Calder Walton’s “Spies” is a riveting history of espionage
A new book looks at the men who knew too much—and too little
In June 1941 Josef Stalin received a warning from the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB, that a Nazi attack on the Soviet Union was imminent. “You can tell your ‘source’ in German air force headquarters to go fuck himself,” was the Soviet leader’s response. “He’s not a ‘source’, he’s a disinformer.” The invasion came a week later. The anecdote is one of many gems unearthed from the archives in “Spies”, a lucid history of the intelligence contest between America, Britain and Russia.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Hi, spy”
Culture July 22nd 2023
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