Secret War in Shanghai
Treachery, Subversion and Collaboration in the Second World War
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
In this classic account, Bernard Wasserstein draws on the files of the Shanghai Police as well as the intelligence archives of the many countries involved, to provide the definitive story of Shanghai's secret war. Bernard Wasserstein introduces the British, American and Australian individuals who collaborated with the Axis powers as well as subversive warfare operatives battling the Japanese - and one another. At times both shocking and amusing, this book lifts the lid on the bizarre underworld of the 'sin city of the Orient' during its most enthralling period in history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
On the eve of WWII, Shanghai contained two foreign enclaves, a French Concession and an International Settlement, each ruled by a small minority of foreigners for their own economic advantage. These enclaves, which sheltered a melange of entrepreneurs and rogues, adventurers and self-promoters, are the setting for Wasserstein's account of the war years in Shanghai, a city rife with violence, vice, colonial hauteur and espionage. Wasserstein's ability to ferret out long-forgotten information from obscure archives shows on every page of this close examination of the behavior of Shanghai's foreign community under the pressure of the Japanese occupation. There are no persons or events of high importance, no battles of consequence, no intelligence breakthroughs. Paradoxically, it is exactly this absence of momentous historical drama that gives the book its charm. This is a study in microcosm of local conditions in Shanghai, where a rag-tag collection of professional survivors adapted to shifting circumstances as the war progressed, and where the intelligence services of many nations labored with equal energy and futility. Wasserstein recounts the careers of many of the more colorful and, in some instances, sinister of Shanghai's spies and opportunists. If the canvas is a bit too crowded, it should still appeal to those who find irresistible the lifestyles of the eccentric, the raffish and the villainous.
