The extraordinary story of a headmaster turned cryptographer, and our top-secret war with the Kaiser's Reich. On 11 August 1914, just days after war had been declared, Australian Captain J.T. Richardson boarded a German merchant vessel fleeing Melbourne's Port Phillip and audaciously seized a top-secret naval codebook. The fledgling Australian Navy had an opportunity to immediately change the course of the war. But what exactly had they found? Enter the Australian code breakers ... Recruited by savvy top brass, maths whizz and German speaker Frederick Wheatley worked night and day to fathom the basic principles of the code and start tracking the German Navy's powerful East Asia Squadron, led by the brilliant Maximilian von Spee. Soon Melbourne was a hub of international Allied intelligence. This is the untold story of how a former Australian headmaster and his mostly female team cracked one of Germany's most complex codes, paving the way for the greatest Allied naval victory of World War I.
The extraordinary story of a headmaster turned cryptographer, and our top-secret war with the Kaiser's Reich. On 11 August 1914, just days after war had been declared, Australian Captain J.T. Richardson boarded a German merchant vessel fleeing Melbourne's Port Phillip and audaciously seized a top-secret naval codebook. The fledgling Australian Navy had an opportunity to immediately change the course of the war. But what exactly had they found? Enter the Australian code breakers... Recruited by savvy top brass, maths whizz and German speaker Frederick Wheatley worked night and day to fathom the basic principles of the code and start tracking the German Navy's powerful East Asia Squadron, led by the brilliant Maximilian von Spee. Soon Melbourne was a hub of international Allied intelligence. This is the untold story of how a former Australian headmaster and his mostly female team cracked one of Germany's most complex codes, paving the way for the greatest Allied naval victory of World War I.
The extraordinary story of a headmaster turned cryptographer, and our top-secret war with the Kaiser's Reich. On 11 August 1914, just days after war had been declared, Australian Captain J.T. Richardson boarded a German merchant vessel fleeing Melbourne's Port Phillip and audaciously seized a top-secret naval codebook. The fledgling Australian Navy had an opportunity to immediately change the course of the war. But what exactly had they found? Enter the Australian code breakers ... Recruited by savvy top brass, maths whizz and German speaker Frederick Wheatley worked night and day to fathom the basic principles of the code and start tracking the German Navy's powerful East Asia Squadron, led by the brilliant Maximilian von Spee. Soon Melbourne was a hub of international Allied intelligence. This is the untold story of how a former Australian headmaster and his mostly female team cracked one of Germany's most complex codes, paving the way for the greatest Allied naval victory of World War I.
"Monumental." --New York Times Book Review NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From one of the foremost historians of the period and the acclaimed author of Inferno and Catastrophe: 1914, The Secret War is a sweeping examination of one of the most important yet underexplored aspects of World War II—intelligence—showing how espionage successes and failures by the United States, Britain, Russia, Germany, and Japan influenced the course of the war and its final outcome. Spies, codes, and guerrillas played unprecedentedly critical roles in the Second World War, exploited by every nation in the struggle to gain secret knowledge of its foes, and to sow havoc behind the fronts. In The Secret War, Max Hastings presents a worldwide cast of characters and some extraordinary sagas of intelligence and resistance, to create a new perspective on the greatest conflict in history.
On 11 August 1914, just days after war had been declared, Australian Captain J.T. Richardson boarded a German merchant vessel fleeing Melbourne's Port Phillip and audaciously seized a top-secret naval codebook. The fledgling Royal Australian Navy had an opportunity to immediately change the course of the war. But what exactly had they found? Enter the Australian code breakers. Recruited by savvy top brass, maths whizz and German speaker Frederick Wheatley worked night and day to fathom the basic principles of the code and start tracking the German Navy's powerful East Asia Squadron, led by the brilliant Maximilian von Spee. Soon Melbourne was a hub of international Allied intelligence. This is the true and remarkable tale of how a former Australian headmaster and his team cracked one of Germany's most complex codes, paving the way for the most vital Allied naval victory of World War I.
Welcome to Long Bay, Australia's hardest prison. For the first time prison guards, inmates and all those that have worked in and around the notorious South Sydney facility will reveal what goes on behind the towering concrete walls.
