Article about: Just started to order my Christmas holiday reading. Always enjoy this time of year ... feet up, a couple of books and a few leisurely beers...peace and joy Churchill's Secret Enemy: MI5 and
Just started to order my Christmas holiday reading.
Always enjoy this time of year ... feet up, a couple of books and a few leisurely beers...peace and joy
Churchill's Secret Enemy: MI5 and the Plot to stop Winston Churchill by Jonathan William PilePaperback: 414 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (24 May 2012)
ISBN-13: 978-1477524749
Author's blurb: Winston Churchill is widely and rightly admired for his historic fight to save Britain and the West against the threat of Nazi Germany. Drawing on unpublished files and declassified documents Jonathan Pile exclusively reveals new evidence concerning the hitherto secret plots against Churchill which intended to drive him from parliament and deprive him of office. Masterminded by MI5 officer Major Sir George Joseph Ball, the Watergate Style dirty tricks involved illegal phone taps, mail interception, burgulary, and the placing of agents to spy on leading Anti-Nazis like Churchill.
Covert campaigns were organised to deprive him of funding, support and smear his reputation. Mr Pile reveals the circle of Ball's friends which extended into high politics, finance, the Media, the Royal Court, as well as far right aristocrats bend on stopping Churchill and reaching a negotiated peace with Adolf Hitler. Ball's circle included Ian Fleming, the Duke of Westminster, Lord Luke, Guy Burgess, Henry Drummond-Wolff, MI5 Deputy Jasper Harker and Far Right Editor Pro-Nazi Henry Newnham. Mr Pile traces the rise of appeasement to culminate in the Rudolf Hess Peace Mission and the mysterious stopping of Big Ben in 1941.
This book exclusively reveals : (As revealed in unpublished letters in the Ball Papers at the Bodelian Library Oxford) Unsolved murdered gold millionaire Bahamas tax-exile Sir Harry Oakes, whose bludgeoned body was found in his Nassau home in 1943 secretly bankrolled Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Nazi Germany in 1938 in exchange for a Knighthood. Neville Chamberlain using his political fixer Joseph Ball also received funds from a secret fund controlled by the Pro-Nazi Group "The Link" member the Duke of Westminster and Pro-Fascist and friend of Herman Goering Sir Henry Drummond-Wolff.
Reputed to have rung out continuously throughout the whole of the Second World War, the iconic symbol of London Big Ben (under the control of BBC Chief Lord Reith at the Ministry of Works) suddenly and mysteriously stopped on the night of June 4th 1941 to be restarted exactly 12 hours later, (a communications technique which was to feature in Ian Fleming's 1965 James Bond Film Thunderball.) Winston Churchill was forced by financial pressure in 1937 to put his beloved home Chartwell up for sale after pro-appeasement British newspapers cancelled his writing contracts over his outspoken opposition to appeasement.
New evidence on the arrival of Rudolf Hess - shows that sacked MI5 chief General Sir Vernon Kell recorded the arrival of Hess, 3 days before the newspapers told Britain and that Churchill reported that some "maggots are in the apple" when referring to the involvement of the British in Hess's arrival.
Ball's Papers reveal his support for a negotiated peace, his control of the pro-Nazi magazine Truth and his offer to Chamberlain to resign and fight the Churchillian Group with a propaganda campaign in 1940. Evidence also points to Ball's darker attempts to stop anti-nazis including involvement in the removal of Hore Belisha, the placing of anti-Churchill poster ads in The Strand , and the forced suicides of an Italian Peace Emissary and honours trafficker in 1943. Whilst Joseph Ball was unable to stop Churchill returning to Power in 1940, he remained a powerful threat first as a head of the Security Executive and as a friend of the head of the Civil Service Sir Horace Wilson.
In 1945, Churchill lacking the brilliant election campaign of Joseph Ball which had won the elections of 1924, 1931 & 1935 went down to defeat against Labour having won the war. Ball had his revenge, and went onto head the Gold Mining Conglomerate Lonrho.
I collect, therefore I am.
Nothing in science can explain how consciousness arose from matter.
Australian Army Campaigns Series volumes 1. "Crete", 2. "The Western Desert Campaign 1940-41" and 5. "Malaya".
I have volume 9 "Bardia" on it way to me.
These are produced by the Australian Army History Unit and published as reference material for young Officers as well as for general consumption.
Only problem is I have read 1 and 2 already.
I spent over a £120.00 sunday on books a Chatham,had a shopping barrow full,if any of you's guys go there and see 2 people with a shopping trolley that's me,come and say hi.
