3. David Bruce, interviews by and correspondence with author.
4. Reinhard Gehlen, interviews by author, conducted in 1972 at Gehlen's home after he retired as chief of West Germany's first spy agency; Gehlen, The Service, trans. David Irving (New York: World, 1972).
5. Charles Webster and Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939–1945 (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1961).
6. Goebbels, Diaries; Roger Manvel and Heinrich Fraenkel, The Canaris Conspiracy: The Secret Resistance to Hitler in the German Army (New York: McKay, 1969).
7. Terence O'Brien, The Moonlight War: The Story of Clandestine Operations in South-East Asia, 1944–5 (London: Collins, 1987); Charles Dunne, conversations with author. Charles Dunne was O'Brien's fellow pilot.
8. Dunne and Bill Simpson, conversations with author; Prince Svasti's intelligence reports in author's files.
CHAPTER 30: THE WHITE RABBIT HOPS INTO THE “GOVERNOR'S” DEN
1. Inga was honored for her heroic work only after controls over “nonexistent” SOE records were partly relaxed. Conversations and correspondence with the author.
2. The full Churchill interview was recounted by Yeo-Thomas to Vera Atkins. See Bruce Marshall, The White Rabbit, from the story told to him by F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952); Leo Marks and Wing Commander F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas, GC, MC, interviews by author.
CHAPTER 31: AN UNPLANNED AND GIGANTIC SPYGLASS
1. The French side of the stories of Watlington and Yeager is given in the Bulletin de l'Amicale des Maquis et des Anciens Réfractaires et Résistants A.S. de la Haute-Corrèze, 1992, published regularly under UNESCO Classification 34/Dossier de déclaration annuelle. After the war, Hartley Watlington dictated an account to his wife, Faith. His memoir was approved by security officials after he left out details of unconventional warfare that might help future postwar enemies, and this was published in the Bermuda Historical Quarterly in 1949. See also Chuck Yeager and Leo Janos, Yeager: An Autobiography (New York: Bantam Books, 1985). Yeager shot down a dozen enemy aircraft after Eisenhower agreed he could resume flying combat operations. He made a dramatic leap into supersonic aviation as a test pilot, and later flew tactical bombers in Asia and supervised military defenses in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
CHAPTER 32: ROLANDE
1. She recalled all this years later when she was being honored at the U.S. Special Forces base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
CHAPTER 33: TANGLED WEBS
1. Gustave Bertrand, Enigma, ou La plus grande énigme de la guerre 1939–1945 (Paris: Plon, 1973).
2. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 7, Road to Victory (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966) and The Second World War: A Complete History (New York: Henry Holt, 1989).
3. Bertrand in fact kept the ULTRA secret from the public until 1973, then published his version, Enigma, ou La plus grande énigme de la guerre. It was a break in the silence. Twenty years later, code breaker Hinsley was allowed to disclose that early reading of the German army and air force Enigma traffic staved off Britain's defeat in 1940. Paul Paillole in Notre espion chez Hitler described Hans-Thilo Schmidt as “our spy” but did not mention his contribution to successes that were made clear in F. H. Hinsley and Alan Stripp, eds., Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), a compilation of essays by those who worked at Bletchley. See also Paul Paillole, L'homme des services secrets: Entretiens avec Alain-Gilles Minella (Paris: Julliard, 1995).
4. The bicycle Semper is now in Israel's Holocaust Memorial Center. Marie-Rose donated it in 2000, when she was eighty-nine, fifteen years after Israel made her one of the Righteous Among Nations.
5. Sefton Delmer, Black Boomerang (New York: Viking, 1962); Delmer, interviews by author. Delmer said incriminating Political Warfare Executive documents were officially “destroyed” after 1945, adding, “These things don't happen by mistake.”
6. Justice Powell and Justice William Brennan, conversations and correspondence with author, 1984. The conversations took place at the U.S. Supreme Court.
CHAPTER 34: DEADLY MIND AND WIRELESS GAMES
1. Colby became a director of the CIA; Peggy Knight sank into obscurity, with no pension, as a London suburban housewife.
CHAPTER 35: “THE LIFE THAT I HAVE IS YOURS”
1. Jacques Deleporte, conversations with the author, 1945.
2. George Millar, interviews with author. See also Millar, Maquis (London: Heinemann, 1945). Somerset Maugham called him “the man of the future.”
3. Richard Hughes, conversations with the author. Hughes was memorialized in a spy novel by John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy (New York: Knopf, 1977).
