To defeat your enemies you must know them well. In wartime, however, enemy codemakers make that task much more difficult. If you cannot break their codes and read their messages, you may discover too late the enemy's intentions. That's why codebreakers were considered such a crucial weapon during World War II. In Secret Messages, David Alvarez provides the first comprehensive analysis of the impact of decoded radio messages (signals intelligence) upon American foreign policy and strategy from 1930 to 1945. He presents the most complete account to date of the U.S. Army's top-secret Signal Intelligence Service (SIS): its creation, its struggles, its rapid wartime growth, and its contributions to the war effort. Alvarez reveals the inner workings of the SIS (precursor of today's NSA) and the codebreaking process and explains how SIS intercepted, deciphered, and analyzed encoded messages. From its headquarters at Arlington Hall outside Washington, D.C., SIS grew from a staff of four novice codebreakers to more than 10,000 people stationed around the globe, secretly monitoring the communications of not only the Axis powers but dozens of other governments as well and producing a flood of intelligence. Some of the SIS programs were so clandestine that even the White House—unaware of the agency's existence until 1937—was kept uninformed of them, such as the 1943 creation of a super-secret program to break Soviet codes and ciphers. In addition, Alvarez brings to light such previously classified operations as the interception of Vatican communications and a comprehensive program to decrypt the communications of our wartime allies. He also dispels many of the myths about the SIS's influence on American foreign policy, showing that the impact of special intelligence in the diplomatic sphere was limited by the indifference of the White House, constraints within the program itself, and rivalries with other agencies (like the FBI). Drawing upon military and intelligence archives, interviews with retired and active cryptanalysts, and over a million pages of cryptologic documents declassified in 1996, Alvarez illuminates this dark corner of intelligence history and expands our understanding of its role in and contributions to the American effort in World War II.

Secret Messages: Codebreaking and American Diplomacy, 1930-1945 (Modern War Studies)

History

Alvarez, David

Military

University Press of Kansas

Revered by millions, the Papacy is an international power that many nations have viewed with suspicion, some have tried to control, and not a few have spied upon. Ranging across two centuries of world history, David Alvarez's fascinating study throws open the Vatican's doors to reveal the startling but little-known world of espionage in one of the most sacred places on earth. Reviewing the pontificates of ten popes—from Pius VII, Napoleon's nemesis, to Pius XII, maligned by some as "Hitler's pope"—Alvarez provides the first history of the intelligence operations and covert activities that reached the highest levels of the Vatican. Populated with world leaders, both famous and infamous, and a rogue's gallery of professional spies, fallen priests, and mercenary informants, his work casts a bright light into the darker corners of papal history and international diplomacy, a light that often sparkles with a witty appreciation of the foibles of the espionage trade. Alvarez reveals that the Vatican itself occasionally entered this clandestine world through such operations as a network of informants to spy on liberal Catholics or a covert mission to establish an underground church in the Soviet Union. More frequently, however, the Vatican was the target for hostile intelligence services seeking to expose the secrets of the Papacy. During World War I, for example, Pope Benedict XV's personal assistant was a secret German agent. During World War II, Germany, Italy, Russia, and the United States sent spies into the Vatican to discover the pope's intentions. The Nazis were especially resourceful, securing the services of apostate priests, such as Herbert Keller, an unscrupulous monk who exposed Pope Pius XII's involvement in a plot against Hitler, and devising a plan to establish a "seminary" in Rome with agents posing as student priests. Alvarez recounts these operations and many more, including the methods by which the Vatican learned about the Holocaust. Based on diplomatic and intelligence records in Britain, France, Italy, Spain, the United States, and the Vatican—with the latter including documents sealed after the author had access to them—Spies in the Vatican reveals that the Papacy often was hindered by its inability to collect timely and relevant intelligence and that it made little effort to improve its intelligence capabilities after 1870. Challenging the long-held notion that the pope is the world's best-informed leader, Alvarez illuminates not only the inner workings of the Vatican but also the global events in which it was inextricably involved.

Spies in the Vatican: Espionage and Intrigue from Napoleon to the Holocaust (Modern War Studies)