I am half way through this book and it is fantastic! Some graphic accounts of the Russian front! A bit Sven Hassel..esque !
"Like many Germans, Berlin schoolboy Erwin Bartmann fell under the spell of the Zeitgeist cultivated by the Nazis. Convinced he was growing up in the best country in the world, he dreamt of joining the Leibstandarte, Hitler's elite Waffen SS unit. Tall, blond, blue-eyed, and just seventeen-years-old, Erwin fulfilled his dream on Mayday 1941, when he gave up his apprenticeship at the Glaser bakery in Memeler Strasse and walked into the Lichterfelde barracks in Berlin as a raw, volunteer recruit. On arrival at the Eastern Front in late summer 1941, Erwin was assigned to a frontline communications squad attached to 4.Kompanie and soon discovered that survival was a matter of luck - or the protection of a guardian angel. Good fortune finally deserted Erwin on 11 July 1943 when shrapnel sizzled through his lung during the epic Battle of Kursk-Prokhorovka. Following a period of recovery, and promotion to Unterscharführer, Erwin took up a post as machine-gun instructor with the Ausbildung und Ersatz Bataillon, a training unit based close to the eastern section of the Berliner Ring Autobahn. When the Red Army launched its massive assault on the Seelow Heights, Erwin's unit, now incorporated into Regiment Falke, was deployed to the southern flank of the Berlin-Frankfurt Autobahn, close to the River Oder. The German defences soon crumbled and with the end of the Reich inevitable, Erwin was forced to choose between a struggle for personal survival and the fulfilment of his SS oath of 'loyalty unto death' . From the war on the southern sector of the Eastern Front to a bomb-shattered Berlin populated largely by old men and demoralised lonely women, this candid eyewitness account offers a unique and sometimes surprising perspective on the life of a young Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler volunteer"
"In all my years as a soldier, I have never seen men fight so hard." - SS Obergruppenfuhrer Wilhelm Bittrich - Arnhem
Just finishing of this one."It never snows in September?".... & when I get home I will be reading or looking through my Christmas present I'm 101% sure of!!! Then fall asleep after five minutes because I will be full of Christmas dinner & Speckled Hen...Cheers Terry.
I am half way through this book and it is fantastic! Some graphic accounts of the Russian front! A bit Sven Hassel..esque !
"Like many Germans, Berlin schoolboy Erwin Bartmann fell under the spell of the Zeitgeist cultivated by the Nazis. Convinced he was growing up in the best country in the world, he dreamt of joining the Leibstandarte, Hitler's elite Waffen SS unit. Tall, blond, blue-eyed, and just seventeen-years-old, Erwin fulfilled his dream on Mayday 1941, when he gave up his apprenticeship at the Glaser bakery in Memeler Strasse and walked into the Lichterfelde barracks in Berlin as a raw, volunteer recruit. On arrival at the Eastern Front in late summer 1941, Erwin was assigned to a frontline communications squad attached to 4.Kompanie and soon discovered that survival was a matter of luck - or the protection of a guardian angel. Good fortune finally deserted Erwin on 11 July 1943 when shrapnel sizzled through his lung during the epic Battle of Kursk-Prokhorovka. Following a period of recovery, and promotion to Unterscharführer, Erwin took up a post as machine-gun instructor with the Ausbildung und Ersatz Bataillon, a training unit based close to the eastern section of the Berliner Ring Autobahn. When the Red Army launched its massive assault on the Seelow Heights, Erwin's unit, now incorporated into Regiment Falke, was deployed to the southern flank of the Berlin-Frankfurt Autobahn, close to the River Oder. The German defences soon crumbled and with the end of the Reich inevitable, Erwin was forced to choose between a struggle for personal survival and the fulfilment of his SS oath of 'loyalty unto death' . From the war on the southern sector of the Eastern Front to a bomb-shattered Berlin populated largely by old men and demoralised lonely women, this candid eyewitness account offers a unique and sometimes surprising perspective on the life of a young Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler volunteer"
I am half way through this book and it is fantastic! Some graphic accounts of the Russian front! A bit Sven Hassel..esque !
By coincidence, I've just finished reading Bartmann's memoir and highly recommend it. He passed away just before it was published - how many times have we heard 'If only I'd asked him more about his experiences in the War' and in this book someone actually did !
I've read all the Eastern Front memoirs I can find, and this one is a bit special.....
Christmas holiday reading
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"In all my years as a soldier, I have never seen men fight so hard." - SS Obergruppenfuhrer Wilhelm Bittrich - Arnhem
by Woolgar
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