Secret War

In 1942, the British army was locked in a deadly struggle in the North African desert with Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps. Few were as motivated as 40 or so German-speaking Jews of the Special Interrogation Group.

A celebrated postwar fashion designer and style icon, Hardy Amies was one of the most unlikely spymasters of World War II.

As Britain held out against the Nazis in Europe, the United States was desperate to keep supply lines open to its ally across the Atlantic. To do so, it needed help from an expert on the New York City docks: mobster Charles Luciano.

While pretending to spy for the Germans during the war, a young Yugoslav offered his services to the British. Agent Tricycle also gathered intelligence about Japan's plans that the FBI tragically dismissed.

Hitler knew that if he could win the race to develop a nuclear bomb, he could still win the war. Churchill's SOE turned to a small group of highly trained Norwegian agents and a successful London financier to make sure that he didn't.

One SOE agent was an Oxford academic most interested in Greece's classical past. In the end, his work among local partisans not only helped liberate Greece from Axis occupation--it also sowed the seeds of the Greek civil war.

SOE missions in Holland during WWII were the most disastrous in British intelligence. Why did London continue to drop agents there only for them to be arrested by the Nazis? Was German counterintelligence that good--or was something more sinister afoot?

With the Allied advance in northern Italy stalled in late 1944 the SOE prepared an attack on German military headquarters in the region. When London called the plans off at the last minute, leaders had to decide whether to comply with the order or defy it

For much of WWII, the SOE waged a successful secret war in occupied France. But the woman at the heart of it all also presided over a series of bungled operations that delivered agents straight into the hands of the Gestapo.

How did the Nazis penetrate the French Resistance? Why were so many British agents captured after landing in France? Part of the answer may lie with an agent who worked with the Germans and the British--and may also have reported to a third party.

Beautiful, charismatic, and cunning, Winston Churchill's favorite spy was a Polish woman who seemed to thrive on adrenaline and beating the odds. For five years she did just that, risking her life to bring back information crucial to the Allied Victory.

A Spanish civilian spying for Germany was actually an intrepid enemy of fascism. Decorated by Germany and Britain alike, he ran an imaginary network of spies and produced fake intelligence that reached the desk of the Führer himself.

On Churchill's orders, an SOE agent parachuted into German-occupied Yugoslavia in 1943 to cut a deal with communist partisans who had an agenda far beyond defeating the Nazis. The prime minister realized the dangers of cooperating with the communists.