Secret War in Shanghai: An Untold Story of Espionage, Intrigue, and Treason in World War II

by Bernard Wasserstein

Book Overview

Bernard Wasserstein has uncovered startling evidence from the archives of the intelligence agencies of several countries that relates the remarkable and murky history of Shanghai''s political... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0395985374
• ISBN13: 9780395985373
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 354 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.5" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Great Book of Spies of Old Shanghai

This book opens with the Siege of Shanghai in the late summer of 1937 and closes with postscripts following Mao's takeover. I found the book well researched and very informative.Others have stated that the book is dry, byzantine and a teases around a fascinating narrative without delivering. I find these charges to be unfair.The book appeals to those who have a working knowledge of the Old Shanghai. So if you don't have a background, I suggest Stella Dong, J.G. Ballard or at a minimum Steven Speilberg's movie EMPIRE OF THE SUN before attempting this book.What is lacking in this book is informative city maps of Old Shanghai. I would liked more photographs of the persons and places that populate the book. As a result, I am having to refer back to Tales of Old Shanghai website to find the Shanghai landmarks much less the Argentine Club. Forget about getting pictures of the smaller names mentioned in the book i.e. Berrier, Erhadt, Otani and Sorge. Some more references to NORTH CHINA DAILY were notably missing. Also missing is offical papers from Wang Ching Wei, Pu Yi, Mao Tse Tung and Chiang Kai Shek's Tai Li. Thier story which becomes the larger story is hinted at but not explored in the shadow of the Old Players.The role of the White Russians and Jews are brought to light. The book hints that the Shanghai Jews may have had more substantial links to the Soviets, but yet Wasserstein does not explore this fully. And where is the Comintern in all of this? He does concede that the Russians as well as the British have been less forth coming.All in all a fantastic book that should be used in conjunction with other references to support serious scholarship.

A sordid tale of espionage and collaboration

In Asia as in Europe, World War II consigned to the waste bin any number of territorial claims, and reordered the face of the world. Looking back over fifty years later it is easy to be fooled into thinking that the pre-war world was essentially the same as that we inhabit today. Of course that was not the case.Too many forget, for example, that Shanghai, rather than Hong Kong or Singapore, was the Britain's commercial jewel in the crown in East Asia. In the 1930's Shanghai was the world's sixth largest city, and cleared over half of China's foreign trade. Major British companies like Jardine Matheson, Swires, and the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank were based there, and the government of the International Settlement was firmly in British hands.Shanghai was also a seething pit of human corruption. Crowded with opium godowns, Chinese warlords and gangsters, and White Russian émigré "taxi-dancers". Such was the venality of the place that it was estimated that one in every thirteen women worked as a prostitute.It was also a place where the intelligence services of half a dozen nations vied for information and influence. It is this world, and what became of it under Japanese occupation, which has been chronicled by Wasserstein in his very interesting book.As Japan flexed its muscles in China in the late 1930's Britain felt itself increasingly powerless to protect its interests in the International Settlement. The collapse of France and Italy's entry into the war in 1940 left it with only the US as a friend in the International Settlement. The city capitulated within days of Japan's entry into the war.The intelligence war had been going on for much longer of course. While the extensive apparatus maintained by Britain to gather intelligence during the interwar years is interesting, what is of more focus for the book is the efforts of the Axis powers, but particularly Japan, to build and maintain intelligence networks, and the targets of their collection activities.The Japanese and Germans also undertook extensive propaganda operations, which would not have been possible without cooperation and outright collaboration by Allied nationals, and others such as Indians and White Russians. Indeed, it is the broad tale of cooperation and collaboration which is the centerpiece of this book. Wasserstein identifies and analyses the people who assisted the occupying powers, and their motives for so doing. Some, like the Australian Alan Raymond, were opportunistic members of the criminal underworld of Shanghai. Others, like the Eurasian sometime Briton Lawrence Kentwell, were motivated by a mix of manic obsession with perceived injustices and a claimed racial bias. There were also Chinese and Russian gangsters and even a nymphomaniac Indian "princess" described in postwar intelligence reports as "physically intimate with both sexes concurrently....[and known to] run the gamut of perversion, since she has also been known to be both sadistically and masochi

The World in Miniature, in a Twisted Sort of Way

Bernard Wasserstein's Secret War in Shanghai looks at the unusual city of Shanghai before and during World War II. The city was unusual because of the different groups and the unique individuals vying for dominance or existence. The book includes much information on events and people during this time although presented and written in a manner often less thrilling than the material whould allow. The focus is on the Europeans, Americans and Australians and the important Asians they come into contact with during their stay. For the most part, these people are a grasping, greedy lot and loyalties shift quite easily. A hard look at the Asian populations during this period in Shanghai would help complete the picture. An interesting first look at a fascinating city at a pivotal period.