4. Maurice J. Buckmaster, Specially Employed: The Story of British Aid to French Patriots of the Resistance (London: Batchworth, 1952) and They Fought Alone: The Story of British Agents in France (New York: W. W. Norton, 1958).
5. Jan Zurakowski and Colin Gubbins, conversations with author. See also Peter Wilkinson and Joan Bright Astley, Gubbins and SOE (London: Leo Cooper, 1993).
6. M. R. D. Foot, SOE in France, rev. ed. (Portland, Ore.: Frank Cass, 2003).
7. Otto John, televised interview with author, 1973.
8. Thornley's letter to Peter Wilkinson of SOE was not made public until the Gubbins biography Gubbins and SOE, heavily screened by the Foreign Office, was published in 1993.
9. After the war, Missie tried to obtain information about these broadcasts. According to her Berlin Diaries, all those responsible “denied any knowledge” of the broadcasts. The existence of a Controlling Officer of Deception and the London Control Directorate had not yet been disclosed. Even in 2002 the disclosure of a report written in 1947 for the British government on the Political Warfare Executive sheds no light on the mystery.
10. Gubbins, conversations and correspondence with author. See also Gubbins and SOE.
CHAPTER 36: “MY UNCLE IS LORD VANSITTART”
1. See Bulletin de l'Amicale des Maquis et des Anciens Réfractaires et Résistants A.S. de la Haute-Corrèze, 1992.
2. The German pilot's logbook is in the author's files.
3. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 7.
4. See also Pierre Tanant, Vercors, haut-lieu de France: Souvenirs (Grenoble: Arthaud, 1947), a detailed account by the maquis chief of staff.
5. General de Lattre de Tassigny signed the German surrender documents on behalf of France on May 8, 1945. He later commanded the French forces in Indochina, 1950–52, and after his death in 1952 was posthumously made a marshal of France.
6. General Stawell to Gubbins, quoted in M. J. Nurenberger, The Scared and the Doomed (Oakville, N.Y.: Mosaic Press, 1985).
CHAPTER 37: “BUT IF THE CAUSE BE NOT GOOD…”
1. See Carlo D'Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life (New York: Henry Holt, 2002).
2. See Williams, The Last Great Frenchman. This is a sympathetic biography by Lord Williams of Elvel, the deputy leader of the opposition in Britain's House of Lords.
3. A copy of Stratton's note to Donovan survived among Sir William Stephenson's papers.
4. William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act IV, Scene I.
CHAPTER 38: “IF THESE DO NOT DIE WELL, IT WILL BE A BLACK MATTER”
1. Noor Inayat Khan, Twenty Jataka Tales (London: George G. Harrap, 1939).
2. Alix d'Unienville wrote her recollections for her family.
3. Suspicions that Dericourt was a Soviet double agent had been nurtured by London Control. Yet later he was to fly in French Indochina for Aigle Azure, an airline also used for delivering Laotian paratroopers during the first Vietnam war. He later joined the CIA proprietory airline Air America, and was killed in Laos on November 20, 1962.
4. Martin Gilbert, Final Journey: The Fate of the Jews in Nazi Europe (London: Allen and Unwin, 1979); Johnson, Modern Times.
5. See The Natzweiler Trial, ed. Anthony M. Webb (London: Hodge, 1949). On the third week of June each year, there is a vigil held
at the camp. Libre Résistance, published by an association of French survivors who worked with SOE networks, contains information “lost” in London files, including those for eighty SOE circuits.
CHAPTER 39: A TERRIBLE IRONY
1. Sir William Stephenson, interviews with author. See Laquer, The Holocaust Encyclopedia.
2. Geoffrey Elliott, I Spy: The Secret Life of a British Agent (London: Little, Brown, 1998).
3. Philippe de Vomécourt, Who Lived to See the Day: France in Arms, 1940–1945 (London: Hutchinson, 1961).
4. Quoted in Alfred Steinberg, The Man from Missouri: The Life and Times of Harry S. Truman (New York: Putnam, 1962).
5. Yitshaq Ben-Ami, Years of Wrath, Days of Glory: Memoirs from the Irgun (New York: Robert Speller, 1982); Brigadier Ernest Benjamin, interviews by author.
6. Edmund de Rothschild, A Gilt-Edged Life: Memoir (London: John Murray, 1998); Rothschild's conversations with author, 2001; Jewish Brigade survivors, interviews by author.
