The Nazi Connection

New York, N.Y.: Dell Publishing Company, 1979. First Dell Printing [Stated]. Mass market paperback. Good. 270, [2] pages. Cover has some wear and soiling. Includes chapters on Convictions; M16; Berlin 1934; Nazi Leaders; Blitzkrieg; Progress; Distractions; Politics; Detente; East Prussia; The Vital Question; Exposure; Flying High; and War. Also includes Author's Note, and Index. The Riveting, True Account of a Master Spy Inside Hitler's Reich. In 1934 the Nazi machine grinds into gear. War looms ever closer on the horizon. British Intelligence Agent Frederick Winterbotham arrives in Germany to play his dangerous game. He dines with generals, drinks with Luftwaffe pilots, befriends top brass like Goering, Hess, and Himmler. He has met the Fuhrer himself and is privy to Hitler's most secret plans. Frederick William Winterbotham CBE (16 April 1897 - 28 January 1990) was a British Royal Air Force officer who during WWII was involved in military intelligence. In 1932,Winterbotham, with the full knowledge of MI-6, escorted Rosenberg around Britain, made some appropriate introductions, and played up to him. Neither Ropp nor Rosenberg knew that Winterbotham had any intelligence connections—he was just a civilian official of the Air Staff. Winterbotham continued in this role for the next seven years. He became a regular visitor to Germany, and an apparent Nazi sympathizer. As such, he was welcomed into the highest circles in Germany, meeting Hitler and Göring, and with Göring's Luftwaffe subordinates such as Erhard Milch and Albert von Kesselring. He gathered a tremendous amount of information on the Luftwaffe and on German political and military intentions. Derived from a Kirkus review: Reminiscences by the best-selling author of The Ultra Secret, who tells about his activities as a double agent, working for RAF air intelligence while deep into dalliance with the Nazi air force in the Thirties and supposedly giving them secrets. Winterbotham himself is "the Nazi connection" and his biggest hook-ups are with Alfred Rosenberg, the anti-Bolshevik architect of Hitler's Aryan myth, who was also the editor of the Party newspaper. Through Rosenberg, Winterbotham came to Hitler's attention and Goering's, and since the Nazis wanted to prove they had no animus toward Britain, they befriended Winterbotham so that he would take Hitler's peace murmurings straight to Whitehall. Meanwhile, Winterbotham was setting up his RAF intelligence apparatus and getting big secrets out of Germany. Nobody would believe him when he described the Stuka dive bomber as it had been described to him at the Luftwaffe Club in Berlin; the RAF people dismissed the very idea of dive-bombing as "a waste of time and energy. . ." But the RAF itself is a junior service arm and not much respected--no one (except the Germans) expects wars to be fought in the air. A master spy who went into the field urbanely reviews the Nazis.