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Sarah Helm

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A life In Secrets by Sarah Helm. This book is subtitled Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of World War II. It is the fascinating story of Vera Atkins of the Special Operations Executive or SOE and the secret agents she trained and sent to France.

The SOE was formed in 1940 in order to conduct sabotage and espionage in German occupied Europe as well as to assist local resistance groups.

The SOE was a secret organization sometimes called "Churchill's Secret Army" or "The Baker Street Irregulars", named after the street on which its main London office stood.

Vera Atkins who was in large part responsible for the SOE section devoted to recruiting, training, mentoring and running secret agents in France.

The agents were both men and women, several of whom were trained as wireless transmitter operators. For the most part they were not trained military personnel but civilians. At the time it was unheard of for women to be recruited for such a perilous wartime job.

A Story of Betrayal and Incompetence

The agents were told that they had a fifty percent chance of surviving and each was given a cyanide capsule in case of capture.

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Tom Carver

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Tom Carver is a former foreign correspondent for the BBC and the step-grandson of Field Marshall Montgomery. In his fascinating book “Where The Hell Have You Been?” he writes compellingly about his father Robert Carver’s experiences in the Second World War.

Monty’s Stepson

Robert Carver was on “Monty’s” staff and fought under him in North Africa at El Alamein. A couple of days after the battle Carver was captured by the German Africa Corps when he was discovered reconnoitering too far ahead of the rest of the allied troops.

As Montgomery’s stepson, Robert Carver was careful not to divulge the nature of this relationship to the Germans, for fear that he would be sent to Colditz along with other prominent British prisoners of war. Instead, he was sent to a prison camp in Northern Italy, the same one from which Eric Newby escaped.

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Max Hastings

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Max Hastings has written one of the best books I have ever read about the Second World War, it is All Hell Let Loose – The World at War 1939-1945, it was published in 2011 and is nearly 700 pages long. In this book Sir Max Hastings has drawn on his more than three decades of research into and analysis of the Second World War.

The book covers the war in it's entirety including all the major campaigns around the world on land and at sea. It ranges from the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, to the war in Asia, the invasion of Russia, the European campaigns and the fall of Japan.

World War II From A Different Perspective

Max Hastings has written about the impact the war had on the hundreds of millions of people from all walks of life. These include not just members of the various armed forces, but also ordinary citizens from the various countries which were effected by the madness of the war.

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Agent Zigzag

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Talk about an exciting and enthralling read! Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre is the incredible true story of Edward Chapman, World War II British double agent, crook, con artist and ladies man. Ben Macintyre wrote Agent Zigzag after being given access to the previously classified documents relating to Eddie Chapman.

MI5 started to release these documents 2001, they numbered over 1700 pages of detailed information including transcripts of interrogations, memos, photographs, wireless intercepts and more.

In these previously secret documents Ben Macintyre discovered information which described in detail Chapman's activities as a spy. More than that the precise case notes of his "handlers" allowed Macintre to paint an accurate picture of Eddie Chapman's personality with all of its contradictions. The documents also described the people and events surrounding Eddie

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