Norman Ridley

Formed a mere two months after the Bolshevik Revolution, the Cheka, the Soviet Security and Intelligence Agency, was formed to gather intelligence and promote revolution abroad. This organisation underwent a series of transformations over the following decades and achieved some remarkable successes against Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the USA, and the United Kingdom. Throughout the 1930s, the Soviets pursued their ambition of gaining influence in Eastern Europe. It was a plan that inevitably brought them into conflict with Nazi Germany, against which they began setting up clandestine organisations that were meant to become operational in the event of war. The USA had been of peripheral interest to the Soviets up until the prospect of war loomed ever closer. Then, when it became known that Britain and the USA were exploring the potential of atomic weapons, espionage in the western hemisphere became of paramount importance. Despite their being allies against the Nazis, the Soviets significantly increased spying activity against both nations in an effort to develop their own atomic bomb programme. After the end of the Second World War, a new and ominous threat hung over the world in the guise of the Cold War when the Soviets brought into play their British spy network which became known as the Cambridge Five. These were agents who had been radicalised and recruited during the 1930s and then embedded within the British security services. In Stalin’s Top Spies the author explores five of the Soviet Union’s greatest spies: Leopold Trepper (and the Red Orchestra), Ursula Kuczynski (the Atomic Spy), Richard Sorge (a Soviet agent in Tokyo), Kim Philby (the Cambridge Spy), and Rudolf Abel (a Soviet intelligence officer who was arrested in the USA on charges of espionage in 1957). The book not only reveals their successes and failures, but assessing the extent to which they influenced world events from the Second World War through to the early years of the Cold War. In so doing, it also highlights the failures of the target nations to recognise the threat posed to them and exposes their lack of success in dealing with it.

When the American War of Independence broke out, the American, British and French intelligence agencies were particularly well structured, but it soon became apparent to all involved that victory hinged on sound political and military intelligence. While Britain and France had a tradition of conducting espionage, the Americans struggled with an intelligence service that was almost always markedly inferior. Even so, despite this disadvantage, it was they who prevailed. Right from the start, General George Washington had been keenly aware of the importance of the espionage and counterintelligence roles. Under his supervision, several networks of spies operated in both close-knit circles and far-reaching societies. The undercover agents were merchants, tailors, farmers, and other extraordinary patriots with ordinary day jobs. Benjamin Franklin took responsibility for covert action, while John Jay oversaw the counterintelligence work. All three men were all honoured by the CIA in 1997 as the Founding Fathers of the American intelligence services. The British, in particular, required information about geography and terrain unfamiliar to their forces. The British, for example, conducted a campaign of trying to win over the American public and especially the enslaved people of African descent. They also relied in part on spies such as Benedict Arnold, whose name later became synonymous with treason and betrayal. Discounting technology, there are few differences between modern espionage and the techniques and methods of 250 years ago. Double agents, secret writing, dead drops, clandestine meetings, code-making and breakings, sabotage, bribery deception, signals, propaganda, and partisan warfare were all very much in evidence during the revolution. Both sides also mounted disinformation campaigns to confuse and mislead. In no small part, the outcome of a number of Civil War battles, such as Lexington, Concord and Yorktown, owed much to the use of intelligence and the work of America’s spymaster, Agent 711 – General George Washington.

The post-war world was dominated by the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R., but the events of 1956 exposed their limitations. On 22 October 1956, following Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden secretly met with French and Israeli leaders in Sevres, France. They agreed that Israel would invade Egypt, with Britain and France intervening under the guise of peacemaking to secure control of the canal and topple Nasser.On 23 October, far from the Middle East, hundreds of thousands of protesters in Budapest opposed Soviet occupation, tearing down Stalin statues. The uprising escalated as the Soviet Red Army intervened, leading to twelve days of violence, thousands killed or injured, and 250,000 Hungarians fleeing their country. Britain and France withdrew from the Suez after nine days of fighting, their ambitions thwarted by international pressure and canal closure.The U.S. and U.S.S.R. struggled to influence these events. The U.S., preoccupied with domestic elections and the threat of Soviet nuclear retaliation, could not support Eastern European movements. Soviet actions during the Hungarian uprising weakened their global image.Norman Ridley’s analysis reveals how these crises highlighted the limitations of superpower influence. Despite their nuclear strength, the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. faced challenges they could not overcome, showing their mutual struggles in shaping the post-war world order.

