Cracking the Nazi Code

February 26, 2024
Philosopher Bell debuts with a gripping investigation of the secret role Canadian-born British spy and philosopher Winthrop Bell (no relation to the author) played in sounding the alarm about the Nazi threat—not once, but twice. The author learned about Winthrop in 2008 when he was doing research on German phenomenology and stumbled upon Winthrop’s archived records, including his diary. Working toward completing his philosophy PhD in Germany when WWI broke out and imprisoned as an enemy citizen for the duration of the conflict, Winthrop was recruited postwar by British intelligence due to his high-level connections within Germany. His first mission was to embed among Berlin political elites, and in 1919 he became “the first intelligence agent to warn about the National Socialists” and their plan to start a second world war—warnings that Bell shows were suppressed by fascist British politicians. Long bothered that his report had been buried, in the 1930s Winthrop returned to Germany posing as a Reuters journalist. He learned enough about the Nazi aspiration for “racial extermination” that was “global in scope” to issue “the world’s first published warning of Hitler’s plans for worldwide genocide” in a quietly influential 1939 newspaper article. Even readers well-versed on the war will be surprised by the history Bell has pieced together. It’s a significant new perspective on behind-the-scenes political machinations preceding WWII.

March 15, 2024
In this era of social media celebrity, it is unusual to read about a person whose explanation for his achievements going unnoticed is "naturally I have not talked of it." The person? Winthrop Pickard Bell, a Harvard philosopher turned military spy. The achievements? Well, that occupies a whole book. In detail-rich prose, Canadian academic Bell (no relation) tells the incredible story of "quite possibly history's greatest spy," a man who went by the code name A12, and who tried to warn the world of the rise of Germany in 1919 and again in 1939. Years before the mainstream media reported on the horrors of the Holocaust, which the Nazis called the Final Solution and had been at pains to keep secret, Winthrop Bell told his intelligence contacts all about it, just as he had told them after the First World War about the National Socialist Party and its plans for conquest. How would things have turned out if Bell had been more impactful? That is the poignant question at the heart of this unputdownable narrative.

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Starred review from March 1, 2024

Bell (philosophy, Univ. of New Brunswick) has penned a remarkable account of the life of Winthrop Bell (1884-1965), a spy also known as A12 who uncovered the emerging Nazi conspiracy in 1919 Berlin from a careful reading of Hitler's Mein Kampf. (The subject and the author are not related.) A12 worked for the Canadian and British governments, and this book indicates that he tried to warn Britain of the rise of Nazism and general instability in Germany. The book vividly documents the spy's efforts to alert the British, of Nazi plans. Instead, the report was hidden away until 1939. That year, Bell again used his espionage expertise to help the British thwart the Nazis. Utilizing primary source material from Europe and Canada and reviewing documents from Bell's archives, the author writes a gripping account of the spy, who also was an academic at Harvard and McGill. VERDICT An extraordinary story of one man's efforts to stop the Nazi regime. Best for those who enjoy history, biography, and tales of espionage.--Jacqueline Parascandola

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Starred review from January 1, 2024
A Canadian scholar tells the story of a dynamic yet understated Renaissance man who was the first to decipher the plans for Hitler's Final Solution. University of New Brunswick professor of philosophy Jason Bell presents a remarkable book about a remarkable man heretofore unknown. Yet in this author's capable hands, the name Winthrop Bell (1884-1965) should resound in the annals of history. The author was granted access to the previously classified espionage documents of the other Bell (no relation), a Canadian academic and MI6 spy known as A12 who diagnosed the rise of the Nazi conspiracy in Germany just after World War I and became one of the Hitler regime's greatest enemies. The author's own academic talents serve him extremely well throughout this fascinating, well-paced text. He's cobbled together information gleaned from unpublished papers in Canadian, German, and British archives to demonstrate how Winthrop Bell's knack for intelligence gathering, his intellectual prowess, and his keen reading of the subtext of Mein Kampf, along with his facility in the field of phenomenology, enabled him to decipher Hitler's plans to eradicate not only Jews, but all non-Aryans. Winthrop Bell's notes, writes the author, became "the world's first published warning of Hitler's plans for worldwide genocide." The author provides vivid, exciting descriptions of Winthrop Bell's often harrowing experiences, observational powers, and yeoman efforts to warn those in power in Great Britain and elsewhere of what was really happening in Germany and how to stop it. This book is a significant and timely achievement, and the author should be commended for bringing to colorful life the story of the courageous, intelligent, and infinitely interesting Winthrop Bell, a man whose name should always be registered in the first rank of heroic freedom-fighters and who, as the author points how, cracked not only the Nazi code but the peace code as well. A masterful profile of a significant historical figure.

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