Customer Reviews

Alliance of Enemies: The Untold Story of the Secret American and German Collaboration to End World War II

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This book is more than just a history of events that occurred over 50 years ago. It raises important questions regarding those events - questions that are highly relevant to the 21st century. As the title says, this is a book about an alliance of enemies, in this case with the Germans opposed to Hitler and their interactions with the Allies before and during the Second World War. Alliance is perhaps a poor designation, since a main theme is that there was much less of an alliance than there should have been. This book is highly recommended not only to students of WWII, the OSS/CIA, and the Holocaust, but also to those interested in the question of loyalty and the proper use of intelligence, both of which resonate with us today.

This book goes into detail about the activities of Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military intelligence (the Abwehr), who turned much of that organization into a haven for the resistance and was the source of information for the OSS. While the story of the July 1944 Hitler assassination attempt is well known, this book also discusses lesser-known assassination attempts. It discusses the actions of many high-ranking German officers and their several other but also failed, attempts at unseating the Nazis. There is also a brief discussion of the business dealings of many prominent US companies, both is supporting the Nazi regime before the war and trading with it during the war. The information provided by the German resistance concerning the Holocaust is also very important and is discussed in some detail. The book also discusses, at length, why Roosevelt's desire for Unconditional Surrender undercut the resistance and helped prolong the war. (In this regard the narrative is, in my opinion, somewhat weak. It gives great weight to the argument that this was a very bad policy and less to the desire to see that WWII did not end like WWI, thereby setting the stage for another war with Germany.)

As has been noted, this history is very relevant to current times. It raises the important question as to where ones loyalty should lie. The German army was forced into swearing personal allegiance to Hitler and many agonized as to where their true allegiance lay. In hindsight it is clear that it lay with Germany and the German people and not with the Nazi regime. Most gave their lives to fight for the "real Germany", against the Nazis, but their sacrifice was largely ignored or denigrated. This book aims to rectify this, and in my opinion, succeeds. This book, written in 2006, also raises the question as to the use of intelligence. During WWII, the good intelligence provided by very highly placed German officers and members of the civilian government was largely ignored.

Several useful appendices are included. There is a glossary of terms used, short biographies of the people mentioned, and a table of military rank equivalencies. Extensive notes are included, and there is an index. These appendices, notes and index help sort out the many people mentioned and greatly simplify following the thread of the narrative.

"Alliance of Enemies" reveals the early U.S. government knowledge of Hitler's extermination policies; the fervent opposition of U.S. military leaders to the Anglo-American demand for FDR's non-negotiable unconditional surrender; Washington intelligence's "Black Hole," which ignored prime intelligence, and Roosevelt's unwillingness to act on information obtained by OSS Europe, to respond to peace feelers or consider compromise.

It is gripping reading and tells of the hundreds of opportunities the U.S. and Britain had to end the war far sooner. We learn in tragic detail why our government allowed it to continue, profiting all the way,despite the many desperate as well as highly strategic, high level attempts to stop it.

This book puts together themes of WW II never before connected, which is possible because of recent freeing of information. Why did the Allies rebuff efforts by the German resistance--some at very high levels--to bring the war to an early end? How could the Allies have abandoned the Jews? Even if you are already knowledgeable about WW II, its spy history and the Holocaust, this book presents links we could never make before. A warning--the book is not an easy read for the beach, but rather serious history. It will be cited, discussed and debated for many years. Your knowledge of the period is not complete without it.

I presently am still reading the book and enjoying it immensely. So far the book illuminates on how the two sides made efforts to collaborate on bringing Hitler down before the war. Unfortunately all the efforts failed. This book is well written and gives me another side of the war not told by many books of in the past. It is sad that the Allies did not heed the efforts made by the German Resistance to stop Hitler. Instead the Allies turned a deaf ear to the Germans who couragiously tried to save their nation from another war they did not want or need.

I have just started reading this engrossing book. It has a scholarly approach, full of detailed footnotes, a chronology of WWII German history, biographical information of the major and minor players in Germany before, during and after the Nazi rise to power.

With the help of the CIA (the help?), U.S. National Archives, German Archives, etc. Documents in Europe and the U.S. buried and unread until now it can be told.

The author is the son of a hung resistance figure. Not just your everyday professorial study, this rings of the real deal. Take it to the bank, this book is worth the price.

One substantiated fact was the cooperation of Germany's military intelligence service actually working with the OSS, America's forerunner to the C.I.A. The book maintains there was more cooperation at the highest levels of both organizations than at any other level. Portrays an early disunified Germany, a politically neutral German army which while provided by the WWI treaty and a natural Prussian army tendancy, also had the unfortunate consequence of not impeding Hitler's control.

The book asserts the German people as a whole were not wanting another world war, just two decades after the last one, which resulted in humilation and much hardship.

This meticulously researched book provides a true wealth of detail not previously available concerning the internal German Resistance and the Allies' response to it (or lack thereof). It shows the extraordinarily diverse situations, viewpoints and priorities at work, both among members of the Resistance and among members of the Allied organizations that they repeatedly approached for help.

A virtuoso use of varied source material (both official and personal) brings to life the major players in these events, who are revealed, often through their own words, as complex and conflicted human beings. This look at the very human factors that shaped events results in an immediacy not frequently achieved by history books.

The authors weave the nuance and complexity of the events described into a thoroughly compelling, thought provoking and entertaining account that provides the reader with tremendously interesting (and often astonishing!) information.

This book is an apologist's fantasy of a negotiated peace proffered by a handful of disaffected German officers to the US and Britain that ignores the Holocaust, and would have required the allies to betray the Soviets.

Admiral Canaris, and other officers, were legitimately worried about the fate of Germany under Hitler, but they only wanted to negotiate to topple Hitler and restore peace on their western front, allowing them to concentrate energy on the war with the Soviets and territorial expansion to the east.

The officers' concerns escalated following the massive defeat of the Sixth Army in '43, the defection/defeat of the Italians, and diminishing financial returns from the looting of occupied territories and Jewish property.