprinter systems by a team which included Alan Turing but also other brilliant minds, Gordon Welshman, Bill Tutte, Max Newman and the man who designed Colossus, arguably the world's first digital computer, the remarkable Tommy Flowers.His assessment of the work of Bletchley Park is clear:"While the Third Reich executed wholesale spies, traitors and saboteurs who threatened its security, its functionaries remained insistently oblivious of the most deadly threat of all – a few hundred tweedy, bespectacled young English academics labouring in drab suburban Bedfordshire. The only credible explanation is hubris: an institutional unwillingness to believe that their Anglo-Saxon enemies, whom they so often humbled on the battlefield, could be so clever."The extent of Soviet espionage is laid out in its full panoply, from the many British and American agents who facilitated Stalin with the West's atomic secrets to the remarkable "double cross" system which allowed Operation Monastery to effectively derail Hitler's Stalingrad offensive.Hastings' findings are stark: signals intelligence was far more important in this conflict than human intelligence - setting the scene for the primacy of electronic warfare in the modern world; intelligence is not a substitute for intelligent leadership, fighting skill or numbers on the battlefield; and that totalitarian regimes were, by their very natures, always handicapped."The democracies," he writes, "handled intelligence better than the dictatorships – including that of Stalin – because they understood the merit of truth, objective assessment of evidence, not as a virtue, but as a weapon of war."This is a fine work and an important addition to the history of secret warfare.

Max Hastings’ courage in tackling a one-volume history of the covert battles of the Second World War as his first foray into the world of intelligence is beyond doubt. To a large extent he succeeds. His usual mix of anecdote and overview, combined with even-handed treatment of the main participants, produces an accessible introduction to the subject. He does not attempt to replicate the libraries already written on, for example, the Cambridge Five or the workings of Bletchley Park but looks instead at their impact on the war. Here he repeatedly and validly makes the point that the value of intelligence is not in its acquisition but in its use. First the nugget of relevant truth must be sorted from the slag heap of gossip and misinformation – bearing in mind that a true report when written may not be by the time it is read. Then it must be fitted into a coherent picture and believed by the decision-makers. Finally there must be the capacity for action. There is no point in knowing when, where and how your enemy will attack if all you can do is send empty good wishes or – worse still – inadequate or wrong reinforcements.He makes the point that the British and Americans were more effective overall than their enemies not because they were any better at gaining intelligence but because they were less bad at managing and exploiting it.The book’s main weakness is flagged in its subtitle. Hastings is interested in spies, saboteurs and signals (specifically cryptography). Other sources of physical intelligence (reconnaissance, captured documents and equipment) and human intelligence (defectors, refugees and prisoners-of-war) get a nod in passing but almost no serious consideration. The Royal Navy’s astonishing meld of service and academic skills in the Joint Services Topographical Department isn’t mentioned at all. A riveting story then – but not quite the whole story.

The Secret War by Max Hastings is a most thorough and detailed chronicle of code breaking, spying and sabotage activities behind enemy lines in all the theatres of the Second World War. Beyond the odd cursory mention, the better-known stories of the 'secret war,' Fortitude, Mincemeat, Eddie Chapman are not covered, having been dealt with in greater detail elsewhere but the work at Bletchley Park is rightly celebrated as being central to the Allies eventual victory.Fascinatingly, Hastings tells of several very important instances where first-class intelligence sources were ignored, leading to catastrophe. Stalin's refusal to believe that Hitler was about to attack the USSR in June 1941 is fairly well known but I wasn't aware that the US had plenty of warning about the impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour but squabbles between the US Army and US Navy meant that this went unheeded. Failure to accurately interpret intercepted signals data resulted in the failure at Arnhem and the initial defeat during the Battle of the Bulge.There is a good deal of time and space devoted to wars of words between different Allied countries intelligence communities and even between various parts of an individual country's spooks. MI6, for example, disliked SOE and various branches of the US armed forces had little time for the OSS. And, this was news to me, the Abwehr, Germany's foreign intelligence service, was incompetent!Having written a (very short) World War Two non-fiction book, I am aware of the demands that painstaking research makes on an author. Max Hastings undertook months and months of such work, all of it highly relevant and the result is a superb, well-written and thrilling history of a crucial part of the greatest ever conflict.David Lowther. Author of The Blue Pencil, Liberating Belsen and Two Families at War, all published by Sacristy Press.

The Secret War by Max Hastings is an extremely detailed look at the ways all the key belligerents in World War II went about trying to understand what their enemies (and friends in the case of Russia) were doing. This was achieved by spies, signals intelligence, human intelligence and the like. We hear about it all. From the well-known, like Bletchley Park’s code breakers, to much more obscure fare the reader is walked through in painstaking detail all the nuances of the secret war. It must be stressed that the book is excessive at times. Hastings’ writing philosophy appears to be ‘why give one example when three will do?’. But, overall, The Secret War provides the sort of one-stop-shop, ‘everything you might want to know’, that readers have come to associate with this author, all delivered in his easy, journalistic style. In other words: if you are really interested in this stuff this is a great read, but the level of detail would likely be overwhelming to those without a keen interest in the subject matter. A key device Hastings uses to try and keep his readers on track through the many, many examples and digressions is the repetition of a few key themes. These are not just helpful in tying the book together but ensure the reader develops a solid understanding of what intelligence is and is not good for. It is this, probably more than the sordid tales and Bond-like escapades, that I will remember long from now.Let’s take the author’s central mantra: “many books about wartime intelligence focus on what spies or code-breakers found out. The only question that matters, however, is how far secret knowledge changed outcomes”. Throughout the book Hastings applies this test to decide whether some daring mission was worth it. As we hear about Russian agent Anotoli Gourevitch: “in his memoirs, [he] touches on a weakness in his own training … he was exhaustively instructed in techniques – secret inks, passwords for rendezvous and suchlike. No matching effort, however, was expended upon explaining the purpose of his mission’. As Hastings goes on to point out (and reiterates many times again): “for many secret agents the management and perils of daily existence consumed a lion’s share of their energies, often overwhelming the function that mattered – the acquisition of information of value to their service and its government”.Nowhere is this made clearer than in terms of human intelligence (humint). All sides in the war expended considerable resources managing and paying informants in the enemy camp (and, of course, in the case of the Russians, in their allies’ camps too). Yet all sides gained almost nothing of value from any of this. Individuals would pocket money and run, make up information or be arrested almost immediately, as seems to have happened to all Japanese spies landed in the continental United States.A second overarching theme resonating throughout the book was that intelligence only matters if senior leaders list to it. In the case of humint, even incredible sources like the Russian agent Richard Sorge, viewed by the Japanese (incredibly) as a German spy because of his easy access to that embassy, could achieve little when any information deemed offensive to Stalin was simply not shown to him. The Germans and particularly the Japanese all seem to have fallen into the trap of dismissing intelligence that did not conform to their leaders’ whims, rendering even good intelligence worthless. The lesson the author draws from this, seemingly a powerful one at our present moment in time, is that authoritarian regimes are good only to stifle understanding of objective truth, which is ultimately to the detriment of all their citizens. The final message that resounds throughout the book is that intelligence is only useful when governments can do anything about it. For this reason, for all of Britain’s incredible code-breaking achievements in breaking enigma, this made little difference in 1941 because Britain just didn’t have the army, navy or air power to capitalise on their intelligence. Only by 1943 when the tide of war was turning could information be translated into advantage.These key messages are hammered home in this massive book, offering a refreshingly blunt look at the limitations as well as the glamour of the intelligence world. I learnt a raft about less familiar aspects of the war reading this book. For example, I had no knowledge of Bill Tutte, a cryptographer at Bletchley who helped break German teleprinter traffic (even harder than Enigma). Hastings stoutly advocates for Tutte’s, and many other individuals’, place in history alongside Alan Turing (indeed, Hastings’ comparative neglect of the latter can no doubt be seen as his attempt to re-balance the scales somewhat).The key issue with the book is its length. I thoroughly enjoyed reading much of the detail, yet I truly felt engulfed by it at times. There are copious quotations from intelligence reports at times which is unnecessary and breaks up the narrative. I found myself praying during some sections for Hastings’ distinctive, journalistic tone to re-emerge with an insightful point about what has just been said. It almost felt at times like reading the evidence behind the author’s assessment. Some is good; more can be bad. Perhaps burying 100 pages or so in an appendix would have helped the flow. The cast of characters is also colossal. I can’t help but feel that the author or his editors could have smoothed the journey for the reader by offering a few more hints (such as who a person is, added in parenthesis) when less familiar individuals re-surface after fifty pages out of the reader’s mind. This is especially true in discussions of the myriad spies and humint sources working for Russia as part of the ‘Lucy’ ring or the Red Orchestra and so on. The cast of these groups is positively kaleidoscopic at times.Despite my confusion at times and the occasional murmur of boredom reading through a particularly dense section, I am glad this book exists and very glad I read it. Partly as a window onto many new aspects of the war, but mostly because the book does not shy away from asking hard questions about whether, in the end, intelligence – however incredibly acquired – was valuable to the war effort. This is a fascinating but undoubtedly challenging book.

