Wars are fought on many fronts — not just the physical, geographical fronts of battlefields — but also the rather less visible fronts of secret, covert and intensely dangerous operations and highly classified missions.
A new book by Queensland author Tony Matthews, Spies, Saboteurs and Secret Missions of World War II, now tells the remarkable stories of some of the countless top-secret missions that took place during the Second World War.
From highly organised but fatally doomed spy–rings, through to overwhelmingly perilous sabotage operations in enemy territory, these stories of men and women from both sides of the ideological fence, and all walks of life, are nail–biting examples of the courage, stamina, and occasionally the negligence of those who attempted to take the fight into the dark shadows of espionage and secret warfare — what we today would call black-ops.
For example, when eight well–trained Nazi saboteurs landed on American shores with the intention of undertaking years of deadly attacks on US facilities, most of them were unaware that their mission was doomed to betrayal from the very beginning, and that six of those agents would soon end their lives in the electric chair.
Many of the characters in this book displayed astonishing bravery in the face of almost insurmountable odds, including intellectuals Mildred Fish–Harnack and her husband, Arvid Harnack.
The couple left American shores during the late 1920s but had no way of knowing that they would become leaders of a major German resistance group, the members of which would fight doggedly to free Europe from the heel of Nazi tyranny. Mildred and Arvid would go down in history as two of the top espionage agents of the Second World War, and both would end their days within the grim walls of Berlin’s notorious Plötzensee Prison. Mildred Fish–Harnack would be the only American woman executed on Hitler’s personal orders.
And then there was Joseph Kennedy, brother to future American president, John F Kennedy, who, after completing his highly dangerous tours of duty with US Bomber Command, refused to go home to see his family and instead volunteered for a top–secret operation so dangerous it was almost certainly going to take the lives of at least some of those who joined the project.
What happened to Joe Kennedy and his co–pilot in 1945, in the skies over England, where they should have been relatively safe, has gone down as one of the great personal and political tragedies of the war, for Joseph Kennedy, even then, was being groomed as a future American president.
Spies, Saboteurs and Secret Missions of World War II also tells the remarkable story of one of war-torn Holland’s most infamous events.
When a group of six Dutch Resistance fighters planned to steal a simple truckload of meat in an attempt to feed at least some of the millions suffering from deliberately enforced starvation, it would have been unimaginable to them that they could accidentally be igniting one of the most vicious and bloody Nazi reprisal actions of the Second World War.
Black propaganda, deep–level espionage, clandestine submarine operations, experimental warfare and deadly resistance undertakings — this is a page-turning true-life spy thriller by one of Australia’s leading war historians.
Spies, Saboteurs and Secret Missions of World War II by Tony Matthews tells the actual stories of some of the most difficult and dangerous secret missions of the Second World War.
Published by Big Sky Publishing, the book is available from all good book stores or online through Booktopia. Spies, Saboteurs and Secret Missions and other titles by Tony Matthews can be found on the publisher’s website at bigskypublishing.com.au