7. Gubbins and SOE; Gubbins, correspondence with Sir William Stephenson and author; Mackenzie, The Secret History of SOE, which noted subterranean links between nine U.K. secret services.
8. Yerucham Amitai, conversations with author.
CHAPTER 40: UNSOLVED MYSTERIES
1. Putney, ULTRA and the Army Air Forces in World War II.
2. Mott, Intelligence Report, August 1988; Mott, interviews by author.
3. Holocaust Encyclopedia.
4. Gehlen, interview by author; Tom Bower, The Pledge Betrayed: America and Britain and the Denazification of Postwar Germany (New York: Doubleday, 1982).
CHAPTER 41: THE AMERICAN CONNECTION
1. Patricia Dawson Ward, The Threat of Peace: James F. Byrnes and the Council of Foreign Ministers, 1945–1946 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1979).
INDEX
Abwehr, 36
Aeroplane, 57
Afghanistan, 42, 44
AGD (Alastair Denniston), 76, 81, 83
Air Ministry, 47, 136, 202, 239
Alanbrooke, Alan Brooke, Field Marshal Viscount, 52–53
Aldrich, Winthrop, 131
Alien Office, 2, 190
Allatini, Hélène, 9, 27 American Black Chamber, The (Yardley), 169
American Red Cross, 41
Amery, Leopold S., 117
Amitai, Yerucham, 311
Anderson, Torr, 65
Anglo-German naval treaty, 23, 25
anti-Semitism
in Germany, 36
in Great Britain, 20, 25–26, 30–31, 45–46, 53, 57, 59, 206–207
Hitler and, 5–6, 13–14, 69
in Romania, 3–6
in United States, 206–207, 306
Antonescu, Ion, 163, 185
appeasement. See under Great Britain
Arctic convoys, 199–200
Arison, Ted, 308
Arnold, Matthew, 183
Artois, Guy d’, xvi, 324n4
Artois, Sonia d’, xvi, 324n4
Ashley, Wilfred, 1st Baron Mount Temple, 20–21
Aspidistra, 147
Astier de La Vigerie, Emmanuel d’, 229, 236
Astor, Vincent, 41, 131, 155
Asymptote, 241
Atkins, Henry (Heinrich Etkins, Vera's grandfather), 2, 3
Atkins, Hilda (Vera's mother), 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 15, 16, 28
Atkins, Ralph (Vera's brother), 6
Atkins, Vera.
Balkans mission, 70
birth and childhood, 1–4
brothers, 6
character and descriptions of, xi-xvii, 1, 19, 45, 200–201, 212, 230, 268–269
death of, 321–322
and Donovan, xv, xvii, 124–125, 128, 129–135, 135, 136, 139–143, 183
education, 4
flying lessons, 24
in France, 293–295
Legion of Honor, xvii, 1, 315–316
in London, prewar, 15–22
parents (see Atkins, Hilda; Rosenberg, Max)
in Paris, 55–56, 101–102, 103, 112, 113–116
in Poland, 77, 78, 81–84, 87, 92–95
in Romania, 1–14, 84, 91–92, 95–96
and SOE, 118, 142–143 (see also Special Operations Executive)
and the Stephensons, xvi, 6–7, 11, 14, 15–16, 18, 48
and Stringbag, 20, 21–22, 24–26, 111–112, 127
and von der Schulenburg, 7–9, 10, 11–14, 35–36, 70
at Winchelsea, 5, 16, 28–29, 111–112, 317–318, 320–321
Atkins, Wilfred (Vera's brother), 6
atomic bomb, 120–121, 122, 167–168
Attlee, Clement, 285, 310
Auschwitz, 201, 202, 227, 288, 306, 310
Austin, John, 173
Austria, 49
Auxiliary Groups, 138–139
Bader, Douglas, 171
Baker Street Irregulars, 142
Baldwin, Stanley, 39
Balfour Declaration, 13, 29, 306
Ball, Joseph, 59, 74–75
Balmaceda, Giliana, 181
Bank, Aaron, 230, 284–285
Bartlett, Vernon, 31, 263
Basin, Francis, 217
BBC, 134, 156, 177, 187, 219, 253, 259, 262
BCRA (Bureau Central de Renseignement et d'Action), 177
Beck, Ludwig, 106
Beekman, Yolande, 303–304
Bégué, Georges, 177
Ben-Gurion, David, 182, 204
Benjamin, Ernest, 308
