Between Silk And Cyanide

Download or read book Between Silk and Cyanide written by Leo Marks and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-04-29 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1942, with a black-market chicken tucked under his arm by his mother, Leo Marks left his father's famous bookshop, 84 Charing Cross Road, and went off to fight the war. He was twenty-two. Soon recognized as a cryptographer of genius, he became head of communications at the Special Operations Executive (SOE), where he revolutionized the codemaking techniques of the Allies and trained some of the most famous agents dropped into occupied Europe. As a top codemaker, Marks had a unique perspective on one of the most fascinating and, until now, little-known aspects of the Second World War. This stunning memoir, often funny, always gripping and acutely sensitive to the human cost of each operation, provides a unique inside picture of the extraordinary SOE organization at work and reveals for the first time many unknown truths about the conduct of the war. SOE was created in July 1940 with a mandate from Winston Churchill to "set Europe ablaze." Its main function was to infiltrate agents into enemy-occupied territory to perform acts of sabotage and form secret armies in preparation for D-Day. Marks's ingenious codemaking innovation was to devise and implement a system of random numeric codes printed on silk. Camouflaged as handkerchiefs, underwear, or coat linings, these codes could be destroyed message by message, and therefore could not possibly be remembered by the agents, even under torture. Between Silk and Cyanide chronicles Marks's obsessive quest to improve the security of agents' codes and how this crusade led to his involvement in some of the war's most dramatic and secret operations. Among the astonishing revelations is his account of the code war between SOE and the Germans in Holland. He also reveals for the first time how SOE fooled the Germans into thinking that a secret army was operating in the Fatherland itself, and how and why he broke the code that General de Gaulle insisted be available only to the Free French. By the end of this incredible tale, truly one of the last great World War II memoirs, it is clear why General Eisenhower credited the SOE, particularly its communications department, with shortening the war by three months. From the difficulties of safeguarding the messages that led to the destruction of the atomic weapons plant at Rjukan in Norway to the surveillance of Hitler's long-range missile base at Peenemünde to the true extent of Nazi infiltration of Allied agents, Between Silk and Cyanide sheds light on one of the least-known but most dramatic aspects of the war. Writing with the narrative flair and vivid characterization of his famous screenplays, Marks gives free rein to his keen sense of the absurd and wry wit without ever losing touch with the very human side of the story. His close relationship with "the White Rabbit" and Violette Szabo -- two of the greatest British agents of the war -- and his accounts of the many others he dealt with result in a thrilling and poignant memoir that celebrates individual courage and endeavor, without losing sight of the human cost and horror of war.

Download or read book The Life That I Have written by Leo Marks and published by Souvenir Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This poignant, haunting poem, originally written for the author's fiancée Ruth who died in a plane crash in 1943, was given to the SOE agent Violette Szabo as her code poem, before she was dropped into occupied France in 1944. It afterwards became famous through the film of her life, Carve Her Name With Pride, starring Virginia McKenna, and has been a source of inspiration ever since to those who have lost a loved one or are themselves facing death.Only in 1998, with the publication of Leo Marks' remarkable book about his works with SOE, Between Silk and Cyanide, did it become known that he was the author of this and many other poems used by SOE agents during World War II.Now one of the best loved poems in the English language, The Life That I Have is presented as a special illustrated gift book, with pencil drawings by the artist Elena Gaussen Marks, the author's wife. Her pencil sketch of Violette Szabo, based on a photograph, is also included.

