Family Betrayal
Family Betrayal

Author: David Burke

Publisher: The History Press

Published: 2021-05-25

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 0750997702

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In 1933, the celebrated German economist Robert Kuczynski and his wife Berta arrived in Britain as refugees from Nazism, followed shortly afterwards by their six children. Jürgen, known to be a leading Communist, was an object of considerable concern to MI5. Ursula, codenamed Sonya, was a colonel in Russia's Red Army who had spied on the Japanese in Manchuria, while MI5 also kept extensive files on her four sisters, Brigitte, Barbara, Sabine and Renate. In Britain, Ursula controlled the spies Klaus Fuchs and Melita Norwood, without whom the Soviet atomic bomb would have been delayed for at least five years. Drawing on newly released files, Family Betrayal reveals the operations of a network at the heart of Soviet intelligence in Britain. Over seventy years of espionage activity the Kuczynskis and their associates gained access to high-ranking officials in the government, civil service and justice system. For the first time, acclaimed historian David Burke tells the whole story of one of the most accomplished spy rings in history.

Churchill's Iceman
Churchill's Iceman

Author: Henry Hemming

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2015-02-12

Total Pages: 562

ISBN-13: 0099594137

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There is no reason why you should have heard of Geoffrey Pyke. After his suicide in 1948 he was described as one of the great geniuses of his time, to rank alongside Einstein, yet he remains today, as The Times put it, 'one of the most original if unrecognised figures' of the twentieth century. Inventor, escapee, campaigner, war correspondent, Pyke was an unlikely hero of both world wars and is seen today as the father of the U.S. Special Forces. He changed the landscape of British pre-school education, earned a fortune on the stock market, wrote a bestseller and in 1942 convinced Churchill and Lord Mountbatten to build an aircraft carrier out of reinforced ice. He gave birth to the Mass Observation movement, escaped from a German concentration camp, devised an ingenious plan to get ambulances and microscopes to the Spanish Republicans for free and launched a private attempt to avert the outbreak of the Second World War by sending into Nazi Germany a group of pollsters disguised as golfers. But there was another side to this man. Pyke, it seems, was a man with a secret. In 2009 MI5 released a mass of material suggesting that Pyke was in fact a senior official in the Soviet Comintern. In 1951 papers relating to Pyke were found in the flat of 'Cambridge Spy' Guy Burgess after his defection to Moscow. MI5 had 'watchers' follow Pyke through the bombed-out streets of London, his letters were opened and listening devices picked up clues to his real identity. Convinced he was a Soviet agent codenamed 'Professor P', MI5 helped to bring his career to an end. It is only now, more than sixty years after his death, that Geoffrey Pyke's astonishing story can be told in full. Churchill's Iceman is a many-faceted account of this enigmatic man's genius, and reveals him as one of the great innovators of the last century.

The Ingenious Mr. Pyke
The Ingenious Mr. Pyke

Author: Henry Hemming

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2015-05-05

Total Pages: 513

ISBN-13: 1610395786

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The untold story of an enigmatic genius who changed warfare forever In the World War II era, Geoffrey Pyke was described as one of the world's great minds -- to rank alongside Einstein. Pyke was an inventor, adventurer, polymath, and unlikely hero of both world wars. He earned a fortune on the stock market, founded an influential pre-school, wrote a bestseller, and came up with the idea for the US and Canadian Special Forces. In 1942, he convinced Winston Churchill to build an aircraft carrier out of reinforced ice. Pyke escaped from a German WWI prison camp, devised an ingenious plan to help the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, and launched a private attempt to avert the outbreak of the Second World War by sending into Nazi Germany a group of pollsters disguised as golfers. And he may have been a Russian spy. In 2009, long after Pyke's death, MI5 released a mass of material suggesting that Pyke was in fact a senior official in the Soviet Comintern. In 1951, papers relating to Pyke were found in the flat of "Cambridge Spy" Guy Burgess after his defection to Moscow. MI5 had "watchers" follow Pyke through the bombed-out streets of London, his letters were opened, and listening devices picked up clues to his real identity. Convinced he was a Soviet agent codenamed Professor P, MI5 helped to bring his career to an end. Henry Hemming is the first reporter to sift through this extraordinary new information and finally tell Pyke's astonishing story in full: his brilliance, his flaws, and his life of adventures, ideas, and secrets.

DOUGHBOY WITH THE FIGHTING 69TH
DOUGHBOY WITH THE FIGHTING 69TH

Author: Ettinger

Publisher: Pocket

Published: 1993-03-01

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 9780671782436

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A World War I veteran recalls his experiences in Europe as a member of Douglas MacArthur's famed Rainbow Division, in a vivid memoir of American participation of the tragic war. Reprint.

Darkest Hour
Darkest Hour

Author: Anthony McCarten

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2017-11-07

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 0062749544

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“McCarten's pulse-pounding narrative transports the reader to those springtime weeks in 1940 when the fate of the world rested on the shoulders of Winston Churchill. A true story thrillingly told. Thoroughly researched and compulsively readable.”—Michael F. Bishop, Executive Director of the International Churchill Society From the acclaimed novelist and screenwriter of The Theory of Everything comes a revelatory look at the period immediately following Winston Churchill’s ascendancy to Prime Minister “He was speaking to the nation, the world, and indeed to history....” May, 1940. Britain is at war. The horrors of blitzkrieg have seen one western European democracy after another fall in rapid succession to Nazi boot and shell. Invasion seems mere hours away. Just days after becoming Prime Minister, Winston Churchill must deal with this horror—as well as a skeptical King, a party plotting against him, and an unprepared public. Pen in hand and typist-secretary at the ready, how could he change the mood and shore up the will of a nervous people? In this gripping day-by-day, often hour-by-hour account of how an often uncertain Churchill turned Britain around, the celebrated Bafta-winning writer Anthony McCarten exposes sides of the great man never seen before. He reveals how he practiced and re-wrote his key speeches, from ‘Blood, toil, tears and sweat’ to ‘We shall fight on the beaches’; his consideration of a peace treaty with Nazi Germany, and his underappreciated role in the Dunkirk evacuation; and, above all, how 25 days helped make one man an icon. Using new archive material, McCarten reveals the crucial behind-the-scenes moments that changed the course of history. It’s a scarier—and more human—story than has ever been told.

Hitler and Stalin
Hitler and Stalin

Author: Laurence Rees

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2021-02-02

Total Pages: 597

ISBN-13: 1610399668

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An award-winning historian plumbs the depths of Hitler and Stalin's vicious regimes, and shows the extent to which they brutalized the world around them. Two 20th century tyrants stand apart from all the rest in terms of their ruthlessness and the degree to which they changed the world around them. Briefly allies during World War II, Adolph Hitler and Josef Stalin then tried to exterminate each other in sweeping campaigns unlike anything the modern world had ever seen, affecting soldiers and civilians alike. Millions of miles of Eastern Europe were ruined in their fight to the death, millions of lives sacrificed. Laurence Rees has met more people who had direct experience of working for Hitler and Stalin than any other historian. Using their evidence he has pieced together a compelling comparative portrait of evil, in which idealism is polluted by bloody pragmatism, and human suffering is used casually as a political tool. It's a jaw-dropping description of two regimes stripped of moral anchors and doomed to destroy each other, and those caught up in the vicious magnetism of their leadership.