MI5 at War 1909-1918
MI5 at War 1909-1918

Author: Chris Northcott

Publisher: Tattered Flag

Published: 2015-06-19

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 0957689284

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The years 1909-1918 can be regarded as formative for MI5, an era in which it developed from a small counterespionage bureau into an established security intelligence agency. MI5 had two main roles during this period; counterespionage, and advising the War Office on how to deal with the police and the civilian population, particularly foreign nationals in Britain. Using hitherto neglected documents from official archives, this study examines how MI5 foiled the spies of the Kaiser during the First World War, paying particular attention to the preventive measures the organization instituted to ‘frustrate’ espionage and how its investigations to ‘cure’ espionage were conducted. In so doing, intelligence specialist, Chris Northcott, also delivers an appreciation of how MI5 saw its work as being divided between preventive measures and investigative work, providing an informative and intriguing insight into MI5’s development during its first ten years. MI5 began as a one-man affair in 1909, tasked with the limited remit of ascertaining the extent of German espionage in Britain amidst an uncertain future. By the armistice MI5’s role had expanded considerably and it had begun to develop into an established security intelligence agency, with hundreds of personnel spread over six branches covering the investigation of espionage, records, ports and travelers and alien workers at home and overseas. This book offers an original and important contribution to our knowledge of the origins of Britain’s security services. In using the example of MI5’s contest against German spies during the First World War era, it forms a groundbreaking study of counterespionage strategy and tactics, and it poses the stimulating question of ‘how to measure’ the effectiveness of a counterespionage agency. It also sets out probably the most detailed description of MI5’s organizational structure available.

Children at War, 1914–1918
Children at War, 1914–1918

Author: Vivien Newman

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2019-03-30

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1473886562

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The author of We Also Served examines what life was like for children during World War I. For most British readers, the phrase “children during the war” conjures up images of the evacuees of the Second World War. Somehow, surprisingly, the children of the Great War have been largely and unjustifiably overlooked. However, this book takes readers to the heart of the Children’s War 1914-1918. The age range covered, from birth to 17 years, as well as the richness of children’s own writings and the breadth of English, French, and German primary and secondary sources, allows readers to experience wartime childhood and adolescence from multiple, multi-national standpoints. These include: British infants in the nursery; German children at school; French and Belgian youngsters living with the enemy in their occupied homelands; Australian girls and boys knitting socks for General Birdwood, (Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Imperial Force); Girl Guides working for MI5; youthful Ukrainian/Canadians wrongfully interned; German children held as prisoners of war in Siberia; teenage deckhands on the Lusitania; not to mention the rebellious underage Cossack girl who served throughout the war on the Eastern Front, as well as the youngest living recipient of the VC. At times humorous, at others terrifying, this book totally alters perceptions of what it was like to be young in the First World War. Readers will marvel at children’s courage, ingenuity, patriotism, and pacifism, and wholeheartedly agree with the child who stated, “What was done to us was wrong.”

Germany's Covert War in the Middle East
Germany's Covert War in the Middle East

Author: Curt Prüfer

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-12-11

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 1786723182

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Ultimately these cross purposes brought disaster, pulling a fatally weak and woefully unprepared Ottoman state into a global war, and unleashing vicious, internal ethnic repression that brought it defeat and dismemberment. The diaries and official reports of German spy and propagandist Curt Prufer - translated here into English in their entirety for the first time - chronicle the complexities of the fragile Ottoman-German alliance from the perspective of a participant. Much like fellow soldier-scholar T.E. Lawrence, Prufer and his colleagues tried to steal the loyalties of the Muslim subjects of the opposing sides. The book explores these episodes of sabotage, subversion and subterfuge - from managing spies to preparing for the attack on the Suez Canal in 1915 - and in the process sheds light onto the ways World War I played out across the Middle East. Complemented throughout by in-depth and meticulously researched footnotes, this primary source collection is an invaluable addition to the extant corpus of late Ottoman and World War I historical documents.

