The never-before-told tale of the German-American who infiltrated New York’s Nazi underground in the days leading up to World War II: “Thrilling, well-researched, well-told, fascinating” ( Minneapolis Star Tribune ).
He was the first hero of World War II and yet the American public has never seen his face. William G. Sebold, a naturalized American of German birth, risked his life to become the first double agent in the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He spent sixteen months in the Nazi underground of New York City, consorting with a colorful cast of spies. Sebold was at the center of the most sophisticated investigation yet devised by the FBI, which established a short-wave radio station on Long Island to communicate with Hamburg spymasters and set up a “research office” in Times Square that allowed agents hidden behind a two-way mirror to film meetings conducted between Sebold and the spy suspects.
The result was the arrest and conviction of thirty-three spies, still the largest espionage case in American history. The guilty verdicts were announced in Brooklyn federal court just hours after Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, which meant that the Führer could not call upon a small army of embedded spies and saboteurs during the most trying days of the coming struggle. “As you know,” an FBI official later told J. Edgar Hoover, “Sebold gave us the most outstanding case in Bureau history.”
In Double Agent , Peter Duffy tells this full account. Here is a story “rich with eccentric characters, suspense, and details of spycraft in the war’s early days….The result is a compelling cultural history with all the intricacy and intrigue of a good spy novel” ( The Boston Globe ).
Peter Duffy is an author and journalist based in New York City. He has written three books of historical non-fiction - The Bielski Brothers (HarperCollins, 2003); The Killing of Major Denis Mahon (HarperCollins, 2007); and Double Agent (Scribner, 2014). His journalism has appeared in The New York Times, New York magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, the New Republic, and many other publications.
”Double Agent” by Peter Duffy, published by Scribner.
Category – Espionage/World War II Publication Date – July 22, 2014
William G Sebold, a naturalized American of German birth, on a trip to Germany is coerced by the Nazi government to become a spy for the Third Reich. Sebold on taking his oath for citizenship took the oath very seriously and vowed to honor his oath to the United States. Therefore, on returning to the States he informs our government and is enlisted as a double agent.
The United States was a neutral nation at the outbreak of War and became a hot bed for German subversives. The big objective of the Nazis was to get the plans on a new bombing targeting device that was reportedly able to allow for the pinpoint accuracy of bombing runs.
Sebold was able to gain the confidence of those individuals on American soil that were filtering information to the German government. It was through his efforts that the FBI was able to round up and gain conviction for thirty-three spies. He did this, not for monetary reasons, but for the love of his new country. In fact, he received very little compensation and led a hard life after the convictions.
I found this book a little difficult to read, mainly due to an uneven dialog that jumped around too much to afford continuity. The book also spent more time on other subjects other than Sebold. I would consider this an OK read for those interested in the subject matter.
An interesting book on Nazi spies operating in America; their theft of a top of the line bomb sight and then the unraveling PD their spy ring by a double agent who went to the FBI after being recruited by the Germans.
The nazi desperately needed a good bomb sight and the reason they adopted dive bombing as a technique was due to the inaccuracy of their horizontal bombers.
Double Agent is a spy story worth reading despite the author’s weakness in maintaining pace. Perhaps he felt obligated to pad out with a lot of historical background the fairly limited sources about his bland hero. Perhaps the book just needed more aggressive editing. A subplot about the American secret weapon, the Norden bombsight—plans for which were stolen early by a German spy but then languished in the hands of German military planners—proved as fascinating to me as the odd characters who were lumped together as the Duquesne Spy Ring.
A well documented tale dealing with a Nazi spy ring and America's naivete prior to World War II. Mr. Duffy did a remarkable job in bringing this story to life and giving Mr. Sebold his deserved place in history.
A great read. Corrects and expands on the storyline of the movie, "The House on 92nd Street". Very well done history of German espionage in the US in the years immediately prior to WWII. Also covers the political climate prior to the war.
