CHURCHILL'S ENEMIES

CHURCHILL'S ENEMIES

John Harte's new book about the challenges that Winston Churchill faced begins where the author's previous book, Churchill's Challenges, ended.  They were the spread of communism, the rise of fascism, and fanatical Islamist terrorism in the Middle East.  Harte's fifth book about Winston Churchill focuses on the rise to dictatorship of Benito Mussolini in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Germany, with reference also to Hitler's collaborator in the Middle East, the Mufti of Jerusalem. It describes how, step by step, the two European dictators destroyed democracy.

This account of the first half of Winston Churchill's life should help readers to understand how today's world developed as a consequence of his influence in and out of office.  It also shows how Churchill changed from an ambitious young politician to an elder statesman, as a consequence of his experiences in the changing world with all its complexities, paradoxes and ambiguities - and how his decisions still impact world politics today.

Author John Harte's most recent publication by Pen & Sword Military in the UK was released in May, 2025, entitled Churchill's Enemies 1927-1940. Winston Churchill's major enemies were the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in Germany, as well as Islamist fanatics in the Middle East.

Political and social historian John Harte was born in England during the rise of Nazi Germany. He has specialized in writing about dictators of authoritarian regimes ever since he discovered a postwar plot by Sir Oswald Mosley to take over Britain in 1949. Harte travelled all over the British Isles to compile a dossier of provincial fascist splinter groups - led mostly by petty criminals - under a variety of different names who intended to combine, and took photos of their leaders. His dossier was presented in parliament by the leader writer of the Sunday Pictorial, while John also gave a scoop to Picture Post. The scandal ended Mosley's political career.

Harte subsequently visited the Volkswagen works in Wolfsburg, Germany to interview postwar Germans and write about their experiences in Nazi Germany. He followed by travelling to Tito's Yugoslavia in 1961 with a Croatian interpreter, to interview Tito's youngest partisan who had fought against Nazi Germany. He returned to Zagreb years later in its war of independence. So that Harte has experienced authoritarian regimes at first hand, and observed the decline of nations. The result is that his books on authoritarian dictatorships bear the hallmark of first-hand experience.

Author visits Volkswagen Works in Wolfsburg, Germany in 1949. Harte on left, with town architect and his daughter, who was the author's first wife.

John Harte chose to use Winston Churchill's experiences - both in and out of office - as a framework for his Churchill's Challenges and Churchill's Enemies, since Winston Churchill spent his entire life struggling against Communist, Fascist, and Islamist fanatics. His two books with Pen & Sword Military (Plus his true life espionage story about how Soviet Russia stole the secrets of the first atomic bomb; namely The Race For The Atom Bomb), describe and explain the following crises:

1. The Middle East Crisis from 1918, after the Allies defeated the German-led Turkish Ottoman Empire, and Churchill was appointed Colonial Secretary to sort out the chaos, define new frontiers, and install new Arab kings.
2. The Russian Crisis from the revolution in 1917, when Churchill attempted to prevent Communism from spilling over the borders of Soviet Russia during its civil war.
3. The Rise of Fascism in Nazi Germany, when Churchill was out of office and attempted to warn Britain's governments of impending danger to the British isles and the world.

As a corollary of the rise of the Nazis, Harte also describes "The Hitler of the Middle East." He was the Mufti of Jerusalem, who collaborated with the Nazis in Berlin and laid the groundwork for the present-day crisis in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. All of the three author's books with Pen & Sword Military explore the historic causes that led to today's catastrophes. Churchill's Enemies has been praised for its comprehensive scope. The International Churchill Society noted Harte's examination of how "the scrawny little second lieutenant" became a global leader.

CHURCHILL'S CHALLENGES: 1918-1940  "Remarkably ambitious in scope, Harte manages to knit together a social and cultural history of these years, including how Churchill both influenced the world and was defined by the issues of the day.  Harte wants to show when and where the 'scrawny little twenty-year-old second lieutenant became a global leader.'  The question is not a new one, but it never fails to fascinate."
INTERNATIONAL CHURCHILL SOCIETY

CHURCHILL'S CHALLENGES

Devoured by egoism, adoration of his mother Jennie, and enduring love for Clementine whom he married, young Winston Churchill's gifts and flaws are described against a background of a world crisis and their love of country.

