The Spies of Warsaw is a 2008 novel by Alan Furst set in the years shortly before World War 2 and deals with espionage in Poland as various nations compete for influence and control over the nation's future. The story starts in October 1937 and ends in May 1938, with a one paragraph description outlining the future of two lead characters.
Lieutenant Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier de Boutillon, a lately widowed aristocrat and decorated hero of World War I, has been transferred from the army staff in Beirut to Warsaw as the French military attaché and has built up an espionage network there. One member is posing as a countess and has started an affair with Edvard Uhl, a manager working on tank production in the Silesian city of Breslau. The countess can no longer afford the Warsaw apartment that serves as their love nest - nor can Uhl for long - but through Mercier she arranges for Uhl to cover her rent by passing on details of the latest tank in his production line.
On returning to Germany by train, Uhl suspects he is being watched by the Gestapo but is persuaded by Mercier to visit Warsaw one last time. In the meanwhile Mercier makes a clandestine visit to the very edge of the fortified German-Polish border and comes under fire. Afterwards he shares gossip with Soviet diplomats Viktor and Malka Rozen at a reception. During Uhl's next visit to Warsaw, Mercier manages to disrupt his kidnap by a team sent from Germany, thereby arousing their vindictive hate. As a result of the attempt on his agent, he is called to Paris to report to his superior, Colonel Bruner, who belongs to the faction of appeasers in the French war office, siding with Marshal Philippe Pétain.
Still in Paris, Mercier is befriended by General de Beauvilliers, a supporter of Charles de Gaulle, who is currently advocating mechanization of the French army for tank warfare. On his return he arranges for Uhl to escape to a new life abroad. He also makes the acquaintance of Anna Szarbek, a lawyer for the League of Nations, and over the next weeks replaces her fiancé, the Russian emigré journalist Maxim Mostov, as her lover.
Mercier's next assignment takes him to Schramberg, where he has to lie low all night in the forest and observe the German tank manoeuvers the next day. He then passes the Christmas-New Year period with his family at their property in the Drôme, reading up Heinz Guderian's articles on tank tactics and worrying about the impact of the future on ordinary people. Back in Warsaw, the Rozens have been recalled to Moscow and anticipate that this means being purged in Stalin's show trials. When they appeal to Mercier, he arranges for their escape in return for all the diplomatic papers that they can salvage. During their interrogation, evidence emerges that allows the Polish authorities to expel Maxim Mostov back to Russia.
At another diplomatic reception, Mercier makes the acquaintance of Dr Lapp, a member of the German military intelligence in touch with the Black Front, the anti-Hitler faction of the Nazi Party. But back in Germany, state security officer August Voss, blamed for the failed attempt to abduct Uhl, learns of his transfer to a dead-end office job. Gathering his team, he leaves for Warsaw to take his revenge on Mercier but is prevented in mid-attempt by Mercier's armed driver, Marek.
A final operation takes Mercier to Czechoslovakia, where he offers sanctuary to the exiled Black Front publicist, Julius Halbach. In return, Halbach must drive to Berlin with Mercier and contact a former unsuspected member of the organisation, Johannes Elter, now an army communications sergeant. From him Mercier obtains the German invasion plans against France and is surprised by Elter's decision to remain in his post and pass on more information rather than take up Mercier's offer to help him escape to Switzerland. However, Bruner chooses to ignore all the evidence that Mercier has gathered and, with Pétain, rely instead on the Maginot Line that the Germans are planning to bypass. Disgusted, Mercier decides to move permanently to Paris along with Anna and work with General de Beauvilliers there.
The Spies of Warsaw is the tenth novel in Furst's Night Soldiers series and reviewers met it with guarded praise. Though for the Library Journal , it brilliantly captures its socio-political setting, for Kirkus Reviews, the novel's lack of tension is only made up for by its "wonderfully wistful late-'30s atmosphere". [1] Alessandra Stanley in the New York Times, also finds the plot thin, while explaining that "The mission in a Furst novel is never as interesting as the men and women who volunteer, or are forced to complete it", and the shady associates with whom they must mix on the way. In this case there is the added interest that its main character, Lieutenant Colonel Mercier de Boutillon, portrayed in the novel as being on the outskirts of the Charles de Gaulle circle, is in fact based on the General. Like him, "Mercier has aristocratic roots, graduated from military school in the class of 1912, spent time in a German prison camp during World War I and helped Polish troops fight the Red Army in 1920." [2] For fellow novelist C. G. Fewston, however, most of the rest of the characters are genre caricatures and the level of writing only comes alive in the light-heartedly skilful sex scenes, spiced with such internal reflections as "Only a princess, he thought, would join a man in the shower but disdain the use of the guest soap". [3]
The book was adapted for television in 2013, with the title Spies of Warsaw , a co-production of TVP1, BBC Four, BBC America, and ARTE, in a series that premiered in January in the United Kingdom and in April in the United States. [4]
Spy fiction is a genre of literature involving espionage as an important context or plot device. It emerged in the early twentieth century, inspired by rivalries and intrigues between the major powers, and the establishment of modern intelligence agencies. It was given new impetus by the development of fascism and communism in the lead-up to World War II, continued to develop during the Cold War, and received a fresh impetus from the emergence of rogue states, international criminal organizations, global terrorist networks, maritime piracy and technological sabotage and espionage as potent threats to Western societies. As a genre, spy fiction is thematically related to the novel of adventure, the thriller and the politico-military thriller.
