Double Agent, by Peter Duffy

Peter Duffy's Double Agent: The First Hero of World War II and How the FBI Outwitted and Destroyed a Nazi Spy Ring is an example of a great story that doesn't necessarily make a great book.  I like this book, and am glad to learn more about this period of history, but Duffy's narrative lost me from time to time and didn't seem to convey the powerful consequences of these events.

William Sebold was born in Germany, but his adopted home of the United States is where his loyalty lay.  The Germans tried to recruit him to spy for them--he worked in the aerospace industry--but he went to the FBI and offered to be a double agent for the U.S.  The story is at once complex and mundane.  He was a normal guy, doing normal things, with lots of normal people.  But in this time leading up to war, normal people get involved in extraordinary circumstances.

I enjoyed Duffy's descriptions of the setting and tone in the U.S. during these years before the U.S. entered the war.  On this side of history, it's hard to imagine that a large number of Americans were calling for the U.S. not to enter the war.  Many even sided with the Germans.  German Americans in Nazi regalia held public demonstrations.  People were in denial about the implications of Hitler's policies in Germany.

In a sense, this makes Sebold even more a hero, as some of his German friends and family in the U.S. and Germany would certainly have supported Hitler's plans.  But as Duffy tells Sebold's story, he got me lost in the wide cast of characters and their interweaving stories.  I admit, this was probably as much my small brain as Duffy's writing skills, but, well, I don't know.  I'm still glad I read it.


Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!