Double-Cross System: The Incredible Story Of How Nazi Spies Were Turned Into Double Agents

Just jaw-dropping details you'd never have guessed and that I've never seen anywhere else. Incredible book.

If you wanted to have another war between Germany and England this is the book to read about how to oversee a spy network - assuming it's 1945 again. I've read about 2/3 of the book, and I'm not planning to finish it. It's an overview, from a very high level, including all sorts of British WW-II individuals' names which can no longer be of contemporary interest except perhaps to a historian working in the period. The book does give some insight into how the British did deceive the Germans, but there are very, very few operational details. There are also numerous accounts of how they would have liked to have done X, Y, and Z, but were prevented from doing so by higher authority. Or mentions of "AGENT-X" obtaining secrets or feeding information to Germans, but never a word on the details of how. It's simply not interesting except in the broadest sense. I feel the book is misrepresented, as the story is NOT "incredible". Only the fact of the occurrence is incredible.

This book is a lightly redacted version of the Twenty Committee's (XX Committee) end-of-war report. The Twenty Committee was responsible for catching German agents in Britain and turning them into double agents. Their record was unblemished...they caught every German agent before he could do any damage.This book is so refreshingly British! The author, J.C. Masterman is very frank about their faults as well as their triumphs. If you want to understand how to catch spies and how to turn them, this is the book for you. I own a hardback copy, but it always seems to be on loan. That's why I bought the Kindle edition.

Somewhat dated. A lot of the information was still classified when Masterman wrote his book - for example the Ultra decrypts which allowed the spymasters to gauge the effectiveness of the disinformation they were playing to the Abwehr = but it is still a first hand account of one of the greatest intelligence coups of all time.It's amazing that British intelligence was peerless against the Germans, and got creamed by the Soviets

Great story of how the British ran the German spy system in Britian during the Second World War. They did the job so well they even got the Germans to pay for the operation of their double cross system.

Sort of good. I did not think it was as interesting as other true spy story books.

Interesting description of how the British turned Nazi spies. I would have appreciated more details about the spies themselves and how they were captured and turned. Reads more like a bureaucratic report .

When first published, Masterman's history of the "Twenty Committee" was feted far and wide. This book is a *must read* for any student of the War in Europe.