A Liberal Chronicle in Peace and War
A Liberal Chronicle in Peace and War

Author: Cameron Hazlehurst

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-07-03

Total Pages: 597

ISBN-13: 0192887076

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Jack Pease was at the heart of the British Liberal government from 1908 to 1915, holding the position of Chief Whip through two general elections, and a member of the Cabinet confronting domestic tumult, international tensions, and war. Pease was an unassuming participant in the deliberations of a unique gathering of political talent. His journals as President of the Board of Education from 1911 to the formation of the coalition ministry in 1915 are a closely observed, unvarnished record of what he saw and heard in Downing St and Westminster: constitutional and Home Rule crises, industrial conflict, electoral reform, women's suffrage controversies, struggles over budgets, naval estimates, and foreign policy. Despite his Quaker beliefs, Pease committed to supporting war against Germany, and his troubled conscience is laid bare in letters to his wife and friends. Replete with intimate portraits of his revered chief H. H. Asquith and the Prime Minister's social circle, the journals also provide evocative observations of the contest of ideas, arguments, and moods of prominent contemporaries, especially David Lloyd George as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill as Home Secretary then First Lord of the Admiralty, and Lord Kitchener as Secretary of State for War. Pease's candid accounts, augmented by the diaries and letters of others privy to Cabinet policy secrets and personal rivalries, reveal the stories not told in the Prime Minister's reports to the King. Together with the editors' biographical introduction, extensive explanatory commentaries, and bibliographical guidance, Pease's text provides a uniquely comprehensive understanding of Asquith's Liberal government in peace and war.

Suffragism and the Great War
Suffragism and the Great War

Author: Vivien Newman

Publisher: Casemate Publishers

Published: 2018-05-30

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 1526718995

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Join Dr Vivien Newman, arm in arm, with some of the formidable women of the pre-First World War suffrage and anti-suffrage movements as, on the declaration of war, they turn their considerable skills, honed over 50 years of active campaigning, to both support of the war and the pursuit of peace.Get to know how these women could bend politicians' wills to their own, challenge and break the many role-norms of contemporary patriarchal society, raise hundreds of thousands of pounds in voluntary contributions and help convince the US public to join the Allied Cause.This book explodes many myths, including the simplistic idea that it was women's war service alone which led to their partial enfranchisement in 1918 as some form of reward from a grateful nation.Vivien Newman reveals a social tapestry which is both complex and infinitely fascinating, one of old friendships broken and new ones formed, shifting alliances and bitter rivalries, of loyalties and even betrayals.

The Beautiful Spy
The Beautiful Spy

Author: David Tremain

Publisher: The History Press

Published: 2019-04-05

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 0750991070

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In September 1940 a beautiful young woman arrived by seaplane and rubber dinghy on the shores of Scotland accompanied by two men – one of Germany's many attempt to penetrate British defences and infiltrate spies into the UK. This seems to be one of the few established facts in the otherwise mysterious tale of Vera Eriksen. Even the origins of the woman described as 'the most beautiful spy' remain hazy, as does her ultimate fate. David Tremain delves into the archives, and in doing so begins to reveal glimpses of her fascinating life story: her career as a dancer in Paris; a tumultuous and violent dalliance with a White Russian officer of uncertain identity; her time in England with the Duchesse de Château-Thierry, an Abwehr agent; the suspicious and untimely death of her husband, and a rumoured pregnancy. The Beautiful Spy also grapples with perhaps the biggest mystery of all: what happened to Vera after she was released by the British?

Spies, Spin and the Fourth Estate
Spies, Spin and the Fourth Estate

Author: Lashmar Paul Lashmar

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2020-04-02

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1474443109

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Combining his expertise as a national security correspondent and research academic, Paul Lashmar reveals how and why the media became more critical in its reporting of the Secret State. He explores a series of major case studies including Snowden, WikiLeaks, Spycatcher, rendition and torture, and MI5's vetting of the BBC - most of which he reported on as they happened. He discusses the issues that news coverage raises for democracy and gives you a deeper understanding of how intelligence and the media function, interact and fit into structures of power and knowledge.