An unprecedented spate of murders in the 1990's - seven in just three years - made Goulburn jail the most feared prison in Australia. Inmates who were sent to the towering sandstone menace, located an hour and half south west of Sydney, declared they had been given the death sentence. Every man who entered the prison was marked for death, and not because of his crime. In the Killing Fields you were murdered because of the colour of your skin. The worst race war in the history of Australian prisons saw four groups; the Aboriginals, the Lebanese, the Asians, and rest, wage a vicious and uncontrollable war as they battled for control of the prison drug trade. Every day there were stabbings. Every day there were bashings. And when they weren't being bashed or stabbed, they were being murdered... The vicious riot, the one that saw guards belted with didgeridoos and stabbed with broken broomsticks, put an end to the segregation that saw Goulburn jail the only prison in the world to separate men by race. It also ended the Killing Field. But soon something far scarier would rise, something called SuperMax... Called a variety of things from "Australia's most secure prison'' to a "hell hole'', SuperMax is the only prison has seen complaints referred to the United Nations. All white walls and solitary confinement, it is where Australia's most evil men are locked away. It is home to Ivan Milat, to the Cobby Killers, to Bilal Skaf, and to Bassam Hamzy to name a few. And soon you will meet them all; murderers, rapists, terrorists. This is Australia's Most Murderous Prison, the Killing Fields, Inside the Walls of Goulburn Jail.
He's the only one who can stop a massacre ... The unputdownable action thriller from Australia's no.1 true crime writer. Riley Jax, convicted murderer. Once a promising engineer in the army, he lost everything in a single night when he killed a man – an act he cannot remember. It's a devastating gap in an otherwise perfect memory. Now he's facing a new life, one behind bars, where he has to learn a whole different set of rules and only the toughest survive. And as a series of deadly bombings rocks the outside world, the only man who might be able to find the truth behind the conspiracy ... is on the inside. Australia's no.1 true crime writer lets his imagination off the leash in this unputdownable action thriller for all fans of Matthew Reilly, Lee Child and David Baldacci. 'An exciting action thriller ... An enjoyable, easy flowing tale that will keep you turning the pages' Canberra Weekly 'A gripping new action thriller ... The story moves along at a lightning-fast pace. [Phelps has] got a knack for bringing you right into the heart of the action, making for some truly tense moments. The Inside Manticks all the boxes when it comes to an action-packed crime novel. If you enjoy authors like Tom Clancy, or are just looking for a thrilling new read, check out The Inside Man. I can't wait to see where Phelps takes this series next.' Better Reading
“Monumental.” —The New York Times Book Review Pulitzer Prize-finalist Stephen Kotkin has written the definitive biography of Joseph Stalin, from collectivization and the Great Terror to the conflict with Hitler's Germany that is the signal event of modern world history In 1929, Joseph Stalin, having already achieved dictatorial power over the vast Soviet Empire, formally ordered the systematic conversion of the world’s largest peasant economy into “socialist modernity,” otherwise known as collectivization, regardless of the cost. What it cost, and what Stalin ruthlessly enacted, transformed the country and its ruler in profound and enduring ways. Building and running a dictatorship, with life and death power over hundreds of millions, made Stalin into the uncanny figure he became. Stephen Kotkin’s Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 is the story of how a political system forged an unparalleled personality and vice versa. The wholesale collectivization of some 120 million peasants necessitated levels of coercion that were extreme even for Russia, and the resulting mass starvation elicited criticism inside the party even from those Communists committed to the eradication of capitalism. But Stalin did not flinch. By 1934, when the Soviet Union had stabilized and socialism had been implanted in the countryside, praise for his stunning anti-capitalist success came from all quarters. Stalin, however, never forgave and never forgot, with shocking consequences as he strove to consolidate the state with a brand new elite of young strivers like himself. Stalin’s obsessions drove him to execute nearly a million people, including the military leadership, diplomatic and intelligence officials, and innumerable leading lights in culture. While Stalin revived a great power, building a formidable industrialized military, the Soviet Union was effectively alone and surrounded by perceived enemies. The quest for security would bring Soviet Communism to a shocking and improbable pact with Nazi Germany. But that bargain would not unfold as envisioned. The lives of Stalin and Hitler, and the fates of their respective dictatorships, drew ever closer to collision, as the world hung in the balance. Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 is a history of the world during the build-up to its most fateful hour, from the vantage point of Stalin’s seat of power. It is a landmark achievement in the annals of historical scholarship, and in the art of biography.