Eleven years after Reinhard Gehlen, the head of Adolf Hitler’s Eastern Front military intelligence unit, emerged from hiding to hand himself over to US forces, he had, with the help of the American CIA, created a legend for himself as founder and first president of the West German Secret Service. In this role he employed many of the same Wehrmacht and SS officers he had served with during the Second World War.All through the steady progression of his career before and during the Second World War, Gehlen had been far too industrious and committed to court the limelight. Then after the defeat of Germany, when he transferred his allegiance to the CIA and later became head of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, he became a man whom Hugh Trevor Roper’s described as someone who ‘always moved in the shadows’.For some, the German intelligence network that Gehlen had controlled since 1942, was part of an unbroken tradition going back to the days of Bismarck. For a great many in Gehlen’s organisation the Cold War was merely an extension of an anti-Soviet campaign that had begun on 22 June 1941, when Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa.After the war, Gehlen had emerged unscathed from Hitler’s bunker and no war crimes charges were ever brought against him. His name, and those of 350 of his Wehrmacht command, were redacted from the official lists of German prisoners of war. Gehlen protected and employed men like Heinrich Schmitz who had been part of Einsatzgruppe A, the murder squad that massacred so many, including communist functionaries and Jewish women, men and children, in the Baltic States.Though Gehlen had remained loyal to Hitler right to the end, once state authority collapsed he wasted little time in making contact with the Americans and offered to place his vast intelligence resources at their disposal in the new fight against Soviet communism. While German generals Heinz Guderian and Franz Halder placed great store by Gehlen’s reports on the tactical level, Hitler called them ‘defeatist’ and gave them barely a glance when making his disastrous strategic decisions. Allen Dulles, head of the CIA, did not repeat Hitler’s mistake, but Gehlen deeply resented the way that his reports to Dulles were mishandled.It became Gehlen’s ambition initially to head up a completely independent West German foreign intelligence service. However, it was not until 1951 that talks to establish a West German intelligence service at federal level began. In the immediate post-war years, Gehlen tirelessly made his case to defend the harbouring of former Wehrmacht and SS personnel in his organisation and battled to prove his worth to the Americans.This book looks at Gehlen’s life from his early career in the chaos of Weimar, through his elevation to General Staff intelligence officer on the Russian Front. It describes how he survived the defeat of the Third Reich and offered himself to the Americans as a foil against the Soviet Union in the Cold War. In doing so it closely examines Gehlen’s record to separate fact from his self-serving fictions.

Válka je nákladná záležitost a v roce 1939 bylo Německo téměř na mizině, protože se jeho ekonomika přehřívala a mířila k prudké inflaci. Hitler potřeboval tvrdou cizí měnu na zaplacení své válečné mašinérie a jediný způsob, jak ji získat, byl prodej zlata, které uloupil z národních bank Rakouska, Československa a všech zemí, které byly okupovány po září 1939. Dalším zdrojem byla krádež osobního zlata, zejména od Židů, které pocházelo i z koncentračních táborů. Žádná neutrální země by nepřijala říšské marky, takže zlato muselo být propíráno přes švýcarské banky. Příběh švýcarské spolu-účasti na německých válečných zločinech je stále předmětem sporů a soudních řízení. Objevují se také otázky, jakou roli hrají jiné země, zejména Portugalsko, při praní ukradeného zlata pro nacisty. Jednání Vatikánu s Hitlerem bylo často vnímáno jako nejednoznačné a tato kniha zkoumá roli Svatého stolce při pomoci dopravovat nacistické zlato do Jižní Ameriky a jak mohlo být použito k znovuvytvoření Německé říše. Po válce byla zřízena komise, která měla získat co nejvíce zlata a vrátit ho těm, kterým bylo ukradeno. To samozřejmě provázely obrovské problémy, zejména pokud jde o zlato uloupené obětem holocaustu. Velké množství zlata a dalších pokladů bylo ukryto v dole v Merkers v Durynsku, který byl nalezen americkou 3. armádou v roce 1945, ale další zlato zůstává nezjištěno a stále probíhají pokusy odhalit předpokládané skryté úkryty, nejnověji v Polsku. Pátrání po nacistickém zlatu probíhá až do dnešních dní a občas je i úspěšné, jako byl například nález v květnu 2022 v Polsku. Místa ukrytí a likvidace zbývajícího ukradeného zlata vedly k mno-ha vyšetřováním a nesčetným konspiračním teoriím. Autor analyzuje a odhaluje záhady provázející pátrání po ztracených milionech.