Hitler’s Spy Against Churchill

Hitler’s Spy Against Churchill written by Jan-Willem van den Braak

and published by Pen & Sword Books - £25 - Hardback - Pages 312

From the summer of 1940 until May 1941, nearly twenty German Abwehr agents were

dropped by boat or parachute into England during what was known as Operation Lena,

all in preparation for Hitler's planned invasion of England. The invasion itself would never

happen and in fact, after the war, one of the Abwehr commanders declared that the

operation was doomed to failure.

There is no doubt that the operation did indeed become a fiasco, with almost all of the officers being arrested within a very brief period of time. Some of the men were executed, while others became double agents and spied for Britain against Germany. Only one man managed to stay at large for five months before eventually committing suicide: Jan Willem Ter Braak. Amazingly, his background and objectives had always remained unclear, and none of the other Lena spies had ever even heard of him. Even after the opening of the secret service files in England and the Netherlands over 50 years later, Jan Willem Ter Braak remained a 'mystery man', as the military historian Ladislas Farago famously described him.

In this book, the author – his near-namesake – examines the short and tragic life of Jan Willem Ter Braak for the first time. Using in-depth research, he investigates the possibility that Ter Braak was sent to kill the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and discovers why his fate has remained largely unknown for so long.

This is quite an intriguing little book that has all the elements of an espionage thriller,

with a bit of light fiasco thrown into the mix. This book follows the story mainly of one

man, Jan Willem Ter Braak, although he was part of a group of people trained to act

as agents or spies in order to start an invasion of Britain during the war. Ter Braak

was a rather evasive or reclusive character who nobody really got to know well. So

here lies the mystery around a man who nobody really knew or what he got up to.

This book I found was quite gripping and was a really quick but enjoyable read, and

I had never heard of this story before either. A book I really enjoyed and would most

certainly recommend it.