Jennifer Swanson - Spies, Lies, and Disguise: The Daring Tricks and Deeds that Won World War II

BLOOMSBURY CHILDRENS BOOKS

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This electronic edition published in 2019 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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First published in the United States of America in November 2019 by Bloomsbury Childrens Books

Text copyright 2019 by Jennifer Swanson

Illustrations copyright 2019 by Kevin OMalley

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request

ISBN: 978-1-6811-9779-1 (HB)
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0497-5 (PB)
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0343-5 (eBook)

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For the US Naval Academy. Those four years by the bay instilled in me a tremendous respect for the military and taught me to honor all those who have gone before us.

J. S.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

If youre looking for a book about World War II that discusses the politics, the actions of key figures, and the battles waged on land, on sea, and in the airthis is not your book. If you want to read a book that will give you a history lesson about World War II, youd better think again. Youre not going to get any of that here. This is not your typical World War II book.

So what is this book about? Its about what happened behind the scenes of one of the darkest wars in history. The top-secret stuff. The stuff that most history books dont talk about. In this book, youll learn about the underground operations conducted by many of the countries involved in the war. These covert ops were designed by military strategists, leaders, and experts whose primary mission was to outthink their enemies. Their job was to deceive, deflect, and confuse. To do whatever it took to end the war.

How in the world did everyone end up in a gigantic war again? Well, there was this dictator named Hitler. Nobody thought much of him as he was gaining power, but then that power went to his head and he decided he wanted to take over the world. An ambitious plan. Hitler was also in favor of creating a new group of people, one that was supposed to be superior to any other group of humans on the planet. He called this new race Aryan, which actually refers to an Indo-European group that invaded India back in the 1700s. Hitler believed that members of this race were ancestors to the Nazis. Was he correct? Not likely. Still, Hitler used the term Aryan to mean a race of pure Germans. Any other groupsespecially the ones made up of people with disabilities, people who were LGBTQIA+, or people who were of Jewish, Roma, or Sinti descentHitler considered to be inferior. He wanted them eliminated (killed).

Hitlers extreme views were not shared by most of the rest of the world, or even by many in Germany at first. But the power he wielded in Germany in the late 1930s was growing.

By 1939, things were looking pretty good for Hitler. Hed taken back the Rhineland area of Germany, as well as Austria and the country that was then known as Czechoslovakia. The Fhrer, as he was now called, even managed to get the Soviet Union on his side for a while. That was huge. That meant the Soviets were in agreement with Hitlers invasion of Poland. After all, he was only taking back land that had once belonged to Germany, before WWI. While the Soviet Union might not have cared about Hitler doing this, Great Britain and France did. They cared a lot.

Great Britain and France kept a close eye on what was happening in Poland. Great Britain assured Poland that they would jump in and defend them if Germany invaded. Hitler knew this and still he moved forward. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland using a style of warfare called blitzkrieg. This entailed raining tons of bombs down on a victim country. Blitzkrieg was the last straw for Great Britain and France. They declared war: World War II has begun! (Or something like that.)

So Great Britain found itself in the last place it wanted to be: in a war. With Germany. Again! The pressing question was how to get out of itfast! Great Britains answer? Have strategists come up with some really outrageous ways to end the war. (And hopefully win it at the same time.)

Imagine that you were one of those strategists. What would you have done?

If the sneaky tricks and dastardly deeds of World War II interest you, get ready to read about some outrageous top-secret operations that just may have helped to shape history.

CHAPTER ONE

License to Kill

S ound interesting? Fantastic! You might be a great candidate for one of Britains secret agentcommandos, aka Churchills Secret Warriors. Where do you sign up? Actually, youre a bit late. Registration was over 75 years ago.

The year was 1939. Adolf Hitler was the leader of Germany. His goal was to gobble up the countries around him in Europe and eventually take over the world. Add in that he wanted to eliminate any people he considered inferior and replace them with his own superior Aryan race, and he was one pretty scary person.

During the first six months of the war, nothing much had happened. In fact, that time, from September 1939 to March 1940, was known as the Phony War. It was named this because while the countries were officially at war, no one was really fighting yet. Not a bad way to conduct a warnobody shoots anyone else. Sounds good to me. Unfortunately, all that was about to end.

In May 1940 the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was sent to France to help keep the Germans out. Unfortunately, the BEF wasnt doing a great job of that. They were forced back to the shore of France, with nothing left to do but retreat. It was beginning to look like Hitler might be adding another country to his growing collection. But wait. The British were not ready to be counted out... not yet.

Winston Churchill, the prime minister of Great Britain, had a wild idea up his sleeve. He decided that since Hitler wasnt playing by the traditional rules (his blitzkrieg affected civiliansregular peopleand not just military members), then he didnt have to either. Churchill called together a few select commanders to a top-secret meeting. It was time to take action. Any action. Nothing would be off-limits. Churchill ordered the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a supersecret force of commandos, to work behind the lines with one missionto destroy the enemy at all costs.