Both Wiley

If John Waller had chosen a title like "The man who massaged the Nazis", his new book would, no doubt, have become something of an under-the-counter classic in seedy sex shops. Alternatively, if this was a work of fiction, one could just lie back -- so to speak -- and enjoy it.

But it is neither a salacious, juicy read nor a ripping fictional yarn and the reader is faced with the rather tedious task of sifting through a maze of often-rehashed facts and figures from World War II.

The story of fierce rivalry between top Nazis is now rather dated, and may owe more than a bit to the same top Nazis' post-war scramble to convince the Allies that they were always really plotting to get rid of Hitler.

The devil's doctor emerges in the unlikely shape of a middle-aged Finn, Felix Kersten, whose ability to relieve stomach aches endeared him to senior figures in the Third Reich. John Waller was an intelligence officer with the OSS (the forerunner of the CIA) in the war, but he fails to tell us much that is new in the story of the man with the "magic hands".

Anyone who appreciated Peter Seller's film, Being There, will probably warm to this story, but much of the ground has been well and truly trodden by others. Waller is not the first to have "discovered" the Kersten story -- in fact, Kersten himself wrote his post-war memoirs which were published in 1956.

The basic story is of SS chief, Heinrich Himmler, his Gestapo deputy, Walter Schellenberg, and Swedish Red Cross director, Count Bernadotte. In this well-rehearsed tale, as the war nears its end, Schellenberg urges Himmler to negotiate Germany's surrender to the Allies via Bernadotte (to avoid being overrun by the Red Army).

Despite Waller's best efforts to place Felix Kersten at centre stage in all this, Himmler's personal masseur remains on the periphery, an insignificant figure who happened to live in the shadow of the big players.

Kersten's massage services were availed of, not only by SS Reichsfuhrer Himmler, but also by a host of other Nazis -- including the boss of the German Labour Front, Robert Ley; Italy's foreign minister, Count Ciano; Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess; German foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop; and Gestapo deputy leader, Walter Schellenberg. What we never find out is why all these top fascists suffered from "chronic intestinal pain"; perhaps it was the strain of running death camps, fighting the rest of the world, or just overdosing on liverwurst and dumplings.

And if Kersten was so gifted in relieving abdominal suffering, why did he not treat Hitler? Himmler, we learn, had a secret dossier on Hitler's health, which makes it clear that the Fuhrer should have been pensioned off years earlier.

According to Waller, "Hitler rejected suggestions that he seek help in a clinic, since, for political reasons, he could not be thought to be `sick'.

"What concerned Kersten was that the secret of Hitler's illness would become widely known, triggering a chaotic struggle for power," Waller writes.

But this contradicts one of the central theses of the book -- that Himmler was secretly plotting to topple Hitler -- Waller alleges, with scant evidence, that Himmler knew about the July 1944 plot to kill Hitler at least two months beforehand. What better way to sow the seeds of dissent than to let it be known that Hitler was seriously ill? Yet, this information was deliberately hushed up.

There are some tantalising morsels in the book, yet they never seem to lead anywhere. For example, a top secret OSS analysis of Hitler's personality was declassified for the first time in 2000. Despite access to this new material, however, Waller quotes only a few lines of the report which, inexplicably, does not appear among the many appendices.

It is hard to quantify Felix Kersten's historical importance. Looking at the story objectively, one can assume that nobody would like to end up being remembered as the personal masseur of top Nazis. Thus another story emerged: that of Kersten the back-room hero who saved thousands from the death camps. And, it should be noted that this version of events is supported by some contemporaries, but not by others.

For example, Count Bernadotte never mentions Kersten in his memoirs, and the post-war Swedish government was reluctant to give him any credit either. Kersten's reputation appears to have been saved, almost accidentally, by the endeavours of a Dutch professor who was determined to find the truth.

There was also a fortuitous letter from an official of the World Jewish Congress, Norbert Masur, which shed light on a secret meeting near Berlin on April 20 1945, attended by Masur, Himmler and Kersten, which paved the way for thousands of Jews to escape Germany to neutral Sweden. There can be little doubt about Waller's claim that this was Kersten's "greatest achievement".

& Deceptions of World War II by William Breuer, will, on the other hand, appeal to readers who like cloak and dagger stuff in heavy doses. The author is a military historian with no fewer than 26 similar books to his credit. It's rather like getting on a roller coaster, so be prepared for a breathless ride as Breuer takes you through a staggering 94 short stories (most only a few pages in length) of spying, double-crossing and derring-do.

The weakness of the book is that, although it deals with an interesting and deadly serious subject, the tabloid writing style makes the stories more sensational than they are and, at times, almost fictional.

The lightweight tone may have something to do with the fact that some of the tales have been lifted from American mass-circulation magazines. Indeed, some of the short story titles are so bizarre, they could have been taken straight from the National Enquirer.

We are told, in all solemnity, that "Nazi spies visit the White House". But on closer examination, it turns out that the two agents merely joined a regular guided tour of the US president's residence, and in 1940, long before America was involved in the war.

Breuer informs his readers that in the mid-1930s Hitler instructed his spy chiefs to "flood the United States with spies", and presents this as something unusual. In fact, throughout the 1930s, German spies were active in most countries, including Ireland, amassing information that might be useful in time of war.

But amid the humdrum material are some real gems, including Urgent Mission: Disguise California. This involved the creation of a vast dummy canopy resembling (from the air) the suburb of Burbank, below which thousands of workers were building warplanes in the Lockheed aircraft plant. As the author quite rightly says: "It was hard to tell where reality ended and fantasy began", but even harder given his tabloid writing style.

Searching for an Irish angle, I thought I'd found it in wartime agent, Patrick O'Leary. Sadly, however, this turned out to be only a nom de guerre for a French agent called Albert Guerisse. Nevertheless, this book will appeal to devotees of film noir classics.