Most students of history assume that the age of the "warlord popes" ended with the Renaissance, but, long after the victory of Catholic powers at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, the Papacy continued to entangle itself in martial affairs. The Vatican participated in six major military campaigns between 1796 and 1870, flew the papal flag over a warship as late as 1878, and during the Second World War mobilized more than 2,000 of its own troops to defend the Pope. David Alvarez now opens up this little-known aspect of the Papacy in the first general history of the papal armed forces. His is the first book in English to provide a comprehensive chronicle of the modern Vatican's military and security forces from 1796, when the armies of revolutionary France invaded the Papal States, through the wars for unification, to the present-day deployment of modern weapons, technology, and skills to protect the Holy Father and the Vatican from terrorists and assassins. Most papal histories make little reference to military affairs, while the few that address them do so only in passing or focus narrowly on particular units or campaigns. Alvarez's history expands our understanding of the Papacy's military through the exceptional research he has done as the first American scholar to gain access to the archive of the Pontifical Swiss Guard and the modern military records in the Vatican Secret Archive. He is also the first historian of any nationality to use the records of the Vatican Gendarmeria. Alvarez chronicles the exploits of the Vatican's military leaders and soldiers in their campaigns and battles, focusing on how those units under the Pope's authority—including the Vatican navy—engaged in actual military operations. He also deals extensively with the Vatican Gendarmeria as well as the Pope's Noble Guards, Palatine Guards, and Swiss Guards, describing their distinctive responsibilities and revealing the competition and internal tensions that sometimes undermined the morale, preparedness, and cohesion of the Pope's guards. Filled with information that will surprise scholars of the Papacy and military historians alike, Alvarez's highly original work illuminates a shadowy corner of Vatican history and will fascinate all readers interested in the role of the church in the broader world.

The Pope's Soldiers: A Military History of the Modern Vatican (Modern War Studies)

Europe

For the period between World War II and the full onset of the Cold War, histories of American intelligence seem to go dark. Yet in those years a little known clandestine organization, the Strategic Services Unit (SSU), emerged from the remnants of wartime American intelligence to lay the groundwork for what would become the CIA and, in ways revealed here for the first time, conduct its own secret war of espionage and political intrigue in postwar Europe. Telling the full story of this early and surprisingly effective espionage arm of the United States, Spying through a Glass Darkly brings a critical chapter in the history of Cold War intelligence out of the shadows. Constrained by inadequate staff and limited resources, distracted by the conflicting demands of agencies of the U.S. government, and victimized by disinformation and double agents, the Strategic Services Unit struggled to maintain an effective American clandestine capability after the defeat of the Axis Powers. Never viscerally anti-communist, the Strategic Services Unit was slow to recognize the Soviet Union as a potential threat, but gradually it began to mount operations, often in collaboration with the intelligence services of Britain, France, Italy, Denmark, and Sweden, to throw light into the darker corners of the Soviet regime. Bringing to bear a wealth of archival documents, operational records, interviews, and correspondence, David Alvarez and Eduard Mark chronicle SSU’s successes and failures in procuring intelligence on the capabilities and intentions of the Soviet Union, a chronicle that delves deeply into the details of secret operations against Soviet targets throughout Europe: not only in the backstreets of the divided cities of Berlin and Vienna, but also the cafes, hotels, offices, and salons of such cosmopolitan capitals as Paris, Rome, Budapest, Prague, and Warsaw. A remarkable account of a clandestine war of espionage, kidnappings, blackmail, disinformation, and political subversion, Spying through a Glass Darkly also describes the quantity and quality of intelligence collected by SSU and disseminated to its “customers” in the U.S. government—information that would influence the attitudes and actions of decision makers and, as the Cold War evolved, the course of the nation in a new and dangerous world.

Spying Through a Glass Darkly: American Espionage against the Soviet Union, 1945-1946

Mark, Eduard

Americas

Nothing Sacred: Nazi Espionage Against the Vatican, 1939-1945 (Studies in Intelligence)

Nazi Germany considered the Catholic Church to be a serious threat to its domestic security and its international ambitions. In Germany, informants provided intelligence, but in Rome, German attempts to penetrate the Papacy were less successful - except for the codebreaking work.

Graham, Revd Robert A. SJ

Routledge

Religion and Society in the American West

Except for the Mormons and the Spanish missions, the religious dimension in the history of the American West has been sadly neglected. This collection of 20 scholarly essays) all but three published here for the first time) virtually opens up the field of religion in the West.

Politics & Social Sciences

Guarneri, Carl

Social Sciences

University Press of America

Except for the Mormons and the Spanish missions, the religious dimension in the history of the American West has been sadly neglected. This collection of 20 scholarly essays) all but three published here for the first time) virtually opens up the field of religion in the West.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Alvarez, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Alvarez, David

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Alvarez, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Secret Messages: Codebreaking and American Diplomacy, 1930-1945 (Modern War Studies)

Spies in the Vatican: Espionage and Intrigue from Napoleon to the Holocaust (Modern War Studies)

The Pope's Soldiers: A Military History of the Modern Vatican (Modern War Studies)

Spying Through a Glass Darkly: American Espionage against the Soviet Union, 1945-1946

Nothing Sacred: Nazi Espionage Against the Vatican, 1939-1945 (Studies in Intelligence)

Religion and Society in the American West

Religion and Society in the American West