Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies

Double Cross, by Ben Macintyre, is an unusual World War II story. It is the true and incredible story of how five Allied double agent spies working for the British Security Service, better known as MI5, fooled the Nazis into thinking the D-Day invasion, the biggest amphibious invasion of all time, would take place in a location that it would not take place. This deception, made by the Double Cross agents, the MI5 double agent section, was the most sophisticated and successful deception operation ever to take place. This book was very strong in the detail and interest departments, but weak in the department of being able to appeal to a large audience and was confusing at times. Despite this, I found Double Cross to be very good because of its interesting topic and extensive details. This book was, overall, very well written because it was interesting. The abundant little facts and details draw in the reader. Ben Macintyre uses these facts to make the reader better understand who the spies were and how they were able to make D-Day a victory, despite the odds against them. The reader learns that these spies were not the typical James Bond or Mission Impossible type. They had basic intelligence receiving and transmitting training, very different motivations for participating in the war, and they came from all over the world. “For the D-Day spies were, without question, one of the oddest military units ever assembled. They included a bisexual Peruvian playgirl, a tiny Polish fighter pilot, a mercurial Frenchwoman, a Serbian seducer, and a deeply eccentric Spaniard with a diploma in chicken farming” (5). They did not know martial arts and were not licensed to kill. Their roles were to plant lies into Hitler and the rest of Nazi Germany’s brains to make them the most unprepared for the D-Day invasion. Ben Macintyre does a very good job of making this story interesting and unique.Though Double Cross was a very good book, it has a couple problems. The first of which is not too much of a problem and is quite obvious. This book is intended to be interesting to a select audience, which is okay if the reader is part of this group. The story is very interesting, but not exciting, meaning the author expects that the reader is interested in espionage stories and World War II stories, and the details chosen show that. They make the book interesting to people who like the topic. The book would seem very boring to a reader not interested in World War II history. If this type of reader were to read, Double Cross, I can predict that they will think this book drags on forever. It would also be more confusing to any reader not interested in the topic. These assumptions of the author and the book are reasonable because the book would not have been as good without it. People like me, who love World War II stories, would not find the book as interesting.The second minor problem is that Double Cross gets a little confusing at times. It was clear that this book was going to be a bit confusing because of the complexity of the story, which is okay because it is a true story and is told how it happened. Ben Macintyre, did however, do a very good job of making the story as clear as possible. The story follows five Allied Forces spies which causes confusion at the beginning. It was easy to mix up their names and code names at the start of the book, but was no longer a problem by the middle of the book. The story also has a few important things to remember and can cause confusion if the reader forgets them. The story is also confusing to the reader because it is partially what the story is about. The spies had to confuse and deceive the Germans. Readers who are not interested in the topic will find the book to be more confusing than readers who like it. This is because non interested readers will be more prone to forget key elements and will cause the book to not make sense. Readers who like the book will be able to deal with the confusing bits and find that everything makes sense by the end.To conclude on Double Cross, it was very detailed, had an engaging topic, and will only appeal to those with an interest in the Second World War. Double Cross, in my opinion, was a fascinating book. I loved the extensive detail about this historical series of events. It feels like Ben Macintyre picked apart everything that happened and explained it. It shows how much work he must have put into writing this book to make it the best and most historically accurate as possible. I expected to learn about how the Allies were able to make the Normandy invasion a very possible success before it even happened. My expectation were very much met in this book and I am happy to have read it because of the historical significance of it. I however, would like to reiterate that anyone who does not find interest in espionage and World War II should stay away from this book.

I have read almost everything Ben Macintyre has written and enjoyed all of it. Write more Ben!