Download or read book London Calling North Pole written by Hermann Giskes and published by Echo Point Books & Media. This book was released on 2015-07-07 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sixty years ago in Nazi-occupied Holland, over 50 British and Dutch spies parachuted into the waiting hands of German soldiers. Most were arrested immediately and many were executed. For decades historians and the curious public have struggled to understand exactly what transpired behind the closed doors of the both the allied and axis intelligence during what came to be known as Operation North Pole and Das Englandspiel. With key expository information sealed to this day, no one can say for certain who was fooling who. Were the Nazi's taking advantage of an inept and disorganized British intelligence service? Or was the operation a self-sacrificial ploy on the part of the British to mislead Nazi intelligence about Allied planned attacks? In this unique memoir, Hermann Giskes offers insight into the mysteries of Operation North Pole. Giskes, a high-ranking member of the German intelligence organization Abwehr, was one of the masterminds behind the operation. London Calling North Pole is an exciting and intriguing account of WWII from within the intelligence community, providing a compelling and honest account of the Englandspiel operation. Giskes gives us a glimpse into his keen mind and personal understanding of the ins and outs of Operation North Pole. London Calling North Pole is the perfect complement to British cryptographer Leo Marks' Between Silk and Cyanide. A must read for students of history, cryptologists, WWII buffs, and those seeking a better understanding of military intelligence.

Download or read book A Life in Secrets written by Sarah Helm and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2008-12-10 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an award-winning journalist comes this real-life cloak-and-dagger tale of Vera Atkins, one of Britain’s premiere secret agents during World War II. As the head of the French Section of the British Special Operations Executive, Vera Atkins recruited, trained, and mentored special operatives whose job was to organize and arm the resistance in Nazi-occupied France. After the war, Atkins courageously committed herself to a dangerous search for twelve of her most cherished women spies who had gone missing in action. Drawing on previously unavailable sources, Sarah Helm chronicles Atkins’s extraordinary life and her singular journey through the chaos of post-war Europe. Brimming with intrigue, heroics, honor, and the horrors of war, A Life in Secrets is the story of a grand, elusive woman and a tour de force of investigative journalism.

Download or read book Cyanide written by Ella Fields and published by . This book was released on 2017-08-21 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heartless. Conceited. Shallow.Three simple words to describe me. I had everything a girl could ask for, yet nothing I truly needed.I'd made peace with who I was and the expectations set upon me long ago.Only to have that peace shattered when a nameless hero rode into my world. I wasn't allowed to have him.Too bad I never cared much for the word no.Because I'd soon learn the hard way that too much self-indulgence could result in incurable consequences.

Download or read book Most Secret War written by R.V. Jones and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2009-08-06 with total page 930 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reginald Jones was nothing less than a genius. And his appointment to the Intelligence Section of Britain's Air Ministry in 1939 led to some of the most astonishing scientific and technological breakthroughs of the Second World War. In Most Secret War he details how Britain stealthily stole the war from under the Germans' noses by outsmarting their intelligence at every turn. He tells of the 'battle of the beams'; detecting and defeating flying bombs; using chaff to confuse radar; and many other ingenious ideas and devices. Jones was the man with the plan to save Britain and his story makes for riveting reading.

Download or read book The Spy Who Loved written by Clare Mulley and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2013-06-11 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Untold Story of Britain's First Female Special Agent of World War II In June 1952, a woman was murdered by an obsessed colleague in a hotel in the South Kensington district of London. Her name was Christine Granville. That she died young was perhaps unsurprising; that she had survived the Second World War was remarkable. The daughter of a feckless Polish aristocrat and his wealthy Jewish wife, Granville would become one of Britain's most daring and highly decorated special agents. Having fled to Britain on the outbreak of war, she was recruited by the intelligence services and took on mission after mission. She skied over the hazardous High Tatras into occupied Poland, served in Egypt and North Africa, and was later parachuted behind enemy lines into France, where an agent's life expectancy was only six weeks. Her courage, quick wit, and determination won her release from arrest more than once, and saved the lives of several fellow officers—including one of her many lovers—just hours before their execution by the Gestapo. More importantly, the intelligence she gathered in her espionage was a significant contribution to the Allied war effort, and she was awarded the George Medal, the OBE, and the Croix de Guerre. Granville exercised a mesmeric power on those who knew her. In The Spy Who Loved, acclaimed biographer Clare Mulley tells the extraordinary history of this charismatic, difficult, fearless, and altogether extraordinary woman.