Benn, Sir Ernest, 96
Bennett, J. S., 227
Berlin (Germany), 35–37
Berlin Cipher Office, 10–11, 18, 37, 56, 63–64, 79, 82, 84, 233, 260
Bermuda
conference, 206–207
mail interception, 156, 206
Bernhard, Prince (of the Netherlands), 171
Bertrand, Gustave, 83, 113, 114, 260–261, 336n3 (chap. 33)
Best, Sigismund Payne, 106–109
Bienecke, Hans, 284
Bisadej, Prince (of Thailand), 221
Bismarck, Otto von (1815-1898), 8
Bismarck, Otto von (1897-1975), 12
Black Chamber, 169, 170
Blackshirts, 25, 29
Blanc, Arlette, 292
Bleicher, Hugo Ernst, 275
Bletchley Park. See Government Code and Cipher School
Bloch, Denise (Danielle Williams), 312
Blum, Lon, 66
Blunt, Anthony, 86
B Mark II transmitter, 257
Boardman, Kenneth, 89
Bodington, Nick, 175–176, 331n1 (chap. 23)
Boer War, 21
Bolitho, Gordon, 57
Bolshevik Revolution, 43–44, 57
Bolshevism, 98
bombes (Enigma-breaking machines), 79, 82, 95, 113, 265
Bond, James, xvii, 8, 135, 155, 274, 317, 321
Bony, Pierre, 300
Borden, Mary, 178
Borrel, Andrée, 275, 300, 301–302
Bousquet, René, 316
Boy Scouts, 149
Bradley, Omar, 285
Britain, Battle of, 29, 94, 125, 172, 202
British Security Coordination (BSC), xii, 154, 158, 310, 330n1 (chap. 17)
British Union of Fascists, 25, 34
Britton, Colonel, 177–178
Brooke, Alan. See Alanbrooke Brossolette, Pierre, 225–226, 240–241, 242–243
Bruce, David K. E., 41, 131, 152, 157, 210, 280, 309–310, 313
BSC. See British Security Coordination
Buchan, John, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, 59, 60, 156
Buchenwald, 289
Buckmaster, Maurice, 190, 213, 267, 274, 275, 303
Bureau Central de Renseignement et d'Action (BCRA), 177
Burgess, Guy, 74–75
Butler, R. A., 117
Byrnes, James F., 319
Cadogan, Alexander, 37, 81, 89, 104, 107, 108, 109, 121, 133, 134, 160, 194, 227, 277
Cairncross, John, 205
Cairo (Egypt), 222–224
Calder-Marsh
all, Arthur, 31
Calinescu, Armand, 95–96
Cammaerts, Francis, 196, 290–292
Canada, POW camp, 230
Canaris, Wilhelm Franz
and Enigma code breaking, 83, 232–233, 313
execution, 283
opposition to Hitler, 36, 106, 233–234, 235–236, 237
card files, 169–171
Cardigan, 12th Earl of, 51–52, 121, 165–166
Carol II (of Romania), 3, 38, 39, 40–41, 148
Carton de Wiart, Adrian, 87, 96
Casey, William J., 254, 317, 318
cavalry, 21–22, 42, 64, 172
Cavendish, Anthony, 80
Central Fund for German Jewry, 46, 49
Chamberlain, Neville
and Churchill, 62, 111, 117, 145–146
on Eastern Europe, 202
invasion of Czechoslovakia, 70, 71–73
invasion of Poland, 88–89
and Ribbentrop, 69
SOE, 123
Chanel, Coco, 189
Charing Cross Road bookshop, 52, 53
Charmley, John, 74
Chastelain, Gardyne de
as agent in Romania, 223, 289
in Cairo, 290
in Istanbul, 163, 223
Phoenix Oil, 6, 9, 27
Chastelain, Marion de, 9, 233–234
Chetwode, Sir Philip, 64, 65
Christian Science radio station (WRUL), 134, 154
Christie, Agatha, 321
Christopher, Prince, of Hesse-Kassel, 106
Churchill, Peter, 155, 181, 275, 287, 315
Churchill, Randolph, 120, 333n4 (chap. 28)
Churchill, Winston
and Alanbrooke, 52–53
Allied invasion of France, 291
on appeasement, 22
Boer war, 21
and Chamberlain, 62, 145–146
domestic guerrilla warfare, 102–103, 104
and Duke of Westminster, 79–80
as First Lord of the Admiralty, 88, 96, 100
and Ian Fleming, 66
in France, 118
and de Gaulle, 178, 179, 293
and Lord Halifax, 122
Spymistress Page 42
