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Secret War In Shanghai: Treachery, Subversion and collaboration in the Second World War

Secret War In Shanghai: Treachery, Subversion and collaboration in the Second World War

by Bernard Wasserstein (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 1999

    $3.25
Synopsis

With its lurid vice, savage violence and conspiratorial atmosphere, no place on earth in the 1930s and 1940s better exemplified the twilight zone between politics and criminality than China's largest, most cosmopolitan and most dangerous city. Shanghai before the Second World War was an extraordinary place. Civil war raged among Chinese political factions and criminal gangs. Intelligence organizations, police forces and para-military units of many nationalities vied with one another, sold secrets and engaged in a brutal struggle for supremacy in the Far East. In Shanghai espionage, subversion, propaganda and crime came together in a lethal concoction. After Japan invaded China in 1937, the secret war intensified. Bernard Wasserstein has uncovered startling new evidence from intelligence archives in half a dozen countries. He shows how Allied and Axis agents battled one another in this oriental cockpit. He also reveals the extent of collaboration with the Japanese by British, American and Australian nationals. This book untangles a remarkable history of complicity, duplicity and betrayal -- as well as occasional heroism.

$3.25

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Quantity

2 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 320
 Edition: New edition
 Publisher: Profile Books
Published: 19 Jul 1999
ISBN 10: 1861971389
ISBN 13: 9781861971388

Media Reviews
'His cool accounts...are as enjoyable as they are admirable for their research * Daily Telegraph *
'Reveals for the first time that British police and businessmen collaborated extensively with the enemy...(and)...helped fuel the Japanese war effort * Daily Express *
He writes so vividly and with such zest that much of it reads like some improbable thriller * Literary Review *
With the consummate skill of the storyteller, Wasserstein brings to vivid life one of the most thrilling, perplexing and enigmatic cities on earth * Sunday Times *
With extensive research and the consummate skill of the sotryteller, Wasserstein brings to vivid life a unique period of modern history contained within just 18 square miles of what was - and still is - one of the most thrilling, perplexing and enigmatic cities on earth. -- Martin Booth * The Sunday Times *
Wasserstein's book reads very well and draws on a marvellous variety of sources -- Frances Wood * Times Literary Supplement *
Wasserstein knows a bad hat when he sees one. His cool accounts of such colourful Shanghai criminals as One-Arm Sutton, Peg-Leg Kearney, Princess Sumaire and Captain Pick are as enjoyable as they are admirable for their research... -- Alan Judd * Daily Telegraph *
What a fascinating place Shanghai must have been before the Second World War. Some of the best-known spies in history operated there, and they had one thing in common - they were all determined to make as much money as they could and enjoy their drunken lives to the full. . . a scholarly reconstruction of seedy times in an exciting city -- Phillip Knightley * Mail on Sunday *
Author Bio
Bernard Wasserstein was born in London and educated at Balliol and Nuffield Colleges in Oxford. His many books include The Secret Lives of Trebitsch Lincoln (Penguin), which won the Golden Dagger Award for Non-fiction and was acclaimed as a tour de force of historical detection. His most recent book was the controversial Vanishing Diaspora (Penguin). He is currently working on a history of Europe in the twentieth century for Oxford University Press.