Silver was the codename for the only quintuple spy of the Second World War, spying for the Italians, Germans, Japanese, Soviets and the British. The Germans awarded him the Iron Cross, Germany s highest military decoration, and paid him 2.5 million in today s money. In reality Silver deceived the Nazis on behalf of the Soviets and the British. In 1942 the Russians decided to share Silver with the British, the only time during the war that the Soviets agreed to such an arrangement. This brought him under the control of Peter Fleming who acted as his spy master. Germans also gave Silver a transmitter which broadcast misleading military information directly to Abwehr headquarters in Berlin. Silver was one of many codenames for a man whose real name was Bhagat Ram Talwar, a Hindu Pathan from the North West Frontier province of then British India. Between 1941 and 1945 Silver made twelve trips from Peshawar to Kabul to supply false information to the Germans, always making the near-200-mile journey on foot over mountain passes and hostile tribal territory.Once when an Afghan nearly rumbled him, he invited him to a curry meal in which he had mixed deadly tiger s whiskers killing the Afghan. "
The Remarkable Pathan; A Rebel is Born; Learning Politics from a Bullock; The Stagehand Becomes the Main Actor; The Road to Kabul; Seeking Stalin Finding Hitler; The Italian Job; Hitler, The Faqir and the Nazi Intrigues; The Phantom Italian Spy; Moscow Calling; Taking the Nazis for a Ride; More Nazi Loot in Kabul; Russias gift to Britain; Silvers Moscow Centre; Britains Man; A Very Special Sahib; The Problem with Mary and Oliver; Silver and the new Great Game; Now We Have Five; Back to the Beginning; Epilogue-The Unsolved Mystery; Acknowledgements; Appendices, Timeline, Money given to Silver by the Axis powers, British Guide to Good Mullahs, Main Characters, Codes used in the Silver Operation by the British.
This is the first biography of Silver, the war’s only quintuple spy
Based on extensive research into previously classified British, German, Italian, Japanese and Russian documentation
The author interviewed Silver and many of his associates
The book also reveals Nazi intrigues to enlist Muslim tribal leaders in the North West Frontier of British India, now the centre of jihadist activity
A ground-breaking look at how war was fought in a part of the world much in the news, but neglected by Second World War historians