Volume 18, Number 2 · February 10, 1972
Through the Keyhole
By A.J.P. Taylor
Codeword: "Direktor"
by Heinz Höhne
Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 310 pp., $10.00
The Double-Cross System
by J.C. Masterman
Yale, 203 pp., $6.95
The Game of the Foxes
by Ladislas Farago
McKay, 696 pp., $11.95
The London Journals of General Raymond E. Lee 1940-1941
edited by James Lenze
Little, Brown, 489 pp., $12.50
Spying makes news. Captain Dreyfus is the only officer of the French army in the 1890s whose name is still remembered. Mata Hari gets more space than most generals of the First World War. But what did they achieve apart from a sensation? Suppose the activities of which Dreyfus was wrongly suspected had gone on—as indeed they did for some time after he was arrested. Would the Germans have been any nearer winning the battle of the Marne? And what did Mata Hari do except practice her other profession of prostitute? Even when the information received is really important and valuable, it rarely makes any difference. Pearl Harbor is the most famous case of recent times. There has never been an operation more effectively uncovered beforehand and none that came as more of a surprise when it happened. Similarly Stalin was told time and again that the Germans were about to attack. When the attack came he was totally unprepared.
Review, 3318 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |