Marching Orders: The Untold Story Of World War II

Robert T. Crowley, an intelligence officer in World War II who later became a senior executive at the CIA, has called Marching Orders simply "one of the most important books ever published about World War II." At last available in paperback, the book reveals a host of previously untold stories about codes and codebreaking—including how the American breaking of the Japanese diplomatic Purple ciphers led to the defeat of Germany, as well as why America and England agreed to use nuclear weapons against Japan. Bruce Lee, who had access to 1.5 million pages of U.S. Army documents and 15,000 pages of the sometimes daily top-secret messages sent to Tokyo from Japanese diplomats stationed in Berlin and elsewhere, constructs the most complete history available on American codebreaking activity and its consequences. He concisely documents the extraordinary casualties both American and Japanese forces would have suffered in an invasion and occupation of Japan, demonstrating through intercepted secret communications between Japanese leaders that Tokyo was adamant in its refusal to surrender.