The Middle-East was in peril.  The Communist Revolution was spreading.  The Nazis were taking over Germany when he was out of office in a government reshuffle.  And the women in Winston's life were united by a common purpose to make him prime minister.

This is the author's fourth book about Winston Churchill.

The Race for the Atom Bomb:
How Soviet Russia stole the secrets of the Manhattan Project

"This is the detailed backstory of a covert race during World War II to build the world's first atomic bomb.  Robert Oppenheimer, teamed with American and British physicists, toil in the New Mexico desert while the Soviet Union works to better their timeline.  Journalist John Harte's detailed research provides an excellent resource for future historians who wish to understand the espionage, experiments, challenges, and conspiracies revolving around the first atomic weapon deployment in 1945."
STEPHEN L. MOORE, author of: Patton's Payback.

When Nazi Germany began a secret weapons program called "The Uranium Club" in April 1939, Stalin was alerted by his American and British spies of the possibility that German scientists were working to develop an atomic bomb.  The British Government and the United States, and Stalin, realized that if Hitler used The atom bomb, it could mean the end of the West or the end of the world.  John Harte's new book about The Manhattan Project describes how Soviet Russia's leading spymasters in Moscow Centre obtained information from British and American physicists to make a Soviet atomic bomb at each and every stage when the American bomb was developed at Los Alamos in New Mexico.

The first book published by Pen & Sword Military Publishers by historian John Harte was entitled The Race for the Atom Bomb. But the sting was in the tail, so to speak, because it is an espionage book. Its subtitle is How Soviet Russia Stole the Secrets of the Manhattan Project. It was published in 2023.

It appeared to be auspicious that a monumental film about Robert Oppenheimer - the physicist who managed The Manhattan Project to develop the first ever nuclear bomb - turned out to be a disadvantage, because most readers wrongly assumed that it was a book of the film. On the contrary. Whereas the film was biographical description of the brilliant intellectual physicist Robert Oppenheimer, Harte's book was largely about an experienced KGB spy known as "Kitty Harris," among many other code names given to her by the KGB in Moscow Centre.

Among KGB spies "Kitty Harris" kept a safe-house for was the notorious Donald Maclean, one of the Cambridge Five spies. She was his handler and lover.

Donald Maclean

Whereas the movie focused on the trial of Robert Oppenheimer as a security risk, because so many of his friends and colleagues were communists, Harte's book describes how the first nuclear bomb came to be made by Americans when it became known that Hitler's German scientists were developing a number of secret weapons which could include an atomic bomb. If the Nazis had produced the first nuclear bomb, Nazi Germany would win World War 2 and threaten the world with extinction. The race was on by Stalin, to copy every innovation and development of the American bomb in the desert of Los Alamos in New Mexico.

Russia's KGB had a safe-house in Los Alamos. It had been used as a base from where one of Stalin's spies had assassinated the revolutionary Leon Trotsky in 1940. When the Manhattan Project commenced two years later in 1942, the safe-house was reopened by Moscow's star spy-master Elizabeth Zarubin. She contacted her star pupil Kitty Harris, who was also known by numerous other names to deceive anyone following her trail, including "Carmen," "Ada," and "Edda." Kitty had been one of their best spies for many years, acting as a courier and running safe-houses. Her orders now were to seduce Robert Oppenheimer, who was in the process of organizing the Manhattan Project and hiring leading scientists for his team. Oppenheimer was introduced to Kitty Harris at a garden party in August 1939, when she was a married woman of 29. She fell in love with him immediately, and did her best to conceal it from Moscow Center.

Because of Kitty's usefulness as a KGB asset, the Kremlin had created numerous stories about her background to confuse anyone following her trail, which would lead into a dead-end whichever of her pseudonyms they attempted to penetrate and follow. One was that she was dead. Another was that she was under close psychiatric treatment in a clinic. None of them was true.

Elizabeth Zarubin's orders were to befriend the physicists working on the project and obtain the secrets of how to make an atomic bomb, which Stalin's scientists would copy - hopefully ahead of the Americans, the British, and of course Werner Heisenberg. He was the brilliant physicist who was thought to head the German team of nuclear scientists. It would require speed to prevent Hitler from developing the first nuclear bomb and winning World War 2. He would threaten the world if he did. And there was no doubt that he would use it.

