The Secret War - Max Hastings

   2015; 557 pages.  Full Title: The Secret War: Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas, 1939-1945.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : History; Espionage; World War 2; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    During a war, how much is the knowledge about what the enemy’s up to worth?  Before you answer, keep in mind that money is precious when waging war: armies are expensive, and so are the weapons, transportation, and food needed to properly equip them.

 

    Besides the money, you also need to decide how many people to devote to gathering enemy intel.  After all, they could instead be carrying a gun and stationed on the front lines.  Even when you decide on a number, then you have to figure out what they’re going to focus on.

 

    Some should work on breaking the enemy’s secret codes, but who knows, maybe the whole war will pass by before they succeed at that.  Others should spend their time eavesdropping on the enemy’s communications, which in World War 2, was mostly radio transmissions.  Perhaps we ought to also drop some commandos behind enemy lines, equipped with binoculars and a transmitter, to give us firsthand observations of where the enemy squadrons, ships, fuel depots, etc. are located.  I wonder how’d we get anyone to volunteer for that job.

 

    Naturally, we should expect our foes to do this same kind of skullduggery to us, so we’d also need a counterintelligence department.

 

    Which means we'll need even more money and personnel.  It better be worth it.

 

What’s To Like...

    In The Secret War Max Hastings takes an in-depth look at how each of the major combatants in World War 2 approached the task of developing intel on their opponents, and in some cases, on their allies as well; the latter being especially true when England, the USA, and Russia were forced to into an uncomfortable alliance against Nazi Germany.

 

    I liked the book’s structure: 21 sections in more or less chronological order, starting with the pre-war setups and continuing through the post-war “Nuclear bomb technology” spying, capped off with a great final chapter in a “what ever happened to so-and-so” forma, which was one of my favorite sections, along with #15, “Blunderhead”, which chronicles the escapades of one Ronald Seth, in theory an English spy, who certainly knew how to milk the system.

 

    Given that espionage is by nature a secret profession, I was amazed how many agents afterward went on to have very successful and public careers.  Graham Greene became a famous novelist.  Alan Turing became famous for his work in developing the computer.  Ian Fleming is known to all for writing the series featuring the superspy James Bond.  Freeman Dyson was a pioneer in quantum physics; the “Dyson sphere” (say what?) is named after him in honor of his theoretical essays about it.  Hugh Alexander and Stuart Milner-Barry both became top-tier chess players for England after the war.  Sterling Hayden became a famous Hollywood movie star.  All played key roles in the intel effort against Nazi Germany.

 

    Max Hastings gives an impressively balanced view of each country’s intelligence departments, including those of Japan and Germany.  They each had some significant intel successes; they each had some significant intel missed opportunities.  In fairness, it was always difficult to “sort the wheat from the chaff”.  How do you tell if the “Japan is going to attack Pearl Harbor” intercepted message is more valid than the “Japan is going to invade South America” one?

 

    I admired Max Hastings' objectivity about the impact, or lack thereof, that intel had on the outcome of the war.  Even if you gain important knowledge, such as “Russia is about to launch an offensive”, there’s not much you can do about it if your army is no longer a match for theirs.  And a message like “the enemy is going to attack tomorrow” does little good if it takes a week to forward it to your frontline generals.  The validity of any message of great importance also has to be evaluated.  Did your spy send it, or did an enemy agent?  For that matter, is your spy a double- or triple-agent?   And let’s not even discuss generals who ignore good intel in favor of their “gut feelings”, or intel which starts out true but becomes false because some leader, such as Hitler, simply changes his mind.

 

    Like any book about the military, there are a ton of acronyms to get acquainted with.  My favorite here was “Huff Duff”, which stands for “High-Frequency Direction-Finding” radio signals.   As with any reference book, there are a slew of extra sections in the back of the book: Notes-&-Sources, Index, Bibliography, etc.  I found the “Photographs” section particularly fascinating.  Last and probably least, be aware that Max Hastings is a British author, so this book is written in “English”, not “American”.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Pusillanimity (n.) : lack of courage or determination; timidity.

Others: Pibroch (n.); Sclerotic (adj.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.1/5 based on 773 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.84/5 based on 1,666 ratings and 198 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “Do we know, or am I just not being told, what the Japanese intentions are in Burma, bearing in mind that they upset the whole of our offensive-defensive plans earlier this year and that a good deal of their movement passed unnoticed?”  (…)

    “If we do not know, then if I were the Army Group commander I should be very unhappy to go into battle with an enemy disposed I know not how, and of whose full intentions I am equally ignorant.  No doubt there is a limit to what the Japanese can do today with the land forces available to them in Burma, but past experience has shown that it is both inconvenient and decidedly unpleasant when they do the unexpected.  You will remember my saying the other day that it was never wise to assume that the Japanese will not do a thing because it seems stupid to us.”  (loc. 10266)

 

    When the first Soviet bomb was exploded in 1949, it proved to be an exact copy of the 1945 Alamogordo test device.  Apologists for Moscow’s informants have ever since made two points: first, that with or without the traitors, the Soviet Union would have built its own bomb soon enough, because that is how science and technology evolve around the world; second, that the NKVD’s informants performed a service to the cause of peace, because they ensured the creation of a balance of terror, making it impossible for America’s right-wing fanatics credibly to advocate a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union.  Both arguments merit consideration.  (loc. 19535)

 

“Diplomats and intelligence agents, in my experience, are even bigger liars than journalists.”  (loc. 496)

    A word to the wise: If I had to describe The Secret War in one word it would be “comprehensive”.  This is a deeply-researched effort, and that means you have a ton of people, acronyms, and Intel Group names to keep straight in your head.  Good luck with that. 

 

    Probably because of this, I found the book to be a challenging and slow read, yet without being the least bit boring.  The depth of the details is astounding.  This is a book for history buffs, especially those who love to read about World War 2, and I found The Secret War incredibly enlightening.  I came away with a better understanding of things like:

    a.) why Germany and Russia were initially partners, then deadly enemies.

    b.) why Japan would start a war-to-the-death against the United States

    c.) why the US didn’t believe Japan would dare attack them at Pearl Harbor or anyplace else.

    d.) why Stalin didn’t believe Hitler would invade Russia in 1941

 

    If you enjoy musing about such things, this is definitely the book for you.  If you have a book report due tomorrow, and you haven’t even started reading one yet, this is definitely not the book for you.

 

    9 Stars.  A personal note.  Several years ago, while riding the local light rail to a downtown concert, I sat across the aisle from a curious-looking, foppish man who was reading a book while completely oblivious to the crowded conditions around him.  Naturally I was fascinated.  I just had to know what book he was so absorbed in.

 

   After lots of glances, I finally determined its title was The Secret War.  I google-imaged it when I got home, and found “hits” that showed somebody named Max Hastings was the author.  I was resigned to looking for it at my local library; the Amazon price was way above my budget and searching for a particular non-fiction history tome at any used-book store is always a hopeless task.  Then lo and behold!, a couple weeks later, Amazon offered the e-book version for a paltry $1.99!  Serendipity strikes again!

 

    The rest is history.  Pun intended.