Booth, Nicholas. ZIGZAG: The Incredible Wartime Exploits of Double Agent Eddie Chapman. London: Piatkus, 2007. New York: Arcade, 2007.
Clark comment: "ZIGZAG" was Chapman's codename in MI5's Double-Cross operation. His obituary appears in the Telegraph (London), "Eddie Chapman -- Safe-blower Who Became the Wartime Double Agent Zig-Zag and Outfoxed the Germans," 20 Dec. 1997.
Mi5 has a Web page devoted to Chapman: "History: Cases from the National Archives -- Eddie Chapman (Agent Zigzag)," at: https://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/eddie-chapman-agent-zigzag.html. Additional documents on the case are at: https://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/documents-from-the-chapman-case.html.
A Publishers Weekly reviewer (via Amazon.com) calls this is "lively and sympathetic account" of the petty crook turned double agent. However, the author's "transparent cheerleading for Chapman detracts from an otherwise enjoyable biography."
Peake, Studies 51.3 (2007), notes that the author "had the cooperation of Chapman's wife and family, and his story is full of details about [Chapman's] origins, his numerous failed business ventures, his female admirers, his Rolls Royce, and his long, but successful, battles to publish his memoirs and make a movie about his double-agent life."
For Gallehawk, I&NS 24.6 (Dec. 2009), this work "benefit[s] greatly from the input and reminiscences" of Chapman's "sometimes long-suffering wife and then widow." However, what makes this book "invaluable ... for this whole saga is the considerable amount of material devoted to Chapman's life after the war." This is "a very worthwhile read."
See also, Macintyre, Agent ZIGZAG (2007); and Owen, The Eddie Chapman Story (1954).
Day,
Peter, and Andrew Alderson. "Top German's Spy Blunders Helped Britain
to Win War." Electronic Telegraph, 23 Apr. 2000. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk]
Documents at the Public Record Office in London show that "Major Nikolaus Ritter realised as early as 1941,... that his spy network in Britain had been compromised but he never passed on his suspicions to his superiors.... Ritter's failure to report his suspicions paved the way for the success of Operation Double Cross."
Destremau, Christian. Opération Garbo: le dernier secret du jour J. Paris: Perrin, 2004.
Evans,
Michael. "Double Dealing Aided the Allies." Times (London),
17 Sep. 1999. [http://www.the-times.co.uk]
The minutes of the XX Committee, "which masterminded the wartime double cross agents," were released by the Public Record Office on 16 September 1999. The minutes "reveal more details of the way the Germans were fooled," showing that the "greatest double cross agent of them all,... Juan Pujol Garcia, codenamed Garbo, played the crucial part in deceiving the Germans over Allied plans for the invasion of Normandy."
Fowler, Simon. "New MI5 Records at the Public Record Office." Labour History Review 63 (1999): 288-296.
Royal Historical Society Database: "Second World War records."
Grosjean, François. "FIDO: French Pilot and Security Service Double Agent Malgré Lui." International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 23, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 337-352.
A son tries to reconstruct his father's (Roger Grosjean) relationship with the British Double-Cross system during World War II.
Harris, Tomas. Summary of the GARBO Case. London: Public Record Office, 2000.
Hoare, Oliver, ed. Camp 020: MI5 and the Nazi Spies: The Official History of MI5's Wartime Interrogation Centre. Richmond: Public Record Office, 2000.
Juárez, Javier. Juan Pujol, el espía que derrotó a Hitler. Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 2004.
Pujol was "Garbo" in the British Double-Cross system.
Lacey, Nicola. A Life of H.L.A. Hart: The Nightmare and the Noble Dream. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Erskine, Journal of Intelligence History 8.1 (Summer 2008), notes that most of this book covers Hart's "work as a barrister and academic, but part of chapter 5 deals with his wartime work in MI5 (British counter-intelligence)." His main task with MI5's B division (counter-espionage) "was to assimilate and interpret copious, but often very cryptic, ISOS (Sigint) on the Abwehr and Sicherheitsdienst (SD -- the intelligence service of the SS and Nazi Party), plus huge amounts of data from interrogations, the police and other sources." The author "is a law professor, not an intelligence historian, which leads to some detailed errors and omissions."
Lawless, Jill. "WWII British Spies Frustrated by FBI." Associated Press, 4 Sep. 2007. [http://www.ap.com]
Newly declassified files released on 4 September 2007 by the British National Archives "chart the rocky early years of the relationship" between the FBI and the British Security Service (MI5) "and show how cooperation improved over the course of the war."
[Liddell, Guy.]
See Nigel West, ed., The Guy Liddell Diaries -- 1939-1945: MI5's Director of Counter-Espionage in World War II, 2 vols. (London: Routledge, 2005).
See also, Eunan O'Halpin, "The Liddell Diaries and British Intelligence History," Intelligence and National Security 20, no. 4 (Dec. 2005): 670-686.
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