Eye Spy - May 2018

78 EYE SPY INTELLIGENCE MAGAZINE 115 2018

identity that continues to shape

world events.

This is the story behind the birth of

the Cold War, and the US-led liberal

global order, told with verve, insight,

and resonance for today. Bringing to

bear fascinating new material from

American, Russian, German, and

other European archives, Benn

Steil’s book will forever change how

we view the Marshall Plan.

Focusing on the critical years 1947

to 1949, Steil’s gripping narrative

takes us through the seminal

episodes marking the collapse of

postwar US-Soviet relations: the

Prague coup, the Berlin blockade,

and the division of Germany. In each

case, Stalin’s determination to crush

the Marshall Plan and undermine

American power in Europe is vividly

portrayed.

A polished and authoritative work of

historical narrative, The Marshall

Plan is a valuable addition to Cold

War literature. Hardback 624pp

George Marshall

etween 1941 and 1944,

sixteen thousand plucky

homing pigeons were

SECRET PIGEON SERVICE:

Operation Columba, Resistance

and the Struggle to Liberate Europe

Gordon Corera

William Collins

B

Available from Eye Spy Ref: ES/1710

UK £28.00 USA $45.00 ROW £30.00

dropped in an arc from Bordeaux to

Copenhagen as par t of ‘Columba’ -

a secret British operation to bring

back intelligence from those living

under Nazi occupation. The

messages flooded back written on

tiny pieces of rice paper tucked into

canisters and tied to the legs of the

birds. Authentic voices from rural

France, the Netherlands and Belgium

• they were sometimes comic, often
  tragic and occasionally invaluable
  with details of German troop
  movements and for tifications, new
  Nazi weapons, radar systems or the
  deployment of the feared V-1 and V-
  2 rockets that terrorised London.

Who were the people who provided

this rich seam of intelligence? Many

were not trained agents nor, with a

few exceptions, people with any

experience of spying. At the centre

of this book

is the

‘Leopold

Vindictive

Network’ - a

small group

of Belgian

villagers

prepared to

take huge

risks. They were led by an

extraordinary priest, Joseph Raskin

(above) - a man connected to

royalty whose intelligence was so

valuable it was shown to Churchill,

leading MI6 to parachute agents in

to assist him.

Not so much about pigeons as the

remarkable people living in occupied

Europe who were faced with the

choice of how to respond to a call

for help, and took the decision to

resist. Hardback 336pp

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erial warfare which has

dominated western war-

making for over 100 years,

AERIAL WARFARE: The Battle for

the Skies

Frank Ledwidge

Oxford University Press, Oxford

A

and despite regular announcements

of its demise, shows no sign of

becoming obsolete. Frank Ledwidge

offers a sweeping look at the history

of air warfare, introducing the major

battles, crises, and controversies

where air power has taken centre

stage, and the changes in technol-

ogy and air power capabilities over

time. Highlighting the role played by

air power in the First and Second

World Wars, he also sheds light on

the lesser-known theatres where the

roles of air forces have been clearly

decisive in conflicts, in Africa, South

America, and Asia.

Along the way, Ledwidge asks key

questions about the roles air power

can deliver, and whether it is

conceptually different from other

forms of combat. Considering

whether bombing has ever been

truly effective, he discusses whether

wars can be won from the air, and

concludes by analysing whether

there is a future for manned air

power, or if it is inevitable that UAVs

will dominate 21st century war in

the air. Hardback 208pp

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UK £15.50 USA $27.00 ROW £17.50

early forty female agents

were sent out by the French

section of Britain’s Special

SOE HEROINES: Special Operations

Executive’s French Section and

Free French Women Agents

Bernard O’Connor

Amberley Publishing

N

Operations Executive (SOE) during

the Second World War. The

youngest was 19 and the oldest 53.

Most were trained in paramilitary

warfare, fieldcraft, the use of

weapons and explosives, sabotage,

silent killing, parachuting, codes and

cyphers, wireless transmission and

receiving, plus general spycraft.

These women - as well as others

from clandestine Allied

organisations - were flown out and

parachuted or landed into France on

vital and highly dangerous missions:

their task, to work with resistance

movements both before and after

D-Day.

Bernard O’Connor uses recently

declassified government docu-

ments, personnel files, mission

reports and memoirs to assess the

successes and failures of the 38

women including Odette Sansom,

Denise Colin and Cécile Pichard.

Of the twelve who were captured,

only two survived; the others were

executed, some after being tortured

by the sadistic officers of the

Gestapo. This is their story.

Hardback 424pp

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UK £27.50 USA $42.50 ROW £30.00

n 1946, genius linguist and

codebreaker Meredith Gardner

discovered that the KGB was

IN THE ENEMY’S HOUSE: The Secret

Saga of the FBI Agent and Code

Breaker Who Caught the Russian Spies

Howard Blum

Harper

I

running an extensive network of

strategically placed spies inside the

United States, whose objective was

to infiltrate US Intelligence and steal

the nation’s military and atomic

secrets. Over the course of the next

decade, he and young FBI supervi-

sor Bob Lamphere worked together

on Venona, a top-secret mission to

uncover the Soviet agents and

protect the ‘Holy Grail’ of Cold War

espionage - the atomic bomb.

Opposites in nearly every way,

Lamphere and Gardner relentlessly