The Venlo Sting
The Venlo Sting

Author: Norman Ridley

Publisher: Casemate

Published: 2022-12-01

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1636242081

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"I would recommend the book to intelligence practitioners, scholars, and other persons interested in World War II intelligence history." —Michael Nady, American Intelligence Journal On 9 November 1939, two unsuspecting British agents of the Special Intelligence Services walked into a trap set by German Spymaster Reinhard Heydrich. Believing that they were meeting a dissident German general for talks about helping German military opposition to bring down Hitler and end the war, they were instead taken captive in the Dutch village of Venlo and whisked away to Germany for interrogation by the Gestapo. The incident was a huge embarrassment for the Dutch government and provided the Germans with significant intelligence about SIS operations throughout Europe. The incident itself was an intelligence catastrophe but it also acts as a prism through which a number of other important narrative strands pass. Fundamental to the subterfuge perpetrated at Venlo were unsubstantiated but insistent rumours of high-ranking German generals plotting to overthrow the Nazi regime from within. After the humiliation suffered when Hitler tore up the Munich Agreement, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was anxious to see just how much truth there was in these stories; keen to rehabilitate his reputation through one last effort to find a peaceful rapprochement with Germany. When Franz Fischer, a small-time petty crook and agent provocateur, persuaded British SIS operatives in the Netherlands that he could act as a go-between for the British government with disaffected German generals, the German Security chief Reinhard Heydrich stepped in and quietly took control of the operation. Heydrich’s boss, head of the Gestapo Heinrich Himmler, was anxious to explore the possibility of peace negotiations with Britain and saw an opportunity to exploit the situation for his personal benefit. On the day before a crucial meeting of conspirators and British agents on the Dutch-German border, a bomb exploded in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich in the exact spot where Hitler had stood to deliver a speech only minutes earlier. The perpetrator was quickly arrested, and Hitler demanded that Himmler find evidence to show that the two events were intimately connected—the British agents were snatched hours later. While the world was coming to terms with the fearsome power of German military might the British intelligence capability in northern Europe was consigned to the dustbin in the sleepy Dutch town of Venlo. This first full account of the Venlo incident explores the wider context of this German intelligence coup, and its consequences.

Reading Hitler's Mind
Reading Hitler's Mind

Author: Norman Ridley

Publisher: Frontline Books

Published: 2022-07-20

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1399086308

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Most strongly associated with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, it is often stated that Britain’s policy of appeasement was instituted in the 1930s in the hope of avoiding war with Hitler’s Nazi Germany. At the time, appeasement was viewed by many as a popular and seemingly pragmatic policy. In this book the author sets out to show how appeasement was not a naïve attempt to secure a lasting peace by resolving German grievances, but a means of buying time for rearmament. By the middle of the 1930s, British policy was based on the presumption that the balance of power had already dramatically shifted in Germany’s favour. It was felt that Britain, chiefly for economic reasons, was unable to restore the balance, and that extensive concessions to Germany would not satisfy Hitler, whose aggressive policies intensified the already high risk of war.. The only realistic option, and one that was clearly adopted by Neville Chamberlain, was to try to influence the timing of the inevitable military confrontation and, in the meantime, pursue a steady and economically sustainable program of rearmament. Appeasement would ‘buy’ that time for the British government. Crucially this strategy required continuously updated and accurate information about the strength, current and future, of the German armed forces, especially the Luftwaffe, and an understanding of their military strategy. Piercing the Nazis’ veil of secrecy was vital if the intelligence services were to build up a true picture of the extent of German rearmament and the purposes to which it might be put. The many agents, codebreakers, and counter-espionage personnel played a vital role in maximising the benefits that appeasement provided – even as war clouds continued to gather. These individuals were increasingly handed greater responsibility in a bid to inform British statesmen now scrambling to prepare for a catastrophic confrontation with Germany. In Reading Hitler’s Mind, Norman Ridley reveals the remarkable efforts made by the tiny, underfunded and often side-lined British intelligence services as they sought to inform those whose role it was to make decisions upon which the wheels of history turned.