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The True Story of the D-Day Spies
Crown
August 2012
On Sale: July 31, 2012
416 pages ISBN: 0307888754 EAN: 9780307888754 Kindle: B0075WP9MK Hardcover / e-Book
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Other Editions Hardcover (May 2013)
Non-Fiction History
In his celebrated bestsellers Agent Zigzag and Operation
Mincemeat, Ben Macintyre told the dazzling true stories of a
remarkable WWII double agent and of how the Allies employed
a corpse to fool the Nazis and assure a decisive victory.
In Double Cross, Macintyre returns with the untold story of
the grand final deception of the war and of the
extraordinary spies who achieved it. On June 6, 1944, 150,000 Allied troops landed on the
beaches of Normandy and suffered an astonishingly low rate
of casualties. D-Day was a stunning military
accomplishment, but it was also a masterpiece of trickery.
Operation Fortitude, which protected and enabled the
invasion, and the Double Cross system, which specialized in
turning German spies into double agents, deceived the Nazis
into believing that the Allies would attack at Calais and
Norway rather than Normandy. It was the most sophisticated
and successful deception operation ever carried out,
ensuring that Hitler kept an entire army awaiting a fake
invasion, saving thousands of lives, and securing an Allied
victory at the most critical juncture in the war. The story of D-Day has been told from the point of view
of the soldiers who fought in it, the tacticians who planned
it, and the generals who led it. But this epic event in
world history has never before been told from the
perspectives of the key individuals in the Double Cross
System. These include its director (a brilliant, urbane
intelligence officer), a colorful assortment of MI5 handlers
(as well as their counterparts in Nazi intelligence), and
the five spies who formed Double Cross’s nucleus: a dashing
Serbian playboy, a Polish fighter-pilot, a bisexual
Peruvian party girl, a deeply eccentric Spaniard with a
diploma in chicken farming and a volatile Frenchwoman, whose
obsessive love for her pet dog very nearly wrecked the
entire plan. The D-Day spies were, without question, one of
the oddest military units ever assembled, and their success
depended on the delicate, dubious relationship between spy
and spymaster, both German and British. Their enterprise was
saved from catastrophe by a shadowy sixth spy whose heroic
sacrifice is revealed here for the first time. With the same depth of research, eye for the absurd and
masterful storytelling that have made Ben Macintyre an
international bestseller, Double Cross is a captivating
narrative of the spies who wove a web so intricate it
ensnared Hitler’s army and carried thousands of D-Day troops
across the Channel in safety.
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