Catastrophe - Volume Two: Europe Goes to War 1914

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910148772303321
• Autore: Hastings Max
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: HarperCollins UK
• ISBN: 0-00-753856-1
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Musica
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Sommario/riassunto: A magisterial chronicle of the calamity that crippled Europe in 1914. Unabridged and split into two parts.1914: a year of unparalleled change. The year that diplomacy failed, Imperial Europe was thrown into its first modernised warfare and white-gloved soldiers rode in their masses across pastoral landscapes into the blaze of machineâÂeÂ"guns. What followed were the costliest days of the entire War. But how had it happened?In Catastrophe: 1914 Max Hastings, best-selling author of the acclaimed All Hell Let Loose, answers at last how World War I could ever have begun. Ranging across Europe, from Paris to St. Petersberg, from Kings to corporals, Catastrophe 1914 traces how tensions across the continent kindled into a blaze of battles; not the stalemates of later trench-warfare but battles of movement and dash where Napoleonic tactics met with weapons from a newly industrialised age. A searing analysis of the power-brokering, vanity and bluff in the diplomatic maelstrom reveals who was responsible for the birth of this catastrophic world in arms. Mingling the experiences of humbler folk with the statesmen on whom their lives depended, Hastings asks: whose actions were justified?From the out-break of war through to its terrible making, and the bloody gambles in Sarajevo and Mons, Le Cateau, Marne and Tannenberg, this is the international story of World War I in its most severe and influential period. Published to coincide with its 100th Anniversary, Catastrophe: 1914 explains how and why this war, which shattered and changed the Western world for ever, was ; fought.

Cargo of lies : the true story of a Nazi double agent in Canada / / Dean Beeby

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910787229603321
• Autore: Beeby Dean
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Toronto, Ontario ; ; Buffalo, New York ; ; London, England : , : University of Toronto Press, , 1996; ©1996
• ISBN: 1-4426-5976-9; 1-4426-5518-6
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (245 p.)
• Collana: Heritage
• Disciplina: 940.54/8743/092
• Soggetti: World War, 1939-1945 - Secret service - Germany; World War, 1939-1945 - Secret service - Canada; Spies - Germany; Spies - Canada; Biographies.; Electronic books.; Germany; Canada
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Prologue -- ONE Broken Boats, Broken Bodies -- TWO. The Stranger in Room 11 -- THREE. A Fluent and Fertile Liar -- FOUR. Bobbi Calls Home -- FIVE. C'est la guerre -- SIX. Collapse -- SEVEN. Operation Crete -- EIGHT. Autopsy -- Sources -- Index -- Illustration Credits
• Sommario/riassunto: On a chilly autumn night in 1942, a German spy was rowed ashore from a U-boat off the GaspT coast to begin a deadly espionage mission against the Allies. Thanks to an alert hotel-keeper's son, Abwehr agent `Bobbi' was captured and forced by the RCMP to become Canada's first ; double-agent.For nearly fifty years the full story of the spy case, code-named Watchdog, was suppressed. Now, author Dean Beeby has uncovered nearly five thousand pages of formerly classified government documents, obtained through the Access to Information Act from the RCMP, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Department of Justice, the National Archives of Canada, and Naval Intelligence. He has supplemented this treasure trove with research among still heavily censored FBI files, and interviews with surviving participants in the Watchdog story. Although British records of the case remain closed, Beeby also interviewed the MI5 case officer for Watchdog, the late Cyril Mills.The operation was Canada's first major foray into international espionage, predating the Gouzenko defection by three years. Watchdog, as Beeby reveals, was not the Allied success the RCMP has long claimed. Agent `Bobbi' gradually ensnared his captors with a finely spun web of lies, transforming himself into a triple-agent who fed useful information back to Hamburg.Beeby argues that Canadian authorities were woefully unprepared for the subtleties of wartime counter-espionage, and that their mishandling of the case had long-term consequences that affected relations with their intelligence partners throughout the Cold War.