I really loved this book - a series of vignettes about HUMINT and SIGINT operations by all the major powers in WWII. Would make a great series ala Turn. Highly recommend the audiobook version!

This is a fascinating and very well written book about a much neglected aspect of the second world war: intelligence. Like all Max Hastings books it is readable and very enjoyable, well-paced, and doesn't shy away from drawing conclusions and making hard judgements. Most of these were quite convincing. The balance between analysis, outlining the broad sweep of events, and recounting more detailed and specific anecdotes is about right.I was particularly struck by how much of the intelligence effort on all sides was farcical, futile and contributed little or nothing to the outcome of the war, and by the paranoid fervency of the dictatorships, especially the Soviet Union, in rejecting much of what they discovered as misinformation and enemy conspiracy. Part of what made the book so appealing to me is how these aspects of the gathering and use of intelligence are really nothing more than reflections of human nature. This can be seen in virtually every chapter, and many of the anecdotes that are included are a delight to read.Some of the main takeaways for me were:- No intelligence effort reduced the need for the enemy to be defeated on land or sea, so intelligence was only as useful as the ability of a nation to exploit it by force of arms.- Signals intelligence, especially the work done at Bletchley Park, made by far the greatest contribution to allied victory, and particularly at sea. The vast majority of human intelligence and guerrilla action in the war contributed little to the overall outcome.- The contribution of guerrilla and resistance was moral rather than material; it made possible the resurrection of self-respect in occupied societies.- The nations that gathered and used information best in the Second World War were those committed to intellectual honesty and the pursuit of truth. The democracies tended to see truth as a virtue while the dictatorships, including the Soviet Union, did not. The dictatorships tended to reject any intelligence that didn't fit with their preconceived ideas.- The more trusting and open nature of western democracies made them more vulnerable to traitors like the Cambridge 5, but this is infinitely preferable to the terror, paranoia, oppression, suspicion and near madness that characterised the Soviet Union.Hastings is rightly regarded as one of the best contemporary popular military historians, and this book shows why. He has provided much food for thought, and his well considered analysis is as stimulating as ever.

Really interesting as it debunks some of the romantic notions that people have picked up about the world of spies and guerrilla fighters: humit especially with all of its follies and amature carrying on.It is especially hard on SOE and OSS, which were very expensive and not very effective. Found it funny that OSS was made up of mainly wealthy kids and corporate types, who seemed to be more interested in liberating colonial peoples and over throwing governments run by dictators they didn't like than dealing any blows to our enemies...one thing that the CIA seemed to have adopted from them in its less reputable days.The truth of this hard look at intelligence is that no matter how good it is it will never replace hard power, which in the end though costly in lives and treasure will always out even without intel. It does give kudos to the unknown men and women that actually provided assistance to our war effort, as it seems that those who receive laurels and public acclaim are often less deserving than those who go unsung. The codebreakers seemed to have done more toward the war effort than any other group, when they found commanders willing to consider their information...they were hampered by lack of funding and generally thought little of often having to create their own resources while millions were being spent to keep spies living the high life and buying information from shady sources. The wars within departments while other books refer to them at times were very interesting, things like the (our) Navy keeping active intel from Chennault's 14th Air Force which would have helped them in targeting, information he would eventually get from the Brits is kind of worrying.It seems that the only group who managed to set up an really good spy network were the Russians who because of romantic notions both Americans and British embraced about the glorious concept of communism allowed them to infiltrate the highest level of MI6 and our intelligent services including our nuclear program, while the programs of the Germans, Japanese, British, French and Americans were quite laughable.Very interesting read with a good overview of the games we played...one hopes we have learned something valuable in the interium.

I think that this Book is a very respectful to its subject, which has been excessively written about, in both fact and fiction. The author Max Hastings covers all sides and how the Secret War started before the beginning of WW2; how it lead in to the Cold War starting soon after. The way it’s written is absolutely amazing, it covers every aspect of Secret Intelligence and Wartime Espionage; Counter Espionage. The way it’s written is very similar to a novel which makes an enthralling read. Very highly recommended.

Whether you agree with Hastings' view of history or not, he does accumulate and present a prodigious amount of facts to allow us to make our own judgement. Without him our bistory would be a poorer place.

