Shadow Knights: The Secret War Against Hitler

Pulp History brings to life extraordinary feats of bravery, violence, and redemption that history has forgotten. These stories are so dramatic and thrilling they have to be true.

 

In SHADOW KNIGHTS, everyday men and women risk their lives on top-secret missions to sabotage Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.

 

Hell-bent on conquering Europe, Hitler had just set his sights on England when Winston Churchill reached into his bag of tricks and invented a secret spy network of ordinary citizens. These schoolteachers, housewives, prostitutes, and farmers abandoned their former lives, trained in covert black ops, and set Europe ablaze. Parachuting into Nazi territory under the cover of night, they destroyed factories, armed resistance networks, and turned Hitler’s juggernaut on its head.

In the summer of 1940, Winston Churchill, faced with complete German domination of Western Europe, created a secret organization with the instructions to “set Europe ablaze.“ Ordinary citizens, men and women, were recruited and smuggled into occupied nations to carry out assassinations, attack munitions plants, engage in economic warfare, and, of course, aid local resistance movements. The operatives were a diverse group with a variety of talents; some were effective and some were tragically reckless or careless, but almost all were brave. Their stories are told via an interesting new genre, referred to by the publishers as “pulp history,” combining solid research, well-written if sometimes over-the-top narratives, and color illustrations that give a comic-book quality to the work. The often-garish drawings, which include eye gouging and other forms of mayhem, may entice some readers, but they can also detract from a serious effort to describe the successes and failures of these men and women. Professional historians may cringe, but this effort will usefully inform general readers about some relatively obscure aspects of WWII. --Jay Freeman