One of Robert Oppenheimer's many mistakes was to hire a Soviet Spy named Klaus Fuchs to join his team. Another mistake was the love affair that ensued between the neurotic and accident-prone Kitty and the brilliant intellectual physicist Robert Oppenheimer, who was socially naive. Did she deliberately trap him into marriage by becoming pregnant, or not? No one was sure. But she knew he was a gentleman and would not let her down.

Robert and his wife Katherine were watched, day and nigh, by the Manhattan Project's security officers, since it was run by the United States military. She was also watched by a longtime intelligence officer who was convinced she was a KGB spy. It was always touch-and-go. But they could prove nothing. John Harte has tackled the subject of espionage in two previous books. One is about three intelligence officers who ignited the Arab Revolt in 1918, which helped to end the First World War by using Arab irregulars under the leadership of Lawrence of Arabia. The other is entitled The Greatest Spy. A new paperback edition of The Greatest Spy is scheduled to be published by Harte's New York publisher in September.

Amazon 5/5 : Fascinating and incredibly readable!
With its meticulous research and sources... it's like a page-turner novel. The Greatest Spy needs to be a movie or a streaming series - you can just see it in your mind as you read. I'm going on to Mr. Harte's other books now!

"THE GREATEST SPY  by John Harte is a true espionage mystery that reads like a detective story.  It is about the real-life hero of Britain's Secret Service, code-named Sidney Reilly.  The story takes readers on a thrilling ride across Germany, Russia, Mongolia and Japan, where he is sent by his controller in London.  The author finally answers the question which had stumped previous biographers as to what happened to Reilly after he vanished in Soviet Russia in 1925.  But one question still remains - was he a British hero or a foreign traitor: a double-spy working for the KGB?  This true story could otherwise have been another spy thriller about the fearless James Bond.  And, in fact, Ian Fleming, the novelist who invented the fictional 007, based his Bond character on Reilly's extraordinary exploits."
ARIANNA DAGNINO, author of: The Afrikaner

The Greatest Spy:
The true story of the secret agent who inspired James Bond, 007.

Sidney Reilly was the most audacious, courageous and successful spy in Britain's Secret Intelligence Service. His Top Secret Admiralty Intelligence file formed the basis for Ian Fleming's series of novels about a secret agent named James Bond 007. Much of the true story of his forerunner, known as the "Ace of Spies" was still Top Secret and prevented from publication by the Official Secrets Act until now, while other significant information only recently came to light. So, it was only conjecture before this as to whether Reilly was a hero or a traitor.

"THE PASSIONATE SPIES  by John Harte is an extraordinary and thrilling read about three secret agents in Britain's Secret Service, who organized and led the "Arab Revolt" in 1917.  It gave independence to new Arab-speaking nations in the Middle East and founded oil-rich Saudi Arabia.  The colourful characters of spymaster Gertrude Bell (the first female officer in the British Army), the legendary "Lawrence of Arabia," and the astute traitor St. John Philby (father of the notorious KGB double-spy Kim Philby) are all so dynamic that their heroics are hard to believe, but nevertheless true and soundly researched by a perceptive author who depicts them for us in stylish prose.  I found it hard to put down with its thrilling twists and turns and surprises, and amazing characters."
STEVE HARRIS, author of: America's Secret History

"The current war in Syria has dwarfed all serious academic study of the pre-Ba'ath era. This has left a new generation of scholars with no new literature about the formative years of the Syrian state, with the notable exception of James Barr's highly acclaimed A Line in the Sand (2011).  This is why John Harte's new book THE PASSIONATE SPIES is important, shedding light on British conspiracy, and agents who shaped the modern Middle East.

THE PASSIONATE SPIES focuses on the careers and contributions of three individuals, Gertrude Bell, John Philby, and T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia.  Skeptics will argue that they have been studied in the past, but never in one book, however, and not with the hindsight of 100 years, packaged in a gripping manner that will appeal to 21st century readers.
SAMI MOUBAYED, author of: Steel & Silk,
Founding Chairman of The Damascus History Foundation

CHURCHILL: BRITAIN'S LAST HERO - 1944-1953

The recent spree to damage or topple great historic British heroes from their pedestals prompts a new and critical assessment of Sir Winston Churchill by JOHN HARTE.  It is an exciting yet sober look at a national hero's career as politician and world statesman.

