They were doomed from the very beginning. During the Second World War, it didn't take long for the British Secret Services to discover that Nazi Germany's cohorts of espionage agents - influenced either by the illusionary light of profit or idealism, or the darkness of blackmail and reprisals - were largely comprised of amateurs so grossly inefficient it seemed almost a shame to hang them. Sourced exclusively from previously highly classified MI5 files, this thought-provoking new book tells the dramatic stories of some of Hitler's so-called spies whose training and credentials as secret agents were so pathetic that it was virtually inevitable they be caught. Secret interrogation centres, double-cross, international intrigue and deadly, leap-in-the-dark adventures of enemy agents, lie at the heart of every chapter of this captivating, multi-storied book. From a spy who deliberately jumped out of his aircraft knowing that he would be caught, to a dashing but misguided Errol Flynn look-alike, or a secret agent who had been duped into becoming a diamond courier, Tony Matthews strips back the layers of Nazi espionage to reveal a world of duplicity, stupidity, betrayal and deceit. A probing exposA (c) into the perilous and inefficient world of some of Hitler's most endangered spies.