Secret War in Shanghai: An Untold Story of Espionage, Intrigue, and Treason in World War II

On the eve of WWII, Shanghai contained two foreign enclaves, a French Concession and an International Settlement, each ruled by a small minority of foreigners for their own economic advantage. These enclaves, which sheltered a melange of entrepreneurs and rogues, adventurers and self-promoters, are the setting for Wasserstein's account of the war years in Shanghai, a city rife with violence, vice, colonial hauteur and espionage. Wasserstein's ability to ferret out long-forgotten information from obscure archives shows on every page of this close examination of the behavior of Shanghai's foreign community under the pressure of the Japanese occupation. There are no persons or events of high importance, no battles of consequence, no intelligence breakthroughs. Paradoxically, it is exactly this absence of momentous historical drama that gives the book its charm. This is a study in microcosm of local conditions in Shanghai, where a rag-tag collection of professional survivors adapted to shifting circumstances as the war progressed, and where the intelligence services of many nations labored with equal energy and futility. Wasserstein recounts the careers of many of the more colorful and, in some instances, sinister of Shanghai's spies and opportunists. If the canvas is a bit too crowded, it should still appeal to those who find irresistible the lifestyles of the eccentric, the raffish and the villainous. (Sept.)