It begins with the brutal murder spree in 1945 by German troops in Nazi-occupied Europe, when they realize they have lost the war, and continues to his rejection at the polling booth as Prime Minister in the General Election.  Now, as opposition leader he galvanizes President Truman into action with his "Iron Curtain" speech, and faces-off Soviet Russia in the Cold War.

After retiring from office as peacetime Prime Minister, he paints landscapes on the Italian Riviera and gambles in the casino at Monte Carlo - until suddenly flown back home to London.

He makes a remarkable recovery to appear at the White House to advise President Eisenhower on the nuclear arms race, Khrushchev and Mao Tse-tung, before disappearing finally into the twilight.

Assessments of his stature and his quirks are given by leaders from all over the world, including: "Today marks the end of a glorious and memorable period, during which one man has brought hope and happiness to more people on the earth than anyone else in all its history."

"Equally informative and entertaining, CHURCHILL THE YOUNG WARRIOR covers the formative period of one of the most formidable and influential figures of the twentieth century.  In stylish prose and with a perceptive eye for color, detail, and context, Mr. Harte follows Churchill the soldier, journalist, and politician.  The author parallels Churchill's public career and private life with a trenchant analysis of the political, military, diplomatic, economic, social, and cultural climate that simultaneously invigorated and roiled Europe during the three decades leading up to the Great War."
EDWARD LONGACRE, author of: General Ulysses S. Grant, the Soldier and the Man

How Churchill Saved Civilization resolves the lingering mysteries surrounding the causes of the Second World War, and what transpired during the war to bring its end result.  It proposes answers to such questions as "Why were the Allies unprepared?",  "Why did France collapse so quickly?",  "Why didn't the British government accept Hitler's peace proposals?" and "Why did the Germans allow Hitler to obtain life and death control over them?"

"Harte minces no words in presenting Churchill as the central figure and driving force in the West's resistance to Nazi Germany - resistance that was by no means a given. Harte describes Churchill as unique in being alert to danger, perceptive in analysing it, and decisive in responding to it.  Churchill's failures and shortcomings were penumbras of his ability and insight.  Nor, in the context of his times, was he a blinkered imperialist nor a destructive racist. Unabashed and unapologetic, this is a controversial and useful addition to the literature."
DENNIS SHOWALTER, author of: Patton and Rommel, Hitler's Panzers, and  Armor and Blood: The Battle of Kursk.

Had it not been for the extraordinary bravery, dedication and persistence of a relatively small number of young Allied combatants in World War 2, most of Britain's present generation would not exist. That applies to many Americans, and others, too.

EMBATTLED ENGLAND 1925-1945: Memories of the Great Generation is a unique first-hand account of Britain under attack by Nazi Germany, described quite differently from any previous accounts by the author, who grew up in war-torn England.

It evokes a forgotten London that few knew, by an author who survived the Battle of Britain and the Second World War. It also describes the horrors of bombing sorties over enemy lines without any protection from fighter planes, for which his older brothers volunteered to hasten the war's end.

JOHN HARTE is a former stage actor, playwright, and investigative journalist, who became a management consultant and director of companies in the UK, South Africa and Canada. His memoir of an adolescent searching for identity and purpose in an iconic London which has disappeared for ever, shows us how Londoners behaved under the onslaught of German aerial rockets and bombing attacks. It should long remain a thought provoking record of Britain's "great generation" in World War Two.

This true account of the rise and fall of Hollywood is viewed through the turbulent lives of its five greatest stars, each of whom was described by the media as the most beautiful woman in the world. They shared each other's directors, producers, lovers, husbands, and leading men, while struggling courageously to prevent the collapse of their careers, their love affairs, and their sanity. It describes how all of them challenged or engaged with each other as they struggled to cope with their personality problems and scandals during the rise of Hollywood's golden years and the gradual collapse of the studio system. This is a celebration of five talented and courageous young women who fought hard to control the personality disorders that marked their lives, while harassed by the media and often abused by their fans and the film industry. It ends on the day that Hollywood died, with the mysterious deaths of the unforgettable Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe.