The Meinertzhagen Mystery
Subtitle: The Life and Legend of a Colossal Fraud
Publisher: Potomac Books Inc.
Published: January 30, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 376
ISBN-13: 9781597970419
Subjects: Biography: general; Espionage & secret services; European history: Second World War; Soldiers; Historical - General; Biography/Autobiography; Biography & Autobiography; Biography / Autobiography; Scientists - General; Europe; United Kingdom, Great Britain; Middle East - General; Military; Biography & Autobiography / Military; Spies; Birds & Birdwatching - General; Biography; Great Britain; Ornithologists
Description: Tall, handsome, charming, Col. Richard Meinertzhangen was an acclaimed British war hero, a secret agent, and a dean of international ornithology. His exploits inspired three biographies, his life has been the basis for movies, and Jerusalem dedicated a city square to his memory. Meinertzhagen was trusted by Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George, Chaim Weizmann, David Ben Gurion, T. E. Lawrence, Elspeth Huxley, and a great many others. But he bamboozled them all. Meinertzhagen was a fraud. Many of the adventures recorded in his celebrated diaries were imaginary, including a meeting with Hitler while he had a loaded pistol in his pocket, an attempt to rescue the Russian royal family in 1918, and a shoot-out with Arabs in Haifa when he was seventy years old. While he truly was a key player in Middle Eastern events after World War I and represented Zionism's interests in negotiations with Germany in the 1930, he also set up Nazi front organizations in England, committed a half-century of major and costly scientific fraud, and may have murdered his wife to boot.