Coffee with Hitler

TELEGRAPH and SPECTATOR HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR

How the British might have handled Hitler differently remains one of history’s greatest ‘what ifs’.

Coffee with Hitler tells the astounding and poignant story, for the first time, of a handful of amateur British intelligence agents who wined, dined and befriended the leading National Socialists between the wars. With support from royalty, aristocracy, politicians and businessmen, they hoped to use the much mythologised Anglo-German Fellowship as a vehicle to civilise the Nazis. A pacifist Welsh historian, a Great War flying ace, and a butterfly-collecting businessman offered the British government better intelligence on the horrifying rise of the Nazis than anyone else.

Charles Spicer draws on newly discovered primary sources, shedding light on the early career of Kim Philby, Winston Churchill’s approach to appeasement, the US entry into the war and the Rudolf Hess affair.