This book is an English translation of Peer Henrik Hansen's Ph.D. dissertation at Roskilde University in 2008 about U.S.-Danish intelligence relations in 1943–1946. The book is based largely on his research in the U.S. National Archives at College Park, Maryland, from which he brought back around 12,000 pages of documents, most of them from the records of the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The dissertation was also published in Danish as a book with a title that translates as “When the Yankees Came to Denmark.” The English title of the book is somewhat enigmatic because it does not make immediately clear who or what is “second to none.” Is it the U.S. intelligence activities as compared presumably to British intelligence? Or is it the Danish intelligence effort in comparison with that of the other countries of Northern Europe, about which Hansen says little or nothing?
The book is not...