Britain's Secret War

Britain's Secret War tells the astonishing story of how Britain's spies, boffins and special operations teams helped to win the Second World War. The work of the Bletchley Park codebreakers in breaking the German Enigma cipher is estimated to have cut the length of the war by around two years, saving countless lives, while the Double Cross system, in which German secret agents were "turned" by the British to feed their Nazi agent-runners with false information, ensured the success of the D-Day landings. The Secret War not only reveals new details about these remarkable operations but also tells the real story of how MI6 turned the disaster of lost networks across Europe into triumph. The stories range from extraordinary courage to the bizarre with even astrologers and a stage magician brought in to help get intelligence and allied aircrew out of Nazi-occupied Europe. Intelligence historian Michael Smith describes the work of all the participants in the Secret War, revealing a host of new heroes, and heroines, along the way.