I didn't find this book as exciting as I imagined. It was interesting to read about the beginning of the FBI's role in espionage in the USA just prior to entry into World War II. I am forever grateful for the people who risked their lives to find people that wanted to cause serious harm to this country.
I found the chronology of the unfolding events very confusing. I'm not certain it can be attributed to the author or me. The chronology definitely impacted how I read the book, finding it unexciting.
If you've got time, you might want to read this, but if you don't, it won't result in the world ending. For those interested in the beginning of an organized approach to espionage in the USA, I would recommend.
This author's superpower is turning fascinating subject matter into a boring book. It's actually pretty amazing how he is able to suck all the life out of the story. I give the book 2 stars based solely on the topic. I knew nothing about this incident at the beginning of WWII so learning about a previously unknown part of American history bumped the book up to "ok".
I enjoyed this book, though it took me longer to get through it than I might have liked. It's an entertaining and enlightening read and takes care to explain the significance of this German-American's contributions to the country and the context in which he made these contributions. It does take some persistence but the effort is well worth it.
Engaging to a point, although the narrative breaks down once the parties head for the courtroom. I'm not fond of moralizing in history (-1 star) and find it unforgivable to not have footnotes in a book drawn almost entirely from third parties (-1 star).
Enjoyed learning about William Sebold, the FBI's first double agent. But I'm very much saddened by his fate and by the inability of the country which he sacrificed so much for to care for him.
In addition to the espionage, this book is also a good introduction to World War II. Plus the parts devoted to spies Stein and Duquesne are hilarious.
Writing is very disjointed and relies heavily on long verbatim quotes from diaries and journals. Parts of this book are interesting, but generally it is a slog.
In Double Agent, Peter Duffy took what could have been a potentially great story and buried it beneath a wealth of dates, names and quotations from other sources.
William Sebold, born in Germany, was a principled man who, on becoming a citizen, took his oath to the US very seriously. On a trip back home to see his mother in 1939, he was coerced into becoming an agent for the Germans. On returning to the States, he reported this to the authorities and became a double agent. With his help, the FBI, under J Edgar Hoover, cracked a German spy ring hoping to aid the Nazis. However, Sebold did not really enter into the story until almost halfway through the book.
The abundance of names left my head spinning and I did a poor job of keeping them straight. The two, besides Sebold, that I recognized most easily were Major Ritter, head of German military espionage, and the South African, Fritz Duquesne, a member of the spy ring Sebold helped crack. Duquesne stood out by being more adventurer/self-promoter than effective spy. What I appreciated most about Duffy’s book was the picture he painted of the American political climate in the years immediately prior to World War II. On that, he did a very effective job.
(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)
From the time Adolf Hitler came into power in 1933, German spies were active in New York. In 1937, a German national living in Queens stole the blueprints for the country's most precious secret, the Norden Bombsight, delivering them to the German military two years before World War II started in Europe and four years before the US joined the fight. When the FBI uncovered a ring of Nazi spies in the city, President Franklin Roosevelt formally declared J. Edgar Hoover as America's spymaster with responsibility for overseeing all investigations. As war began in Europe in 1939, a naturalized German-American was recruited by the Nazis to set up a radio transmitter and collect messages from spies active in the city to send back to Nazi spymasters in Hamburg. This German-American, William G. Sebold, approached the FBI and became the first double agent in the Bureau's history, the center of a sixteen-month investigation that led to the arrest of a colorful cast of thirty-three enemy agents, among them a South African adventurer with an exotic accent and a monocle and a Jewish femme fatale, Lilly Stein, who escaped Nazi Vienna by offering to seduce US military men into whispering secrets into her ear.
This was an interesting story about William Sebold, the first double agent in the history of the FBI, in the years leading up to WW2.
Author Peter Duffy has done some deep digging into the history of these events and has compiled a book that, whilst difficult to get into at times, gives some insight into the weeks and months that led up to the Second World War. It tells of the formation of the FBI and the role J. Edgar Hoover played in trying to stop spies in the midst of the USA intelligence circles.
I was a little disappointed with this story in some ways. While the information contained in it is interesting and well worth reading, the focus of the book seemed to stray at times, getting caught up in a lot of stuff that was peripheral to the work of Sebold.
Overall, a fascinating read for anyone wanting to learn more about the period, or espionage and the early days of the FBI.
Double Agent is the true story of Nazi espionage in pre-war America and the German-American who helped to bring it down. During a visit to his native German a young William Sebold was coerced into becoming a Nazi spy. He was trained and returned to the United States to carry out his mission. His first act was to contact the US authorities and alert them to what was happening. He then agreed to serve as a double agent and to help bring down the spy ring. The book centers around the colorful cast of characters. Sebold, an adventurer with a nervous disposition, is the unlikely hero of the story. Among the colorful cast of characters is a South African adventurer, a Jewish socialite who escaped the Nazis by becoming a seductress of important figures, and a host of others who either sympathized with the Nazis or had a strong dislike for the British. The investigation would lead to the largest arrest of foreign agents as of that date. The trial of these agents would coincide with the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the entrance of the United States into the Second World War. These agents could have caused serious damage to the US war efforts, particularly in shipping. Instead they were in prison and unable to accomplish their goals.
Peter Duffy has written a well researched and enjoyable book. His prose style is very accessible to the average reader. He keeps his story unfolding at a good pace and does not slow the narrative down or get bogged in some minutia that will distract from the central theme. Even when he describes the Norden Bomb Sight, a vital piece of equipment stolen before Sebold came on the scene, Duffy does not stick with a technical breakdown, but makes it understandable. This is a fascinating story that, for some reason, has been lost to the general public. I am surprised that Hollywood has not taken up this story. After all you have the femme fatale, the strange adventurer, the hidden Nazis, and the nervous, but brave double agent. Perhaps someone will read this book and work up a screen treatment. Until then I highly recommend that you go down to your local bookstore and pick up a copy of Double Agent. You won’t regret it.
This is a fascinating story about a spy ring that started here in the U.S. by Germany in 1933. The main goal besides information was any plans that were being used for building any new equipment for the war in Europe. A German from Queens working in a plant that developed and made our most advanced invention, the Norbert Bomb-sight, was able to steel the blue prints. BY 1939 a naturalized German American by the name of William G. Sebold, went to the FBI after a trip he took to Homburg, Germany and told them he was approached by the Germans to be a spy on the U.S. Taking being an American very seriously he felt it was his duty to inform them of what happened. What happened was he became the first double agent we ever had and throughout the war was able to get information on people from the U.S. in Europe, and even a women in South Africa, just to name a few. In all he was able to bring 33 people to trail for espionage and they were all convicted. The story is amazing, and is still to date the largest arrest and conviction on record. The other part of the story that got me is that I had never heard of this man before. Being a WWII history buff because of my father fighting in Europe, I would have thought somewhere along in my reading I would have seen his name somewhere, but no. Not even a movie about this man. The book though is good, I don’t get into all of the writing part. Look it is history some of it is interesting and some is boring for some people, but for me I wish I knew about this man sooner. This is a good story and though you may know what happens the people in the book are real and so is the suspense and mystery. Overall a good book. I got this book from net galley.
After the end of World War Two, a movie came out called “The House on 92nd Street”. It was the first film that the FBI gave full cooperation to, so much so that J Edgar Hoover spoke in the introduction and ‘real’ FBI Agents played background agents in the movie. Some of the story was changed but the major facts were true. A naturalized German- American is approached by a member of the Abwehr (German Military Intelligence) and asked to spy for his home country (whom he fought for in WW One).
Having taken his naturalization oath as a true change of heart and goes to the FBI and tells them about the approach. They tell him to play along and for sixteen months he is involved with an ‘office’ set-up in the Times Square area. Here he met with other spies and used a short-wave radio station to transmit information to Germany. His meeting with other spies, were filmed by the FBI through a two-way mirror in the ‘Office’.