A strugle for power by any means necessary.

If you are a scholar, serious student, or avid reader of World War II History, this book is for you. This book is exhaustively researched, meticulously crafted, and written with flowing style.Prior to World War II, Shanghai was a major trading hub in Asia. The city was populated by Americans, British, Japanese, Italians, Nationalist and Communist Chinese, French, Australians, Indians, Germans, Jewish Refugees, Russian Refugees, and other minor national players. Add to the population rogues, spies, soldiers-of-fortune, adventurers, Chinese gangsters, con men, thieves, murders, and low lives of other callings. Mix all of these elements together and start a major world war and the intrigues begin.This is a tale of treason, collaboration, bravery, propaganda, and maneuvering for power, prestige, and money. Businesses wanted to continue operation and ignore the consequences. Torture, murder, extortion, imprisonment, and blackmail were tools of the day. Numerous intelligence organizations competed against each other and all had to rely heavily on the Chinese for information. One fact I found interesting was the Japanese distrust of the Germans because they were racists. I find this ironic. Another interesting fact was the Allies used 100,000 Japanese soldiers in and around Shanghai at the end of the war to keep order. The book is filled with excerpts from intelligence reports, newspaper articles, and the eventual demise of some of the more colorful characters. There is also a section of fascinating pictures.After the war, Shanghai made an attempt to recover some of her previous glory, but much of her business moved on to Hong Kong and Singapore. The final blow was the defeat of the Nationalist forces by the Communists in 1949. The city has never been the same since.

Truth is seamier than fiction.

Bernard Wasserstein's look at the cloak-and-dagger side Shanghai in the 1930s and during World War II casts an even seamier light on pre-Liberation city than is usually seen. Secret War exceeds the reader's expectations in several ways. First, the level of spying that was carried out by the various powers in the International Settlement against each other and their own citizens is nothing short of shocking. Sexual habits, personal histories, and suspected involvements were all part of the records kept by the Shanghai Municipal Police, a largely Anglo-Saxon coalition empowered to keep order in the Settlement. Not a single nation is spared in Secret War. Just when the reader believes that Wasserstein may be favoring the British, he slams them for incompetence or outright treachery. The French, Germans, Americans, and Japanese all come under fire for treating their concessions in Shanghai as their own little fiefdoms.Wasserstein introduces us to an eclectic cast of charlatans, murderers, and thieves. There's Eugene Pick, the Russian-born gangster who collaborates with the Japanese and, when not spending his evenings at the theater, is conspiring to have his rivals bumped off. There's "Count" du Berrier, a bogus aristocrat and genuine arms dealer available to the highest bidder. "Princess" Sumaire, another false member of a royal family, this social-climbing Indian imposter lived the high life and traded sex for influence, first among Western expatriates, and later, the Japanese.After the outbreak of the Pacific War in the late 1930s, intelligence gathering in Shanghai turned from a broad activity aimed at foiling communism and social disruption to top-level spying. As the war deepened, two surprising details emerge: not only were citizens of the Allied nations prone to passively or actively collaborating with the Japanese, but both the Allies and the Axis powers spent as much time and resources spying on each other as they did on the enemy. Because Britain wanted to avoid dragging Japan into the larger conflict, instructions given to British citizens were never exact in stating what constituted collaboration, and therefore Shanghai continued, in some ways, to do business as usual even after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when war was officially declared.In between its various stories of intrigue, Secret War presents an account of expatriate life in Shanghai seldom documented elsewhere. The description of Shanghai's various newspapers and radio stations operated by the Settlement's nations and entrepreneurs is by itself short but fascinating.Missing from this fine work of research is a single map of old Shanghai that would show the reader the lay of the land and the location of the various concessions. Without it, the reader has no idea which concessions abutted one another nor the proximity of one to the other, or the relation of the Chinese city to the International Settlement. The only other out