Book picks similar to
Churchill's Secret Agent: A Novel Based on a True Story by Max Ciampoli
historical-fiction
history
fiction
wwii
Nancy Wake
Russell Braddon - 1956
But when her husband was called up for military service, Nancy felt she had just as much of a duty to fight for freedom. By 1943, her fearless undercover work even in the face of personal tragedy had earned her a place on the Gestapo’s ‘most wanted’ list.Mixing armed combat with a taste for high living, Nancy frustrated the Nazis at every turn—whether she was smuggling food and messages as part of the underground Resistance or being parachuted into the heart of the war to lead a 7,000-strong band of Resistance fighters.The extraordinary courage of this unequalled woman changed the course of the war, and Russell Braddon’s vividly realised biography brings her incredible story to life.Revised edition: This edition of Nancy Wake includes editorial revisions.
The Volunteer: The True Story of the Resistance Hero who Infiltrated Auschwitz
Jack Fairweather - 2019
The name of the detention centre -- Auschwitz.It was only after arriving at the camp that he started to discover the Nazi’s terrifying designs. Over the next two and half years, Witold forged an underground army that smuggled evidence of Nazi atrocities to the West, culminating in the mass murder of over a million Jews. His reports from the camp were to shape the Allies response to the Holocaust - yet his story was all but forgotten for decades.This is the first major account of his amazing journey, drawing on exclusive family papers and recently declassified files as well as unpublished accounts from the camp’s fighters to show how he saved hundreds of thousands of lives.The result is a enthralling story of resistance and heroism against the most horrific circumstances, and one man’s attempt to change the course of history.
The Walls Have Ears: The Greatest Intelligence Operation of World War II
Helen Fry - 2019
This mission proved so effective that it would go on to be set up at three further sites—and provide the Allies with crucial insight into new technology being developed by the Nazis. In this astonishing history, Helen Fry uncovers the inner workings of the bugging operation. On arrival at stately-homes-turned-prisons like Trent Park, high-ranking German generals and commanders were given a "phony" interrogation, then treated as "guests," wined and dined at exclusive clubs, and encouraged to talk. And so it was that the Allies got access to some of Hitler’s most closely guarded secrets—and from those most entrusted to protect them.
Zig Zag: The Incredible Wartime Exploits Of Double Agent Eddie Chapman
Nicholas Booth - 2007
He was also a great hero - the most successful double agent of the Second World War. Chapman became the only British national ever to be awarded an Iron Cross for his work for the Reich. This book tells the story of Eddie Chapman's extraordinary exploits.
Espionage
A.L. Sowards - 2012
Partnered with the French Resistence leader Jacques Olivier, Eddy must identify which of three Allied contacts in Calais is a double agent and use the traitor to help implement a strategic Allied diversion that might win the war. Eddy and Olivier secretly cross the English Channel to confront their suspects one at a time, but what appears to be a clean assignment soon turns disastrous, and a shocking betrayal leaves Eddy in the grip of the Gestapo. With the courageous aid of Olivier and his sister, Genevieve, Eddy evades his captors with a dangerous escape plan. But as the Allied invasion approaches, treachery in the least likely places leads to fresh graves in the bloodied European soil—and only the power of loyalty and love can transform tragic endings into new beginnings.
Our Friends in Berlin
Anthony Quinn - 2018
A masterpiece’ Edward Wilson, author of A Very British EndingLondon, 1941. The city is in blackout, besieged by nightly air raids from Germany. Two strangers are about to meet. Between them they may alter the course of the war.While the Blitz has united the nation, there is an enemy hiding in plain sight. A group of British citizens is gathering secret information to aid Hitler’s war machine. Jack Hoste has become entangled in this treachery, but he also has a particular mission: to locate the most dangerous Nazi agent in the country.Hoste soon receives a promising lead. Amy Strallen, who works in a Mayfair marriage bureau, was once close to this elusive figure. Her life is a world away from the machinations of Nazi sympathisers, yet when Hoste pays a visit to Amy’s office, everything changes in a heartbeat.Breathtakingly tense and trip-wired with surprises, Our Friends in Berlin is inspired by true events. It is a story about deception and loyalty – and about people in love who watch each other as closely as spies.
Surviving the War
Adiva Geffen - 2020
Perfect for fans of THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ, THE VOLUNTEER and THE LIBRARIAN OF AUSCHWITZ.
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Against all odds, love will lead them home.Shurka, her husband and their two small children never thought the war would reach their remote Polish village. They were wrong. Forced to flee their family home, they find shelter with their fellow Jews in the ghetto - but every night more and more people disappear, taken away on trucks to never be seen again. As terrible rumours of extermination camps swirl, Shurka realises that the longer they stay in the ghetto, the lower their chances of survival.Their best hope is to flee into the Polish forest, where Jewish resistance fighters hold out against Nazi search parties. Their new life is precarious in the extreme - and will test them more than they ever thought possible...
Even in the dark, hope can be found.
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Surviving The War is the international Amazon bestselling survival and holocaust story, based on an incredible true story and previously published as Surviving The Forest. It has been translated into English from the original Hebrew.
Liberation
Imogen Kealey - 2020
Soldier. Spy. Leader. Her name is Nancy Wake.To the Allies, she was a fearless freedom fighter, a special operations legend, a woman ahead of her time. To the Gestapo, she was a ghost, a shadow, the most wanted person in the world.But at first, Nancy Wake was just another young woman living in Marseilles and recently engaged to a man she loved. Then France fell to the Nazi blitzkrieg. With her appetite for danger, Nancy quickly finds herself drawn into the underground Resistance standing up to Nazi rule. Gaining notoriety as the White Mouse, with a 5-million-franc bounty hanging over her head, Wake rises to the top of the Nazi's Most Wanted list--only to find her husband arrested for treasonous activity under suspicion of being the White Mouse himself.Narrowly escaping to Britain, Wake joins the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and parachutes into the Auvergne, where she must fight for the respect of some of the toughest Resistance fighters in France. As she and her maquisards battle the Nazis, their every engagement brings the end of the war closer--but also places her husband in deeper peril.A riveting, richly imagined historical thriller, LIBERATION brings to life one of World War II's most fascinating unsung heroines in all her fierce power and complexity. This is the story of one of the one of the war's most decorated women, told like never before.
Dash for Dunkirk
Denis Caron - 2017
May 1940: Royal Air Force pilot Harry Fitzgerald is one of millions of heroic Allied troops fighting against Nazi Germany. In the pitched heat of battle over the skies of Northern France, Fitzgerald is shot down by an enemy plane and captured. Miraculously, he escapes certain death but must make his way back to the Allied evacuation at Dunkirk to get back home. However, Fitzgerald is in the middle of a warzone. At a chateau turned hospital, he encounters two of his wounded comrades. Too sick to reach Dunkirk by themselves, they helplessly lie in wait as the German army advances. Fitzgerald knows he must save them, and with the assistance of the French nurse Solange, the refugees attempt to reach Dunkirk-before the Nazis can reach them. It’s a life-or-death mission through dangerous territory where nothing is guaranteed. In Dash for Dunkirk, authors Denis Caron and Fran Connor explore a world where loyalty and bravery face off against an unforgiving enemy. Bound together by duty and honor, war heroes push themselves to the limit through refugee-crowded streets, mechanical setbacks and enemy attacks. Will they reach safe harbor, or will the ultimate evil finally prevail? Praise for Dash for Dunkirk > "A wildly entertaining, action packed story not only about the reality of war, but also of loyalty, friendship, and romance. A must read! - Jordan Ebare, Avid Reader & Historical Fiction Enthusiast
The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss
Edmund de Waal - 2010
Yet by the end of World War II, almost the only thing remaining of their vast empire was a collection of 264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox.The renowned ceramicist Edmund de Waal became the fifth generation to inherit this small and exquisite collection of netsuke. Entranced by their beauty and mystery, he determined to trace the story of his family through the story of the collection.The netsuke—drunken monks, almost-ripe plums, snarling tigers—were gathered by Charles Ephrussi at the height of the Parisian rage for all things Japanese. Charles had shunned the place set aside for him in the family business to make a study of art, and of beautiful living. An early supporter of the Impressionists, he appears, oddly formal in a top hat, in Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party. Marcel Proust studied Charles closely enough to use him as a model for the aesthete and lover Swann in Remembrance of Things Past.Charles gave the carvings as a wedding gift to his cousin Viktor in Vienna; his children were allowed to play with one netsuke each while they watched their mother, the Baroness Emmy, dress for ball after ball. Her older daughter grew up to disdain fashionable society. Longing to write, she struck up a correspondence with Rilke, who encouraged her in her poetry.The Anschluss changed their world beyond recognition. Ephrussi and his cosmopolitan family were imprisoned or scattered, and Hitler’s theorist on the “Jewish question” appropriated their magnificent palace on the Ringstrasse. A library of priceless books and a collection of Old Master paintings were confiscated by the Nazis. But the netsuke were smuggled away by a loyal maid, Anna, and hidden in her straw mattress. Years after the war, she would find a way to return them to the family she’d served even in their exile.In The Hare with Amber Eyes, Edmund de Waal unfolds the story of a remarkable family and a tumultuous century. Sweeping yet intimate, it is a highly original meditation on art, history, and family, as elegant and precise as the netsuke themselves.
