Spy and Counterspy: Secret Agents and Double Agents from the Second World War to the Cold War

By Ian Dear

The shadowy world of supposedly legalized spying has an enduring fascination for us all. Spy and Counterspy reveals for the first time the web of spies that spanned the globe during and after the Second World War, working for organisations like MI5 & MI6, the CIA & OSS, Soviet Smersh & NKVD, Japanese Tokko and the German Gestapo. These men and women lived extraordinary lives, always on the edge of exposure and the risk of death. Many of them were so in love with the Great Game of espionage that they betrayed their countries and acted as double and sometimes even triple agents in a complex deception that threatened the very grasp of power in government. Their war in the shadows remained unrecognized until today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9780752479194

Ian Dear

IAN DEAR is an historian with an unusual background in covert warfare. He served in the Royal Marines beofre working in the film and book publishing industries. He became a full time writer in 1979 specializing in military and maritime history and has written a vast number of books on secret operations of the war, including Marines at War, Escape and Evasion and Sabotage and Subversion (both The History Press) and Ten Commando. He spent five years as general editor of The Oxford Companion to World War II and co-edited, with the late Peter Kemp, The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea.