Bernard O'Connor

Bernard O'Connor's Jagdeinsatz Italien is a documentary history based on the information collated by British and American intelligence services in Italy towards the end of the Second World War. It provides a comprehensive overview of Jagd Einsatz Italien, a German military organisation operating in Northern Italy between 1944 and 1945. These texts, including interrogation reports, memoranda, and historical accounts, detail the unit's sabotage, espionage, and anti-partisan activities, particularly focusing on the South Tyrol region. The sources illuminate the structure, training, and missions of Jagdeinsatz Italien and its subordinate Jagdkommandos, as well as their connections to larger German intelligence and paramilitary organisations like the Brandenburg Division and the SS Jagdverb nde. Furthermore, the documents contain biographical information and interrogation summaries of key personnel, such as Hptm. Albert Soelder and Hptm. Hans Gerlach, and also record post-war investigations into buried explosives and alleged war crimes, providing insight into Allied efforts to dismantle German resistance and gather intelligence.

Before the Second World War, Britain's Security Service was concerned that foreign spies were operating across the country, collecting military and economic intelligence and passing it on to the enemy. There were worries that some people were stealing and selling state secrets. In order to collect the evidence needed to convict people of spying for the enemy, the Security Service employed agents to go undercover, sometimes for years. One such 'mole' was a woman whose 'handler' only referred to her as 'Miss X' or Moses. Her real identity was not revealed until decades later. What had been a TOP SECRET file was not released by the British Government until January 2025. Bernard O'Connor has researched her story and brings to light the correspondence between 'Miss X' and her 'handler' for the first time.

Bernard O'Connor's latest documentary history is an account of opium, the black drug derived from poppies that was consumed as a medicine, a soporific, a mind-altering drug and a poison. Using the British Newspaper Archive, he has selected newspaper articles from both the Indian and the British press. What follows sheds light on the conflicting scientific, medical, commercial and religious attitudes towards opium, the changing economic and political situation in Great Britain, India and China and the effects of its consumption. Given the considerable coverage of opium in the news, this book is Volume II, covering the first two decades of the 19th century. Further volumes are planned.

Bernard O'Connor's latest documentary history is an account of opium, the black drug derived from poppies that was consumed as a medicine, a soporific, a mind-altering drug and a poison. Using the British Newspaper Archive, he has selected newspaper articles from both the Indian and the British press. What follows shed light on the conflicting scientific, medical, commercial and religious attitudes towards opium, the changing economic and political situation in Great Britain, India and China and the effects of its consumption. Given the considerable coverage of opium in the news, this book is Volume I, covering the 18th century. Further volumes are planned.

In late-1943, some officers in the Abwehr, Germany's military intelligence service during the Second World War, began planning for a withdrawal of troops from occupied Western Europe. 'Operation Easter Egg' was initiated. Caches of explosives and sabotage material were buried and location maps drawn. Nazi collaborators were recruited to be trained at special schools as saboteurs, espionage agents and wireless operators. The plan was to have them stay behind once the Germans retreated, locate the caches and undertake sabotage on Allied lines of communication. There were stay-behind groups in Italy. Some were members of the Decima Flotilla MAS, also known as X MAS, a naval assault group which had launched numerous attacks on Allied shipping between 1940 and 1943. After the Italian Armistice in September 1943, Prince Valerio Borghese, the X MAS Commander called by some 'The Black Prince', collaborated with the Germans and in 1944 began to set up stay-behind groups in Turin, Genoa, Bologna, Milan and Venice. In April 1945, Mario Rossi, the leader of these stay-behind groups, was captured by the Allies and interrogated. Over the following months, members of the X MAS stay-behind groups were arrested and interrogated. Their interrogation reports, deposited after the war in the National Archives in Kew, shed light on the organisation, its administrators, its training schools, the students, the syllabus, their equipment and in some cases their missions. Bernard O'Connor's documentary history provides first-hand evidence of the X MAS stay-behind organisation and the day-to-day dealings of British and American counter-intelligence officers whose job it was to identify threats to the security of Allied forces in Italy, apprehend those responsible, locate and confiscate their equipment, interrogate the agents and learn as much as they could about the enemy's plans and their organisation.

During the Second World War, officers in the British and American Intelligence agencies reported links with the Vatican in Rome. This documentary history uses first-hand evidence, telegrams, letters, memoranda and photographs found in files deposited in the National Archives in Kew, London, It investigates the links between the representatives of the Special Operation Executive (SOE), Britain's subversive intelligence agency, and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), its American equivalent, in Berne, Switzerland, and Adriano Olivetti, an Italian industrialist. He wanted Allied help in coordinating the coup against dictator Benito Mussolini's Fascist government with the Allies' invasion plans. When Pierre Osterreith, a lieutenant in the Belgian Army, fled to Britain in 1941, he was recruited by the British Political Warfare Executive (PWE), a clandestine organisation dedicated to producing and disseminating white and black propaganda. Trained by SOE and briefed by PWE, he was parachuted into Belgium in August 1942 to contact leading Belgian industrialists. When a message reached London that he had been captured on landing and imprisoned by the Germans, members of his family planned to ask the Vatican to plead for his release. Mr and Mrs Weiss, Austrian refugees in Britain, were recruited by the SOE and trained for a mission in Italy where they were to contact leading figures in the Vatican and try to encourage support for a Catholic resistance organisation in Austria. Monseigneur Hugh O'Flaherty, an Irish official in the Vatican, organised the Rome Escape Line, a group financed by MI9, part of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). Set up to train escape and evasion methods to members of the Armed Forces, it financed those who helped escaped prisoners of war, downed pilots, air crew and other refugees fleeing Nazi persecution to reach Britain. Helen Ten Cate Brouwer was a German-trained wireless operator from Belgium who handed herself in to the Allies in Rome and provided details of Nazi activities in Italy and the Vatican. Cesare de Amicis was a German-trained Italian saboteur, the head of the 'Rome Sabotage Gang' which was captured by the Americans and interrogated. His report sheds light on the Abwehr, Germany's military intelligence service, their plans to attack the Allies' supply lines, and their intrigues in the Vatican.

Bernard O'Connor's 'There's life in Neenton, Shropshire' is a selection of articles from the British Newspaper Archive from 1771 to the present day. It provides insight into the social, economic, religious and political life of the village - births, marriages, illnesses, accidents, deaths, inquests, agriculture, sales, auctions, crime, punishment, pubs, alcohol, sport and more.