Six gentlemen, one goal: the destruction of Hitler’s war machine In the spring of 1939, a top-secret organization was founded in London: its purpose was to plot the destruction of Hitler’s war machine through spectacular acts of sabotage. The guerrilla campaign that followed was every bit as extraordinary as the six men who directed it. One of them, Cecil Clarke, was a maverick engineer who had … maverick engineer who had spent the 1930s inventing futuristic caravans. Now, his talents were put to more devious use: he built the dirty bomb used to assassinate Hitler’s favorite, Reinhard Heydrich. Another, William Fairbairn, was a portly pensioner with an unusual passion: he was the world’s leading expert in silent killing, hired to train the guerrillas being parachuted behind enemy lines. Led by dapper Scotsman Colin Gubbins, these men–along with three others–formed a secret inner circle that, aided by a group of formidable ladies, single-handedly changed the course Second World War: a cohort hand-picked by Winston Churchill, whom he called his Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
Giles Milton’s Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a gripping and vivid narrative of adventure and derring-do that is also, perhaps, the last great untold story of the Second World War.
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I have been reading many books about Churchill recently, wanting to find out as much as I could about this remarkable man. I grew up in England during the war, listening to his broadcasts by the BBC and even today they make the hair curl on my neck. Without his inspiration I hesitate to imagine where we would be today. Talk about a man being the right person in the right place at the right time!
I loved the title of this book and when I read it, it made so much sense. So many mistakes were made during World War one, thinking that certain things would not be done by gentlemen, but of course very few gentlemen fought the war.
In World War two, the enemy was even worse and was definitely more evil. The various ways in which these methods were imagined and put into use are illuminating and thoroughly justified – and give a great sense of justification and pride somehow. Loved it.