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French military officer and statesman who led Free French Forces against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Republic from 1944 to 1946 in order to restore democracy in France. In 1958 during the Algerian War he came out of retirement when appointed President of the Council of Ministers by President René Coty. He rewrote the Constitution of France and founded the Fifth Republic after approval by referendum. He was elected President of France later that year, a position to which he was re-elected in 1965 and held until his resignation in 1969.
Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Pétain ; 24 April 1856 – 23 July 1951) was a French military officer and statesman who commanded the French Army in World War I and became the head of the collaborationist regime of Vichy France, from 1940 to 1944, during World War II.
Maxime Weygand was a French military commander in World War I and World War II, as well as a high ranking member of the Vichy regime.
Free France was a political entity that claimed to be the legitimate government of France following the dissolution of the Third Republic. Led by French general Charles de Gaulle, Free France was established as a government-in-exile in London in June 1940 after the Fall of France during World War II and fought the Axis as an Allied nation with its Free French Forces. Free France also supported the resistance in Nazi-occupied France, known as the French Forces of the Interior, and gained strategic footholds in several French colonies in Africa.
Jean Louis Xavier François Darlan was a French admiral and political figure. Born in Nérac, Darlan graduated from the École navale in 1902 and quickly advanced through the ranks following his service during World War I. He was promoted to rear admiral in 1929, vice admiral in 1932, lieutenant admiral in 1937 before finally being made admiral and Chief of the Naval Staff in 1937. In 1939, Darlan was promoted to admiral of the fleet, a rank created specifically for him.
Albert François Lebrun was a French politician, President of France from 1932 to 1940. He was the last president of the Third Republic. He was a member of the centre-right Democratic Republican Alliance (ARD).
From 1939 to 1940, the French Third Republic was at war with Nazi Germany. In 1940, the German forces defeated the French in the Battle of France. The Germans occupied the north and west of French territory and a collaborationist régime under Philippe Pétain established itself in Vichy. General Charles de Gaulle established a government in exile in London and competed with Vichy France to position himself as the legitimate French government, for control of the French overseas empire and receiving help from French allies. He eventually managed to enlist the support of some French African colonies and later succeeded in bringing together the disparate maquis, colonial regiments, legionnaires, expatriate fighters, and Communist snipers under the Free French Forces in the Allied chain of command. In 1944, after the Allies had landed in Normandy and the southern front moved from North Africa across the Mediterranean into Italy and Provence, these forces routed the German Army, and Vichy officials fled into Germany.
Paul Reynaud was a French politician and lawyer prominent in the interwar period, noted for his stances on economic liberalism and militant opposition to Nazi Germany.
The Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionnage, abbreviated SDECE, was France's external intelligence agency from 6 November 1944 to 2 April 1982, when it was replaced by the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE). It should not be confused with the Deuxième Bureau which was intended to pursue purely military intelligence.
Alan Furst is an American author of historical spy novels. Furst has been called "an heir to the tradition of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene," whom he cites along with Joseph Roth and Arthur Koestler as important influences. Most of his novels since 1988 have been set just prior to or during the Second World War and he is noted for his successful evocations of Eastern European peoples and places during the period from 1933 to 1944.
Marie Joseph Pierre François Kœnig or Koenig was a French general during World War II during which he commanded a Free French Brigade at the Battle of Bir Hakeim in North Africa in 1942. He started a political career after the war and was posthumously elevated to the dignity of Marshal of France in 1984.
Paul Baudouin was a French banker who became a politician and Foreign Minister of France for the last six months of 1940. He was instrumental in arranging a cessation of hostilities between France and Germany in June that year, resulting in an Armistice.
Major-General Sir Edward Louis Spears, 1st Baronet, was a British Army officer and Member of Parliament noted for his role as a liaison officer between British and French forces in two world wars. From 1917 to 1920 he was head of the British Military Mission in Paris, ending the war as a Brigadier-General. Between the wars he served as a Member of the British House of Commons, before once again becoming as Anglo-French liaison officer, this time as a Major-General, in the Second World War.
The Battle of Gabon, also called the Gabon Campaign, occurred in November 1940 during World War II. The battle resulted in forces under the orders of General de Gaulle taking the colony of Gabon and its capital, Libreville, from Vichy France, and the rallying of French Equatorial Africa to Free France.
Former French secret service chief Paul Paillole was born in the Breton town of Rennes on 18 November 1905. He died on 15 October 2002 in the Bichat hospital in Paris. He is remembered essentially for his role organizing the arrest of German intelligence agents in France after the defeat of 1940 but his activity during this period has been the subject of controversy.
Vichy France, officially the French State, was the French rump state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. It was named after its seat of government, the city of Vichy. Officially independent, but with half of its territory occupied under the harsh terms of the 1940 armistice with Nazi Germany, it adopted a policy of collaboration. Though Paris was nominally its capital, the government established itself in the resort town of Vichy in the unoccupied "free zone", where it remained responsible for the civil administration of France as well as its colonies. The occupation of France by Nazi Germany at first affected only the northern and western portions of the country, but in November 1942 the Germans and Italians occupied the remainder of Metropolitan France, ending any pretence of independence by the Vichy government.
The Polish Officer (1995) is a novel by Alan Furst.
Spies of Warsaw is a British television miniseries in which a Deuxième Bureau intelligence agent (spy) poses as a military attaché at the French embassy in Warsaw, and finds himself drawn into the outbreak of World War II.
The liberation of France in the Second World War was accomplished through diplomacy, politics and the combined military efforts of the Allied Powers, Free French forces in London and Africa, as well as the French Resistance.