Stealing secrets, telling lies: how spies and codebreakers helped shape the twentieth century

Abstract

How important is it to know your enemy's secrets? The German victory at the Battle of Tannenberg in 1914, the entrance of the United States into World War I, the defeat of Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union's faster-than-anticipated development of the atomic bomb were all facilitated by stealing enemy secrets. Espionage and codebreaking have, throughout history, been instrumental in the rise, fall, and preservation of world powers. In Stealing Secrets, Telling Lies, James Gannon provides the full story behind the critical intelligence breakthroughs that helped alter the course of history in the twentieth century. The interception of the Zimmerman Telegram, the deciphering of the German Enigma machine, the Soviet's damaging penetration of the British Foreign Service through the Cambridge Five spy ring, and the U.S. counter-intelligence coup known as Operation Venona (still secret until 1995) are just some of the episodes detailed here.