For
sale are 12 World War II hardback books, (many of which are rare) as follows:
COLONEL
HENRI’S STORY
– The War Memoirs of Hugo Bleicher, Former German Secret Agent., Wm. Kimber
pub., London, 1954. HUGO BLEICHER was a
Counterintelligence Agent for the Geheime Feldpolizei (Secret Field
Police or GFP) which worked closely with the Sicherheitsdienst (Security
Service or SD). Bleicher is most famous
for having captured British SOE agents Odette and Peter Churchill. This book and its cover are in very good condition,
and it is not a library copy.
ODETTE
– THE STORY OF A BRITISH AGENT – by Jerrard Tickell, Chapman & Hall pub.,
London, 1950. ODETTE SANSOM (later Mrs.
Peter Churchill) was an Agent for the British Special Operations Executive
(SOE) working with the underground in France until her capture (and
Churchill’s) by Bleicher and the GFP.
She was tortured and sent to Ravensbruck Concentration Camp until her
release at war’s end. This book and its
cover are in particularly good condition, and it is not a library copy.
THE
CAT WITH TWO FACES
– by Gordon Young, Putnam Publishers, London, 1957. In WWII French spy MATHILDE CARRÉ worked as a
double agent for both Allied and German sides. In November 1941, Carré, known as The Cat, was
arrested by Nazi officer Hugo Bleicher, who gave her the choice: die or turn
double-agent. For several months, Carré worked with the Germans, which lead to
the arrest (and, in multiple cases, eventual death) of several of her former
friends and contacts. Eventually, she met a man named Lucas, who helped her leave
France for London. Then she flipped sides again informing on Bleicher and the
Germans. After the war she was convicted of treason in France, then released
from prison in 1954. In very good condition,
and not a library copy.
LONDON
CALLING NORTH POLE
– by H. J. Giskes, Wm. Kimber pub., London 1953. This 1953 Kimber edition is the first English
version of the remarkable 'Englandspiel', SOE's greatest scandal in the Low
Countries. For twenty months during 1942-3, SOE's radio links with its agents
in Holland were read and 'turned' by the German Military Intelligence (Abwehr)
with many tragic losses. Written by the Abwehr officer responsible (H.J. GISKES),
it was first published in Amsterdam in 1949 as 'Abwehr III F. De duitse
contrespionage in Nederland'. This
edition is quite rare, in very good condition and not a library copy.
AMATEUR
AGENT –
by Lt. Col. Ewan Butler, W.W. Norton pub., New York, 1954 "Amateur
Agent" is the BUTLER’s account of his six years with the Special
Operations Executive (SOE) and British Intelligence in World War II. He oversaw
the SOE G-Section (German), stationed first in Cairo and later in Stockholm.
Butler was a journalist before working for SOE, and became responsible for
propaganda, harassment, and sabotage operations. His account is very
interesting and especially useful as a source of details on training in the
SOE. The book is in very good condition and not a library copy.
THE
VENLO INCIDENT
– BY Capt. S. Payne Best, Hutchinson & Co. Ltd. Pub., London, 1950. This
true account where on November 9, 1939, Captain Sigismund Payne Best and other
members of Britain's ultra-secret Z service sat near a café in Venlo, The
Netherlands, waiting to meet with German resistance leaders. What they met at
Venlo was an SS ambush leading to the murder of Best's Z associate and the
Nazis' seizure of a plain text list of British under-cover agents. It was a
massive disaster for British intelligence and a crucial turning point of
war-time espionage. Best survived Venlo and
five years in the infamous Sachenhausen and Dachau concentration camps. As a
prisoner, he crossed paths with famous Nazi resistance fighters, including
Georg Elser and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Best's memoir of espionage, survival, and
captivity is a riveting narrative that readers will not soon forget. In very
good condition with 26 illustrations, this rare 1950 publication is not a
library copy.
SPIES
AND TRAITORS OF WORLD WAR II – by Kurt Singer, Prentice-Hall pub., New
York, 1945. Kurt Singer, an anti-Nazi
activist and spy during World War II was born in Vienna and grew up in Berlin,
where he increasingly worried about the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi
regime. He began publishing an anti-Nazi
underground weekly in 1933 and the Nazis soon put a price on his head, causing
him to flee to Stockholm. In Sweden and later in the U.S., the writer
functioned as a spy, providing information for the Allies about Russian and
Nazi activities in Scandinavia. SPIES AND
TRAITORS OF WWII covers all espionage front and gives a global picture of
undercover warfare at the end of the war. This book is in very good condition
and is not a library copy.
THE
ESCAPE ROOM
– by Airey Neave, Doubleday & Co. pub., Garden City, NY, 1970. . This is the fantastic story of the underground escape lines
in Nazi-occupied Europe, and of Room 900, London, the secret office from which
they were run by M.I.9, the British War Office Intelligence Department
concerned with Allied prisoners-of-war. Lt.
Colonel Airey Neave, OBE, DSO, MC, TD (1916-1979) was a British army officer,
barrister, politician, and author who was assassinated in 1979 in a car-bomb
attack at the House of Commons. The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), a
spin-off of the IRA, claimed responsibility.
Neaves’ book is in very good shape and not a library copy.
BEHIND THE LINES –
Russell Miller, Secker & Warburg pub., London, 2002. This book is an oral
history of Special Operations by former members of Britain’s SOE and America’s
OSS complied from letters, diaries, interviews, and first-person accounts - many
unpublished before this book. These
Agents trained in the black arts of warfare-sabotage, subversion, espionage,
guerrilla tactics and undermining enemy morale by the distribution of insidious
propaganda. They parachuted behind enemy
lines, often alone, with orders to cause mayhem and arrest almost always
resulted in torture and imprisonment, sometimes in execution. The special agents of WWII really
were a breed apart and this is their extraordinary story in their own words. This book is in like-new condition and not a
library copy.
INSIDE THE GESTAPO – A Jewish Woman’s Secret
War by
Helene Moszkiewiez, Macmillan pub., Toronto, 1985. In this book HELENE
MOSZKIEWIEZ is discusses her life as a former Jewish resistance fighter and
double agent. The book offers a
compelling account of her work against the Nazis in her native Belgium,
explaining how she penetrated Gestapo headquarters as one of its employees and
gained information used in the rescue of Jews and Allied POWs. The book is in excellent condition and not a
library copy.
HITLER’S SPIES AND SABOTEURS – by
Chas. Wighton and Gunter Peis, Henry Holt & co. pub.’ New York, 1958. This book is based on the recollections of
former German Abwehr officers and agents as well as the wartime diaries of
Erwin von Lahousen, former chief of the Abwehr's sabotage section (Abteilung
II) and Admiral Canaris' right-hand man. The book is in good condition and not a library copy.
THE SECRET WAR
AGAINST HITLER – by Fabian Von
Schlabrendorff, Hodder & Stoughton pub., London, 1966. One of the few survivors of the German
Resistance, von Schlabrendorff traces his anti-Nazi activity from his student
days in the 1920s, through Hitler's rise to power, to the war and his
involvement in the July 20, 1944, plot. He vividly recalls the double life of
the Resistance leaders during World War II, the futile secret meetings of the
conspirators, and their efforts to enlist the aid of weak and vacillating
German generals. In very good condition and not a library copy.
The books will be carefully packaged and please note there are no returns accepted.