Hitler's Spy

James Hayward

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780857208569
• eBook ISBN:
  9781471132636
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

Originally published as Double Agent Snow, Hitler's Spyis the paperback edition, which tells of how on the eve of the outbreak of the Second World War the double-agent Arthur Owens, codenamed SNOW, is summoned to Berlin and appointed Hitler's chief spy in Britain. Days later he finds himself in Wandsworth prison, betrayed by the wife he traded for a younger model, and forced to transmit false wireless messages for MI5 to earn his freedom - and avoid the hangman's noose. A vain and devious anti-hero with no moral compass, Owen's motives were status, money and women.He mixed fact with fiction constantly, and at times insisted that he was a true patriot, undertaking hazardous secret missions for his mother country; at other times, Owens saw himself as a daring rogue agent, outwitting British Intelligence and loyal only to the Fatherland.

Yet in 1944, as Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, Hitler was caught unawares, tricked into expecting the invasion across the Pas de Calais in a strategic deception played out by Owens and the double-cross agents of MI5. For all his flaws, Agent Snow became the traitor who saved his country.Based on recently de-classified MI5 files and previously unpublished sources, Hitler's Spyis the story of a secret Battle of Britain, fought by Snow and his opposing spymasters, Thomas 'Tar' Robertson of MI5 and Nikolaus Ritter of the Abwehr, as well as the tragic love triangle between Owens, his wife Irene, and his mistress Lily Funnell. The evocative, fast-paced narrative moves from seedy south London pubs to North Sea trawlers, from chic Baltic spa resorts to Dartmoor gaol, populated by a colourful rogue's gallery of double-cross agents.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• ALSO BY JAMES HAYWARD
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Epigraph page
• Contents
• Dramatis Personae
• Prologue
• 1 ‘Typical Underfed Cardiff Type’
• 2 Colonel Johnny
• 3 OIK Calling Hamburg
• 4 The Welsh Ring
• 5 Double Agent Dick
• 6 The Trawler Treff
• 7 Operation Lamp
• 8 Nazi Frightfulness in Surrey
• 9 Summer and Snow
• 10 The Executioners
• 11 Double Trouble
• 12 Working For Peace
• 13 Snow On Ice
• 14 Sins of the Father
• Epilogues
• Bibliography and Sources
• Acknowledgements
• Index
• A Note on the Author
• List of Illustrations