Some Girls, Some Hats and Hitler: A True Love Story Rediscovered
Trudi Kanter - 1984
Spearman. Largely unread, it went out of print until it was re-discovered by a British editor in 2011 and now, for the first time, it is available to readers everywhere. In 1938, Trudi Miller, stunningly beautiful, chic, and charismatic, was a hat designer for the best-dressed women in Vienna. She frequented cafes. She had suitors. She flew to Paris to see the latest fashions. And she fell deeply in love with Walter Ehrlich, a charming and romantic businessman. But as Hitler’s tanks roll into Austria, the world this young Jewish couple knows and loves collapses leaving them desperate to find a way to survive. Some Girls, Some Hats and Hitler is an enchanting true story that moves from Vienna to Prague to blitzed London, as Trudi seeks safety for her and Walter amid the horror engulfing Europe. In prose that cuts straight to the bone, Trudi Kanter has shared her indelible story. Some Girls, Some Hats and Hitler is destined to become a World War II classic.
I Carried Them with Me: A Young Girl's Journey to Survive
Sara Lumer - 2016
When she was 16 years old her parents sent her to Budapest, Hungary, where her two older brothers were already living. They felt she would be safer there. But in March of 1944 Germany invaded Hungary and began to round up all the Jews. Sara was sent to two different labor camps and endured two long death marches. She is a Holocaust Survivor.
The Man Who Never Was
Ewen Montagu - 1953
Ewen Montagu, who masterminded the whole scheme, gives his personal account of the audacious and innovative plot to outwit the Germans by washing up a dead body on Spanish shores, complete with apparently confidential information concealed about his person. The preparations were fraught with tensions, as unforeseen difficulties were faced in creating a life persona for 'the man who never was'. Furthermore, as the new introduction by intelligence expert Alan Stripp reveals, failure of the operation could have had devastating results.
When We Fall
Carolyn Kirby - 2020
Mourning her lover, Stefan, who was captured by the Soviets at the start of the war, Ewa is shocked to see him on the street one day.Haunted by a terrible choice he made in captivity, Stefan asks Vee and Ewa to help him expose one of the darkest secrets of the war. But it is not clear where everyone’s loyalties lie until they are tested.Published to coincide with the 75th anniversary of VE Day and based on WWII atrocity the Katyn Massacre, When We Fall is a moving story of three lives forever altered by one fatal choice.
A Single Spy
William Christie - 2017
In 1936, at the age of 16, Aleksi is caught by the NKVD and transported to Moscow. There, in the notorious headquarters of the secret police, he is given a choice: be trained and inserted as a spy into Nazi Germany under the identity of his best friend, the long lost nephew of a high ranking Nazi official, or disappear forever in the basement of the Lubyanka. For Aleksi, it’s no choice at all. Over the course of the next seven years, Aleksi has to live his role, that of the devoted nephew of a high Nazi official, and ultimately works for the legendary German spymaster Wilhelm Canaris as an intelligence agent in the Abwehr. All the while, acting as a double agent—reporting back to the NKVD and avoiding detection by the Gestapo. Trapped between the implacable forces of two of the most notorious dictatorships in history, and truly loyal to no one but himself, Aleksi’s goal remains the same—survival. In 1943, Aleksi is chosen by the Gestapo to spearhead one of the most desperate operations of the war—to infiltrate the site of the upcoming Tehran conference between Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, and set them up to be assassinated. For Aleksi, it’s the moment of truth; for the rest of the world, the future is at stake.