Cracking the Nazi Code
The Untold Story of Agent A12 and the Solving of the Holocaust Code
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
The thrilling true story of Agent A12, the earliest enemy of the Nazis, and the first spy to crack Hitler’s deadliest secret code: the framework of the Final Solution.
In public life, Dr. Winthrop Bell was a Harvard philosophy professor and wealthy businessman.
As an MI6 spy—known as secret agent A12—in Berlin in 1919, he evaded gunfire and shook off pursuers to break open the emerging Nazi conspiracy. His reports, the first warning of the Nazi plot for World War II, went directly to the man known as C, the mysterious founder of MI6, as well as to various prime ministers. But a powerful fascist politician quietly worked to suppress his alerts. Nevertheless, Dr. Bell's intelligence sabotaged the Nazis, in ways only now revealed in Cracking the Nazi Code.
As World War II approached, Bell became a spy once again. In 1939, he was the first to crack Hitler’s deadliest secret code: Germany’s plan for the Holocaust. At that time, the führer was a popular politician who said he wanted peace. Could anyone believe Bell’s shocking warning?
Fighting an epic intelligence war from Eastern Europe and Russia to France, Canada, and finally Washington, DC, agent A12 was a real-life 007, waging a single-handed struggle against fascists bent on destroying the Western world. Without Bell’s astounding courage, the Nazis just might have won the war.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Philosopher Bell debuts with a gripping investigation of the secret role Canadian-born British spy and philosopher Winthrop Bell (no relation to the author) played in sounding the alarm about the Nazi threat—not once, but twice. The author learned about Winthrop in 2008 when he was doing research on German phenomenology and stumbled upon Winthrop's archived records, including his diary. Working toward completing his philosophy PhD in Germany when WWI broke out and imprisoned as an enemy citizen for the duration of the conflict, Winthrop was recruited postwar by British intelligence due to his high-level connections within Germany. His first mission was to embed among Berlin political elites, and in 1919 he became "the first intelligence agent to warn about the National Socialists" and their plan to start a second world war—warnings that Bell shows were suppressed by fascist British politicians. Long bothered that his report had been buried, in the 1930s Winthrop returned to Germany posing as a Reuters journalist. He learned enough about the Nazi aspiration for "racial extermination" that was "global in scope" to issue "the world's first published warning of Hitler's plans for worldwide genocide" in a quietly influential 1939 newspaper article. Even readers well-versed on the war will be surprised by the history Bell has pieced together. It's a significant new perspective on behind-the-scenes political machinations preceding WWII.
