Bodyguard of Lies

In this classic, definitive history, the author provides a pitch-perfect account of the biggest and most complicated intelligence operation in the history of war. On June 6, 1944--D-day--six thousand Allied ships, the largest fleet in history, arrived off the French coast to begin the liberation of Europe. To their enormous relief, the Allies had obtained complete tactical surprise; the Nazi eagle slept. D-day, which could have been one of history's bloodiest disasters, became instead one of its greatest victories. How this astonishing surprise was achieved is the subject of Bodyguard of Lies, one of the most exciting volumes ever written about the Second World War. Anthony Cave Brown presents a large and fascinating cast of heroes and rogues and sweeps through dozens of dramatic stories of plot and counterplot, stealth and treachery, lies and deceits. We learn the full story behind Churchill's agonizing decision not to warn the city of Coventry that it was about to be destroyed, the deadly cat-and-mouse games between Allied agents in France and the Gestapo, the near fiasco of Montgomery's "double," who could not be kept sober, and the heroic but doomed efforts of the anti-Hitler German underground to eliminate the Fuehrer--including the role of the chief of the German intelligence service in passing secrets over to the British. These and many more explosive stories of code-breakers and deceivers, of plots and ruses at the highest and lowest levels, make up the tapestry of this monumental book.