Books: Great Improbabilities

TOTAL ESPIONAGE—Curt Riess—Putnam ($2.75).

Adolf Hitler once remarked of his hopes and methods: "The greatest improbability is the most certain." If this book had no other value, it would make that statement dangerously clear. For the Nazis, relying as always upon the moderate rationality of the world at large, have made such use of "improbabilities" as amounts to cold genius. Nowhere have they used them more brilliantly and systematically than in the art of espionage.

Witty, vain, gregarious Curt Riess is a former German journalist who went to Paris when Hitler came in, became...