The Spies Who Never Were, Hervie Haufler
The Spies Who Never Were, Hervie Haufler
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The Spies Who Never Were
The True Story of the Nazi Spies Who Were Actually Allied Double Agents

Author: Hervie Haufler

Narrator: Derek Perkins

Unabridged: 8 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/24/2020

Synopsis

After the fall of France in the mid-1940s, Adolf Hitler faced a British Empire that refused to negotiate for peace. With total war looming, he ordered the Abwehr, Germany's defense and intelligence organization, to carry out Operation Lena—a program to place information-gathering spies within Britain.

Quickly, a network of secret agents spread within the United Kingdom and across the British Empire. A master of disguises, a professional safecracker, a scrubwoman, a diplomat's daughter—they all reported news of the Allied defenses and strategies back to their German spymasters. One Yugoslav playboy codenamed "Tricycle" infiltrated the highest echelon of British society and is said to have been one of Ian Fleming's models for James Bond.

The stunning truth, though, was that every last one of these German spies had been captured and turned by the British. As double agents, they sent a canny mix of truth and misinformation back to Hitler, all carefully controlled by the Allies. As one British report put it: "By means of the double agent system, we actually ran and controlled the German espionage system in this country."

About Hervie Haufler

Hervie Haufler (1919-2016) was an author and World War II veteran. Born in Kentucky, he attended the University of Michigan, where he was editor of the Michigan Daily and a member of Phi Betta Kappa. His two books of World War II history, Codebreakers' Victory and The Spies Who Never Were, grew out of his wartime experiences as a cryptographer in one of the American units assigned to "Ultra," the British program for intercepting and decoding Axis messages. Haufler researched public archives and interviewed other members of British and American codebreaking programs to write the books. A longtime employee of General Electric, he left the company in 1980 to found a communications consulting firm with his wife, Patricia. Haufler's short stories and articles appeared in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and Travel & Leisure, among many other publications.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Suzie

WWII wasn't all about the military. One of the big advantages the allies had was in the area of espionage. Amazing as it may seem, every single spy that the Germans believed were working for them in England was actually a double agent, feeding them the information the British wanted them to have. Th......more

Goodreads review by Sarah

This was the second of two books written by my great-uncle that I read this summer, and although interesting, I much preferred the first. In many ways, that is because a great deal of this book draws on information already discussed in Codebreakers' Victory...I think if I had read it alone (or first......more

Goodreads review by Yibbie

For a book about spies, double-crosses, and wildly successful deception, it was rather dry. There are a lot of details about travel and the processes used to transmit information. It also details the events that dictated particular lies and their timing. That means that much of the book is taken up......more

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