Successful and Entertaining Multi-layered history of WWII spyingMax Hastings’ accomplishment is to write successfully and entertainingly a multi-layered history and assessment of World War II spying by the major combatants. Each nation brought its own strengths and weaknesses to the task of wartime

Max Hastings is one of the most notable historians of the World Wars working today, since the passing of John Keegan. He has written good books on WW1, WW2, and a host of other subjects. I heard about this book in 2016 but was persuaded to read it after visiting the exhibit on "The Secret War" at the Imperial War Museum in London, which I believe he was involved in.The intent of this book is to place the "secret war" including human intelligence, signal intelligence, partisan forces, and various related context into the broader context of WW2 to examine more systematically the role it place in the conduct and outcome of the war. It is not intended as a definitive of a specific war among secret agents, code breakers, or the like, although vignettes along that line creep into the narrative. Everybody has read something about these topics but they are seldom integrated into the broader story of the war.Hastings is pursuing a broad agenda, spanning all the major combatants, multiple agencies within the governmental structure of the combatants, multiple topics about the nature of intelligence gathering and spying, highly publicized accounts, both based in fact (ultra) and fiction (James Bond style super spies). While there is the general distinction between Axis and Allies, Hastings tells a richer story in which all of the major actors can be paired off against each other at some point (including inter-agency conflicts). Try drawing out all the parties in a network chart. On top of all of this are the grand characters whose lives motivate movies (Alan Turing for example). To make things even more complicated, some of the actors got much better at their craft as the war went on. Others did not care since they had either already lost or else had overwhelming strength.I don't want to give anything away - not a big threat in a complex narrative like this. Most everybody will know some of what Hastings presents. I doubt many will know all of it. This is a very good book for providing a big picture view of a dimension of war that has only grown in importance since 1945.What are Hasting's conclusions? Was the secret war important? Absolutely - intelligence helped to determine the overall course of the war and was extraordinarily important in some areas.Were these activities conclusive? Did they determine the war's outcomes? Probably not, although splitting all the relevant hairs in arguing this would be a good example of post hoc time wasting. Intelligence was influential, but overall military and economic capabilities, although with consistent and sound leadership, were arguably more important. What about human intelligence versus signal intelligence? The British code breakers arguably made the greatest contribution to victory (although there are other important contenders). Hastings argues that the role of code breaking and technologically intensive approaches were more consequential than the work of human agents, although he is quick to note that the intelligence provided by spies may be of high quality but will not prove to be valuable if it is not used by leaders and if leaders lack the force on the ground at the right time to bring about a good conclusion. Hastings' interpretation of the role of intelligence in its varied forms is thoughtful and balanced. It rings very true to me and makes sense given the mammoth and highly complex nature of global war.Hastings is also on target in noting that whatever the impact of intelligence on WW2, his narrative concerns the childhood of the intelligence capabilities that grew to have a much greater role in the Cold War (when the costs of direct conflict grew prohibitive) and remain in the news, both real and fake, today. So this book provides an essential starting point for understanding how a huge dimension of modern political and military affairs developed after 1945.Regarding style, Hastings is always readable and witty and the book is not a difficult read.

I have always enjoyed Max Hastings books about World War II so came to this with interest. I honestly believe this to probably be his best work. It is an encompassing summation of WWII intelligence activity from the major belligerents, it praises and damns with equal measure. For me, what was refreshing was that it refuses to worship at the altar of intelligence. These days, the mythology of the intelligence agencies, both by their detractors and defenders are that they are all knowing and all wise. This book explodes that belief. It describes in detail the intelligence methods and their strengths and shortcomings. While rightly highlighting successes achieved by all the combatants, it also applies gravity to those successes. Hastings praises Bletchley Park but punches home that it was not all knowing and that it didn't read everything and even then both time and context meant a lot of material was never read. That it made mistakes. Yet he records that it was probably the most significant contribution of the British to overall victory. For me, Hastings has an immensely readable style, so despite the books 550 plus pages I was engrossed for its entire length. No mean feat these days where even interesting writing can not sustain my attention for long. But for this tome I was reading it for 30, 60, 90 minute stretches. His analytical, deep dive into all the major protaganists shed light on aspects of WWII that I was either unaware of or had not considered. The sheer systemic incompetence of both the Abwehr and Japanese foreign intelligence is laid bare. The ruthlessness and industrial sized exploitation of naïveté and promotion of treachery by the USSR against their putative allies. The rivalry and incompetence of the allied services particularly the questionable effectiveness of the OSS or MI6 during the conflict whereas the relative success of the SOE is discussed. His arguments for how intelligence should work in a democratic societies are a tonic for those who believe in democracy.I just found this book to be a delight. If you are at all interested in World War II this is indispensable reading. If you have views on Intelligence agencies then it is thought provoking. Cannot recommend enough.