Intelligence Was My Line

When Ralph Hauenstein became a reserve officer, he thought the skills he'd gained as newspaperman might be useful. Indeed, he spent World War 2 gathering information from sources as diverse as soldiers who were encouraged to report on one another and code books pulled from downed German planes. The story of Major Hauenstein's war is also the story of the European Theatre of US Operations, the American command of General Dwight D Eisenhower, who spun between ETOUSA and his international position at Allied headquarters, SHAEF, with dizzying speed. SHAEF dominates histories of the time; ETOUSA is comparatively little studied and understood, but as Hauenstein explains, we couldn't have won the war without it. Donald Markle shapes Ralph Hauenstein's remembrances into an informative, entertaining book that will spark debate among history buffs.