In the end, thirty-three spies, the largest case in American history, were found guilty and given a maximum of 20 to 25 years (though most served much less before being deported back to (West Germany) in the 1950s). This man then disappeared from the public imagination and died quietly in a mental institution in 1970. He was the FBI’s first double-agent.
This book is the story of the man and his motivation and loyalty to a ‘new’ country. He asked for nothing from the FBI for his involvement and received little more than his social security pension from the government.
The moment Hitler came to power in 1933, German spies were active in America, particularly in New York. In 1937 a German national living in Queens stole the blueprints for the Norden Bombsight and delivered them to German military a full two years before World War II started in Europe and four years before the US joined the fight. Upon discovering a Nazi spy ring in the US FDR declared Hoover America’s spymaster. All of this leads to William G Sebold...a German American who was recruited by the Nazi’s to spy on the US and who instead, became the first double agent in the history of the FBI.
This a fast paced story, well researched and readable, telling the story of one of largest espionage busts in American history. The book centers are Sebold, the unlikely hero of the story, and a colorful cast of characters including a Jewish socialite, who managed to stay alive by being a spy herself, and a host of others. Duffy does a good job of keeping things paced well and relatable to the average reader to craft and fun and entertaining story on a largely lost part of history. I give the book 4 out of 5 stars.
"Double Agent" leaves you breathless, with so many twists and turns that you would think it was a work of fiction. Duffy does an excellent job framing pre-War conditions in the U.S.A. against what was going on in Europe. After laying down the groundwork, the heroic story of William Sebold, with all of its nuances and subplots, is quite compelling and thrilling. In short, Sebold was a German-born citizen who came to America long before conflict broke out in Europe. On a visit back to his homeland to visit his family, he was coerced by the Nazis to spy on the US. Their main target is defense contractors with highly appealing aviation secrets. Rather than caving in to the Nazis, Sebold immediately notifies the State Department of his situation and soon becomes a double agent. Most interesting is that Sebold was never really a 'man of intrigue', yet, this amateur spy helped the FBI bring in a nefarious ring of Nazi spies in the New York area. This is a must read!
This book starts with the hero when he first comes to the USA and follows him thru his citizenship and back to Germany. He is approached there by the German spy network to become an agent. Then back to the USA where he notifies the government that he is a spy and wants to work with the USA and not the Germans. The book give you a view of the US Government and FBI workings in the 30's and 40's and show you how they thought and worked. Just a great deal of fun to read! Not only will you learn a lot about the war, but also how Americans viewed the world and how that affected thinking in the USA.. A must read....
The first few chapters seemed very technical so moved a little slowly for me at the start. It was a lot of background information on the history and landscape of that time period. But once William Sebold comes into focus, the book picks right up. I learned a lot about WWII history that I did not know before. The second half of the book had the story feel that I was looking for. I think it's because we got to know some of the characters and their actions. I would recommend it for the interesting read and the knowledge you will walk away with, if you are not already familiar with this bit of history. I also felt that the research was extensive.
Received as an ARC from the publisher. Started 5-25-14. Finished 5-31-14.Interesting story about a Nazi spy ring operating in the US just prior to WWII and the double agent who brought it down. Along the way you learn about the machinations of world leaders, US Congressmen, and J.Edgar Hoover's investigation of these spies and the loss of this country's guaranteed freedoms. I'm not sure the US has ever recovered from those losses, even to this day.
This book was an informative book on what was going in in the states at the beginning of WWII. While I did enjoy reading the book it wasn't a thriller spy story that I had hoped. I am so thankful for William Sebold and the service he offered to my country; I know it took a tremendous toll on him personally, for which I am very thankful. However, if you're looking for a "spy thriller" that happened in real life, I think this story lacks punch.
This was an enjoyable and interesting read. It got more interesting as the story evolved. This is an intriguing spy story and shows the integrity of one man. Of course Hoover took the glory on this one, but really it was the determination of one man. My reason for giving this a three rating instead of a four is due to the book being slow at the beginning. Anyone interested in true WWII spy stories should read this book.