Sharing Secrets with Stalin: How the Allies Traded Intelligence, 1941-1945 (Modern War Studies) - Hardcover

Smith, Bradley F.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0700608001 ISBN 13: 9780700608003

Publisher: University Press of Kansas, 1996

Synopsis

Bestselling author Bradley Smith reveals the surprisingly rich exchange of wartime intelligence between the Anglo-American allies and the Soviet Union, as well as the procedures and politics that made such an exchange possible.

Between the late 1930s and 1945, allied intelligence organizations expanded at an enormous rate in order to acquire the secret information their governments needed to win the war. But, as Smith demonstrates, the demand for intelligence far outpaced the ability of any one ally to produce it. For that reason, Washington, London, and Moscow were compelled to share some of their most sensitive secrets.

Historians have long known about the close Anglo-American intelligence collaboration, but until now the Soviet connection has been largely unexplored. Smith contends that Cold War animosities helped keep this story from a public that might have found it hard to believe that such cooperation was ever possible. In fact, official denials—from such illustrious Cold Warriors as Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell and the CIA's Sherman Kent—continued well into the late 1980s.

Smith argues that, contrary to the official story, Soviet-American intelligence exchanges were both extensive and successful. He shows that East and West were not as hostile to each other during the war or as determined to march right off into the Cold War as many have suggested. Among other things, he provides convincing evidence that the U.S. Army gave the Soviets its highest-grade ULTRA intelligence in August 1945 to speed up the Soviet advances in the Far East.

Based on interviews and enormous research in Anglo-American archives and despite limited access to tenaciously guarded Soviet documents, Smith's book persuasively demonstrates how reluctant and suspicious allies, driven by the harsh realities of total war, finally set aside their ideological differences to work closely with people they neither trusted nor particularly liked.

About this title

About the Author:

Bradley Smith is the author of many books including Reaching Judgment at Nuremberg; The Shadow Warriors: OSS and the Origins of the CIA; The Road to Nuremberg; Operation Sunrise, the Secret Surrender; The ULTRA-MAGIC Deals; The War's Long Shadow; and Adolph Hitler: His Family, Childhood, and Youth.

Review:

"This is a very impressive and important work that should be read by all World War II diplomatic and military as well as intelligence scholars."Journal of Military History

"This highly readable, impeccably researched, and brilliant book casts fascinating new light on the tense relations between the Americans, British, and Soviets during the war."International History Review

"A comprehensive and critical look at the exchange of military intelligence among Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States during the last four crucial years of World War II."American Historical Review

"A useful and interesting work."Journal of Slavic Military Studies

"A persuasive, well-documented, and lively account of the Anglo-American-Soviet intelligence relationship in World War II. Smith has illuminated an interesting and heretofore overlooked aspect of World War II."Journal of American History

"As engaging as it is astonishing, this book provides extremely important revelations and striking pen-portraits etched in acid of the main actors. Certainly the sources are fabulous."John Erickson, author of The Road to Stalingrad

"This richly detailed book is a major revelation, an inquiry into one of the darkest corners of Russian-Allied relations during World War II."John Prados, author of Combined Fleet Decoded

"Credibility, utility, and readability propel this book into the first ranks of its genre. There, it measures up well with the pre-eminent works by Hinsley, Deutsch, and Drea. This work is particularly timely and useful, appearing when current U.S.-Russian cooperative efforts are plagued by the misunderstandings of the past and when the Russian archives are slowly creaking open."David M. Glantz, coauthor of When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler

"The most complete and detailed picture of such exchanges of intelligence that we are likely to see for some time."Warren F. Kimball, author of The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman

"Smith has done an extraordinary job in uncovering a story that forces us to rethink the achievements and the failures of one of historys more improbable alliances."Wesley K. Wark, author of The Ultimate Enemy: British Intelligence and Nazi Germany, 19331939

"A major contribution to the literature of World War II by a scholar of considerable intellectual integrity."Carl Boyd, author of Hitler's Japanese Confidant: General Oshima Hiroshi and MAGIC Intelligence, 19411945

About this edition

• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0700608001
• ISBN 13: 9780700608003
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 328