SOE's PERIWIG BONZOS: Infiltrating anti-Nazi Germans into Germany as part of an elaborate deception scheme

The Special Operations Executive (SOE), Britain's TOP SECRET subversive organisation during the Second World War, were informed before and after D-Day that some surrendered or captured German prisoners of war who had been brought to camps in England claimed not to be supporters of Hitler. They had been compelled to join the Wehrmacht, the German army, and, when asked, volunteered to be trained and infiltrated back into Germany by the Allies on sabotage, subversion and assassination missions. Bernard O'Connor's 'SOE BONZOS' has used recently released personnel files, country section correspondence, training reports and mission papers to tell for the first time the stories of about sixty prisoners who were brave enough to return to Germany on secret operations. Eight, termed PERIWIG BONZOS, were selected for similar missions which involved making contact with members of the German resistance. Such an organisation did not exist but SOE had a plan to convince the Gestapo that it did thereby diverting attention from the Allies' invasion plans. Three were reported to have been dropped with faulty parachutes and documents implicating leading Germans as members of a resistance group which used the symbol of a prancing horse. 'SOE's PERWIG BONZOS' is a documentary history which provides details of Gerhard Bieneke, Leonhardt Kick, Otto Heinrich, Frans Lengnick, Kurt Tietz, Siegel, Ciesinski and Schiller, the successes and failures of their missions and accounts of conditions in Germany towards the end of the war. There are also details of SOE's German Section officers who planned the operations, having to negotiate with the Bayswater Interrogation Section, SOE's Training, Camouflage, Forgery, Finance and Quartermaster Sections; officers in other country sections; the American Office of Strategic Services; the RAF who arranged parachute drops and the Special Forces operating with the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force operating in France, Belgium and Germany. Visit Bernard O'Connor's author page: www.lulu.com/spotlight/coprolite