Author Description

In January 1941, the twenty-four-year-old Noel Annan was assigned to Military Intelligence in Whitehall, where for the next four years he was to be involved in the crucial work of interpreting the information supplied by a network of agents throughout occupied Europe and, critically, by the Ultra code-breakers at Bletchley Park. He was therefore at the centre of Britain's secret war planning, and was engaged in what Shakespeare called the 'mystery in the soul of state'. From Winston Churchill and Bomber Harris to the great minds at Bletchley, he describes in superbly characterised detail the people and the problems involved in this curious and difficult work, which was to play such a vital role in the Allied victory.Immediately the war in Europe ended, Annan was seconded to the British Zone in the defeated Germany to help rebuild the country which he and his colleagues had so recently been working to destroy. Germany's cities were in ruins, its people starving and demoralised, its industry smashed. Britain was changing enemies: from being the ally of the Western Powers, Soviet Russia now became a foe. The Allies were faced with a Soviet-inspired takeover of Berlin by the German Communist Party, which Annan was sent to counter.Annan got to know the new generation of German politicians who were to bring about the economic miracle that led to the country's renaissance from the ashes of defeat to become the most powerful nation in Europe. When the future Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was placed under house arrest and banned from taking part in politics, Annan helped to get him released.