Free (ADE-DRM PDF) Hunt for Nazi Spies: … in Vichy France [WWII History & Spycraft]

[ATDrake]

The Hunt for Nazi Spies: Fighting Espionage in Vichy France by Simon Kitson, translated by Catherine Tihanyi, is WWII retrospective political analysis cum espionage & counter-intelligence history and partial how-to (or rather, how-they-did-it) manual in the areas of Exactly What It Says In The Title, free courtesy of the University of Chicago Press.

This is their featured Free eBook of the Month for January, and is really very nifty, with what amounts to a nearly DIY manual on what to look for and against in agents and how to run operations, in between the historical bits of how actual agents were found and caught (or got away with it, despite those meddling kids!), and the apparently-more-complicated-than-previously-thought political situation of the collaborationist government.

Currently free until the end of January directly @ the publisher's website (ADE-DRM PDF available worldwide in exchange for your email address).

And this has been the selected 3rd (non-repeat) free ebook thread of the day.

Because I love it when we get quality quasi-academic non-fiction freebies, not to mention I went through this spycraft/espionage obsession phase when I was a kid. So this is like doubleplus good.

Enjoy!

Description
From 1940 to 1942, French secret agents arrested more than two thousand spies working for the Germans and executed several dozen of them—all despite the Vichy government’s declared collaboration with the Third Reich. A previously untold chapter in the history of World War II, this duplicitous activity is the gripping subject of The Hunt for Nazi Spies, a tautly narrated chronicle of the Vichy regime’s attempts to maintain sovereignty while supporting its Nazi occupiers.

Simon Kitson informs this remarkable story with findings from his investigation—the first by any historian—of thousands of Vichy documents seized in turn by the Nazis and the Soviets and returned to France only in the 1990s. His pioneering detective work uncovers a puzzling paradox: a French government that was hunting down left-wing activists and supporters of Charles de Gaulle’s Free French forces was also working to undermine the influence of German spies who were pursuing the same Gaullists and resisters. In light of this apparent contradiction, Kitson does not deny that Vichy France was committed to assisting the Nazi cause, but illuminates the complex agendas that characterized the collaboration and shows how it was possible to be both anti-German and anti-Gaullist.

Combining nuanced conclusions with dramatic accounts of the lives of spies on both sides, The Hunt for Nazi Spies adds an important new dimension to our understanding of the French predicament under German occupation and the shadowy world of World War II espionage.

[ATDrake]

Just a reminder that this is the last day to pick this freebie up, if you're interested and haven't already.