When you consider writing a review that runs counter to the "accepted wisdom" represented by an enormous body of editorial and reader acclaim, you ask yourself why do this? In the case of "Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies", the hype begins with many editorial reviews that are peppered with the following florid adjectives:amazing,gripping(4x),astounding,entertaining,winning,stupendous,nail-biting,breathless,riveting,scintillating,edge-of-the-seat,tense,incredible,spellbinding...all offered by none less than the publishing elite, such as WSJ,The Monitor,Washington Post,New Yorker,Boston Globe and others with equal pedigree. Then there are the readers with parallel enthusiasm. To wit 50 reviews...only 11 with fewer than 4 stars and the huge majority "over the top." And let's remember this is said to be the "true story" of D-Day trickery. I will admit I was an avid consumer of such enthusiasms being a student of WWII and the D-Day event near the top of crucial events during that perilous time.But wait, as is told in a NYT news story published this week, there is strong evidence that what I would call the equivalent of "grade inflation" has with some stealth crept into the review process so long depended upon by the reading public and now largely in the hands of on-line entities...Amazon perhaps being the most prominent and respected of those.So back to why write a sour review of a book that seemingly the entire world of editors and readers thinks is "off the charts." Wellas Quixotic as it may seem, it for me, ties together complaints about the review process and my own experience with this book. As the very few, less pleased Amazon reviewers have pointed out, this book reminds me of a 19th century Russian novel in terms of the complexity of the story and the welter of characters with difficult- to-remember names and roles, and in the case of this book, characters with ever shifting both real and code names and changing responsibilities. Only charting would have helped but there was no final exam to worry about. But what I don't believe these less enthusiastic reviewers emphasized is what bothered me the most. It took so long to get to the "meat"...what made me buy the book...the hoodwinking of nearly every prominent German...the very thing the rave editorial reviews were based on. At least two thirds of the book could have been seriously edited to get to the exciting part. And yes, I was a professional editor once, and yes, nonetheless, I have to admit I am pleased with my purchase because I thoroughly enjoyed the action when it finally came. Had I gone somewhere and paid full cover price,I might not be as pleased. As a $10 or less "read" there probably is not a lot of room for complaint. But price is not my issue. And the book itself not the whole matter.So then, what's the point. Well if you are still with me on this, something needs to be done with the review process. I do not have a prescription but it should be looked at closely.JDM

Crooks, conmen, eccentrics and a small dog are amongst the cast of characters that feature in Ben Macintyre's excellent book on the spies who worked on Double Cross. Marshalling a huge amount of material into this highly readable book, Macintyre shows how a disparate bunch of people who would have found it hard to use their talents in peace time came to work on one of the greatest pieces of deception of all time. At times, the overlapping plots of deceit and deception that were employed against the Germans can be confusing, but overall the book comes together well as we head towards the story of the D-Day landings in 1944. Double Cross ensured that the German army was deceived into thinking that the assault on Europe would happen not on the Normandy beaches, but in other locations, including the Mediterranean, Norway and the Pas de Calais. As a result, the Allies were able to land in Normandy and establish a bridgehead to ensure the invasion was successful.The deceits and plots along the way are mind-boggling in scope and cleverness. As the book makes clear, such was the ingenuity of Double Cross that for a good chunk of the war British intelligence knew more about what was happening in Germany than German intelligence. From this base, further bluffs and double bluffs were possible in the lead up to the D-Day landings. Despite the huge scope of the story, this reads as a much tighter book than Macintyre's Operation Mincemeat. The cast of weird and wonderful characters involved is dazzling, and a touching Aftermath chapter reveals the fate of many of them. Predictably, many ended their days in obscurity, or died in mysterious circumstances. Macintyre pays them their due respects - this strange bunch of people drawn from across Europe and beyond - who played their own role in shaping the world we live in today. Riveting stuff.

An interesting insight into the characters involved in WW2 espionage. And what a crazy bunch a lot of them seem to have been. A womanising croatian/Serbian playboy who thought nothing of jacking up his expenses on the finest wine caviar Savile row suits and other luxuries. A Peruvian lesbian, a French woman who turned nasty after MI6 refused to bring her pet cat to the UK. A spaniard who started spying freelance at first and then pestered the British spooks to hire him fulltime and also an abwehr agent and good pal of the previously mentioned Serbian playboy who also thought nothing of being liberal with his expenses. It has to be said that they all delivered good intelligence and took part in successful decoy operations. But apart from that it also has to be said that it wasn't that British intelligence was that good, but German intelligence was so unbelievably bad. Which ultimately made it easy for the allies, especially as most of the Germans in Spain and Portugal spent most of their time again pumping up the good old expense claims. The famous Teutonic efficiency didn't transcend to their intelligence depts with the exception of a few agents and some gestapo operatives who took over later.

What a Book!! I have just finished reading this tale, of 'Double Agents' Spies, Germans, British and almost every-other International Intelligence Agency put together - and I am almost left 'Breath-less!!' I wasn't born until World War II was over, and as I have come later in life to - What really went on then - I am totally amazed by what I have read!! The Agents, 'Garbo', 'Brutus' 'Treasure', et al. come across to me - as Such Brave individuals, all be it - that they were each eccentric - in their own singular ways - and all helped England for their own different reasons - that they took un-believable risks on our behalf. How our little country would have survived without them all, does not bear thinking of!! The men who supported them all in MI5 and MI6, showed such care, and interest in trying to not only to capture as much information as they could, from the Agents - but in trying to keep them safe, at what was such a terrible time, for every-one, that they truly do deserve to be REMEMBERED WITH PRIDE!! I have always felt very proud to call myself ENGLISH - and now I am beginning to understand why. England was in such a perilous position at the time, that without the bravery of all the members of the 'DOUBLE-CROSS SYSTEM' how else could we have survived!! I hope that my Eternal Thanks - even now - so long after they all worked so hard for us - will not be found wanting!! Judy M.

Ben Macintyre, who rather seems to have cornered the market in factual books about espionage in this country, both during the Second World War and then later, during the period of the Cold War, has here written a complex account of the part that not just spies, but those who were double agents, or even triple agents, turned, and turned again - or always firmly on the Allied side, but convincing Germany they were her spies.At times, this engagingly written but dizzying book - I struggled to keep track of the agent, their British code name, their German code name, plus the fact that code-names sometimes got revamped and changed - read almost like a comedy, as the subterfuges dreamed up got wilder and wilder. In fact, the `game' of course was deadly, and the double agents were dangerously playing not only with their own lives, but the lives of thousands of others.Macintyre concentrates on a handful of agents, who were employed, so their German handlers thought, to provide information about Britain and her military plans. In fact, these agents - flamboyant, hedonistic, larger-than-life to a man and woman, were feeding their German handlers misinformation, and as the plans for the Allied offensive which became the Normandy landings progressed, a complex structure of legerdemain was taking place, in order to get the German Secret Service, and the military, to be looking in the wrong direction, convinced that the Allied attack would happen elsewhere.To that end, one of the double agents created a completely fictitious cohort of spies, including a mythical group of disaffected Welsh Nazi sympathisers, and several of the non-existent spies were also `minders' for still more spies. And to stretch the joke still further, it was the Abwehr (German Military Intelligence) which ended up paying for the Double Agents whom they thought were spying for Germany, to feed them this disinformation.Not only was every active agent which the Abwehr thought they had planted in Britain in fact a double agent working FOR Britain, but the Allies even had planted `'Double Agent Pigeons' in Occupied France, as homing pigeons were employed as couriers. (You have to read the book!) Massed dummy tanks at a location to confuse spyplanes about where landings would start from, in order to divert attention to a false destination, an actor impersonating Monty and seen in a neutral country, to disguise the fact that the real Monty was elsewhere, preparing invasion, and even a beloved small dog whose possibly planned smuggle into Britain, going astray, nearly jeopardised the whole effortIn amongst the brilliant games being played, to achieve deadly ends, win or lose, and amongst the self-congratulation about British intelligence, and the extraordinary personalities of the double agents and their handlers, there is much evidence of pettifogging accountancy bureaucracy, and even extraordinary meanness, showed by a book-keeping mentality, and what at times seemed like a real lack of appreciation showed by those within the British Civil Service who were responsible for meeting expenses claims, from those often profligate, overblown, histrionic, but remarkably brave double agents, who risked not only their own lives, but the lives of many others, within their hands. Had the war of `misinformation' not been the success it was, the already horrific loss of life on the D-Day landing would have been immeasurably higher, and Allied failure here would have led to a very different outcome, and no doubt prolonged the war.Behind the derring-do, lies of course, the horror which that derring-do was designed to end.

Ben MacIntyre is a master when writing about what appears to be a favourite topic, espionage and related activities during WW2. He has authored several books within this field.Rather than a book that is primarily about an individual or a specific 'Operation', the subject here is the longer term and loose project known as XX which was a short way of writing 'Double Cross' and which dominated Allied efforts from 1943-45.It was long understood by both sides that there would at some point in time be an invasion of mainland Europe. When it was to happen and where would depend on a number of factors but it was first deemed essential that the number of successes that Hitler's Germany was to see would diminish and that Allied strengths and capabilities would have to be much greater than during the first three years of the War. The turning point came in 1943 when the Allies won at Tobruk, Sicily was successfully invaded and offered a foothold in Italy and, by no means least, when Germany was losing more submarines than they were sinking merchant vessels and the disaster of Stalingrad put paid to Germany's plan to link up with Japanese troops.The Double Cross project involved a great many ideas each of which was intended to mislead and confuse the enemy, create doubts and weaknesses and otherwise gain whatever advantage was possible. Operation Mincemeat, the subject itself of another book by this author, was just one part and the use of double agents and using Germany's own methods of turning agents and radio operators against their own country was used with great success and without any suspicion ever being raised. The book covers many of the different ideas that were employed. It also includes some of the Enigma story, without which it would have been impossible to assess and understand German reactions to the various events.Due to its wide coverage, it provides an excellent retrospective on the ideas, their implementation and execution and sometimes the problems that were to be encountered. There is a degree of summarisation in order to cover those parts of the overall plan which the author believes best delivers the concept; 'Agent Zigzag' another of MacIntyre's books relating a specific agent's part in the overal scheme is of almost similar size to this which provides an indication of the degree of compression applied.An excellent read which covers much of the Intelligence-led Allied actions of the last half of the War.