Reddit reviews Between Silk and Cyanide

An interesting exception to the pattern is the Netherlands. The entire British network was infiltrated and then subsequently run by the Germans.

You can read the German side of this story in London Calling North Pole by the guy who ran the German side: Hermann Giskes.

You can also read part of the British side in Between Silk And Cyanide, which are the memoirs of the SOE codemaker who worked out that the Germans must have been running the agents.

Many questions are not answered there, though, such as: why did the British keep the network intact even when they knew it must be blown? Why did they continue dropping agents and equipment directly to the Germans?

I am unsure if these really count as proper historical sources, though, so sorry if this doesn't technically count as a proper top-level answer.

Oh dear, yes! A fellow student of the subject, I see! Wasn't Garbo decorated by both sides for the information he sent around D-Day?

My favourite story from that time is that Garbo told Berlin that he had an urgent message at midnight on the 6th which they must be online for.

It was going to be a vague "looks like it's imminent" message.

Berlin didn't come online.

So they re-wrote the whole message. It gave all the details of the invasion up until about 7am. Something like "Allied fleet sailing for Normandy. Landing sites will be X, Y, Z. Following divisions are involved..."

When Berlin next came online, Garbo sent a very angry message, scolding them for missing the vital midnight message and sending them the new message with all the details which they (now) had anyway (because those troops were on the ground).

Berlin never twigged that they got the message after they already knew the information, and that message 100% silenced all critics of the Garbo network. Garbo continued to talk about Calais for weeks afterwards, until he finally said that Normandy had been surprisingly successful and Calais was cancelled - by which time an invasion there would have been pointless.


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If you have never read it, I would recommend my all-time favourite book on WW2: "Between Silk and Cyanide".
Not exactly related, but it does touch on D-Day in rather interesting ways.

Between Silk and Cyanide: A Code-Maker's War, by Leo Marks

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Between-Silk-Cyanide-Makers-1941-45/dp/0750948353

This is the stuff. Gripping, humorous, cynical, elegiac account of WWII cryptography, written by someone who was really there. He was also the author of the poem "The life that I have / Is all that I have", used as a coding key by Violet Szabo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_That_I_Have

Between Silk & Cyanide - a fantastically readable, moving and at times funny autobiography by Leo Marks, who in his early twenties worked as a codemaker for British intelligence during WWII. Seriously- this is a damn good & very affecting book.

> My Grandfather was tasked with finding out where the fuse wires went so that in case of an invasion they could cut these cords and help the allied army.

If your grandfather was part of the Dutch resistance, then the Germans were probably the ones giving those orders, after a while (definitely if they came by radio from London) The entire network was infiltrated by Hermann Giskes and his department.

To hide this fact, Giskes rescued Allied pilots and sent them back to the UK via genuine resistance cells. Giskes also mounted a fake "raid" on a harbour - which he didn't inform his own people about. The British were convinced (from intercepts) that it was genuine (but failed its objectives).

While Giskes played a good game, his scheme should have been compromised almost immediately. The British ignored obvious and clear (but coded) warnings which the captured agents sent in their messages.

Your grandfather was a very lucky chap - but was probably too small to be worth picking up.

You may find these two books interesting: firstly, "London calling North Pole" by Giskes (tells the story of how he took over the resistance in the Netherlands).

Secondly: "Between Silk and Cyanide" - a view from London of what it was like to receive messages from the captured agents (and also just one of the best books ever).