Spies of the First World War

When Colonel James Edmonds argued for a British secret service in 1907, officials mocked that he had ̀espionage on the brain'. But fracturing European relations and the resulting explosion in spy activity were to prove Edmonds' prescience. By the time of the First World War undercover agents operated in cities from Geneva to Paris, New York to Moscow, and German spies were being shot in the Tower of London. Spies of the First World War balances accessible history of a profession fashioned by conflict with human stories of heroism and cowardice, brilliance and incompetence, loyalty and betrayal. Spies of the First World War is the first popular history of international espionage in the early twentieth century. This major collection of real-life stories begins with the British spy panic that prompted the creation of the fledgling M15 and M16 in one set of rooms, and tells how by the end of the First World War sophisticated networks like La Dame Blanche surveyed the Western Front. Ranging freely across Europe, America and the wider world, James Morton describes events that shaped history, from the bungling beginnings of Britain's Intelligence Corps to the decryption of the Zimmermann