War of Shadows

by Gershom Gorenberg

  32. MECA GB155–0185, Longrigg papers, Occupied Enemy Territory Administration, April 3, 1941; Abramski-Bligh, Pinkas Hakehillot, 118; Moorehead, African Trilogy, 108.

  33. Yacov Haggiag-Liluf, Yehudei Luv Bashoah (Or Yehudah, Israel: Irgun Olami Shel Yehudim Yotzei Luv, 2012), 140–141.

  34. Ranfurly. To War, February 10, 1941.

  35. HBF B39 F8, Fellers to War Department via State Department, Cable 1815, February 8, 1941.

  ACT II. CHAPTER 4. HALF-SHARED SECRETS

  1. Ranfurly, To War, March 11, 1941; “Lend Lease Act,” March 11, 1941, https://loveman.sdsu.edu/docs/1941LendLeaseAct.pdf (accessed June 12, 2019).

  2. Weinberg, World at Arms, chap. 4; Smith, FDR, chap. 22.

  3. “Our Aid and Britain’s Need,” New York Times, January 26, 1941, Section 4, 1.

  4. FO 1093/308, Cable 3154, Butler to Hopkinson, December 18, 1940, identifies the two expected US Army representatives in garbled form as “Lt. Col. Freeman and Lt. Col. Rosen.” Cf. HW 14/9, DNI to Flag Officer, Commanding, 3rd Battle Squadron, Halifax, December 20, 1940. FO 1093/308, Cable 508, Halifax to Hopkinson, February 2, 1941, says that the delegation’s baggage included twelve boxes, the heaviest of which was “about 200 lbs.” This was almost certainly the replica of the Purple machine. The description of Sinkov is based on photos in US NARA, RG 457 HCC, Box 1359.

  5. David Alvarez, Secret Messages: Codebreaking and American Diplomacy, 1930–1945 (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 2000), 83–85.

  6. Prescott Currier, “My ‘Purple’ Trip to England in 1941,” Cryptologia 20, no. 3 (1996): 193–201: posthumously published text of an undated talk by Currier; Alvarez, Secret Messages, 85.

  7. Alvarez, Secret Messages, 82.

  8. FO 1093/308, Cable 2416, Butler to Hopkinson, October 25, 1940.

  9. FO 1093/308, C/5249, Menzies to Hopkinson, October 30, 1940; Cable 2914, Butler to Hopkinson, November 5, 1940.

  10. FO 1093/308, C/5392, Menzies to Beaumont-Nesbitt, November 22, 1940; C/5415, Menzies to Churchill, November 29, 1940, and proposed Draft A, initialed by Churchill. Menzies’s response about reading US codes is not in the file.

  11. Currier, “My ‘Purple’ Trip,” 196; Smith, Station X, loc. 2241.

  12. Alvarez, Secret Messages, 85.

  13. HW 1/2, C/5906, Menzies to Churchill, February 26, 1941; NCML, NSA OH 04-78, Oral History Interview with John Tiltman, November 1, 1978; 07-78, Oral History Interview with John Tiltman, December 17, 1978.

  14. HW 14/9, GC and CS Personnel, December 2, 1940.

  15. Mair Russell-Jones and Gethin Russell-Jones, My Secret Life in Hut Six: One Woman’s Experience at Bletchley Park (Oxford, UK: Lion, 2014), describes the life of the women who worked these and other machines in the decoding assembly line.

  16. NCML, NSA OH 07-78, Tiltman Oral History; Robert Louis Benson, A History of U.S. Communications Intelligence During World War II: Policy and Administration (Center for Cryptological History, National Security Agency, 1997), 19–20, www.nsa.gov/about/_files/cryptologic_heritage/publications/wwii/history_us_comms.pdf (accessed January 10, 2015); Russell-Jones, My Secret Life.

  17. Tempe Denzer, daughter of John Tiltman, interview.

  18. Biography of Russell Dudley-Smith on his personal papers, generously shared by his daughter, Lottie Milvain, and on interviews with her (November 21, 2016) and with Tempe Denzer (October 20, 2016), daughter of John Tiltman, with additional material from Lt. Cdr. Geoffrey B. Mason, RN, “Service Histories of Royal Navy Warships in World War 2: HMS Resolution,” Naval-History.net, www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono-01BB-Resolution.htm (accessed June 7, 2018); HW 50/22, Chronology of Inter-Service Cypher Security Committee; “Security Allied Cyphers,” Section D, “The Enemy Naval ‘Y’ Service.”

  19. HW 50/22, “W/T Security and Deception”; “Interservice Cypher Security Committee and Cypher Policy Board” entry for 19.2.41; “The Enemy Naval Wire Service”; CAB 116/29, “Staff Dealing with Security of Codes and Cyphers”; ADM 223/882. The full file shows the wider history of this affair, including interception of German messages showing that the German navy’s B-Dienst cryptographic service was reading American messages in this cipher.

  20. FO 1093/314, Vickers to Cavendish-Bentinck et al., May 20, 1941; EWT to CSS, May 24, 1941.

  21. FO 1093/314, Cable 518, Cadogan to Hoare, March 29, 1941; Hoare to Foreign Office, April 2, 1941; Cadogan to Johnson, April 7, 1941, with handwritten approval from C, April 5, 1941. Cf. US NARA, RG 457, Entry 9032, Box 1384, File NR 4400, “Report of Special Committee to Investigate Security of State Department Communications,” June 26, 1941.

  22. Jackson, Solving, chap. 20; Ralph Erskine, “Breaking Air Force and Army Enigma,” in Action This Day, ed. Michael Smith and Ralph Erskine (London: Bantam, 2001), 69–72; Budiansky, Battle of Wits, 186–188; Weinberg, World at Arms, chap. 4; HW 14/30, “Appreciation of Present Position of ‘E,’” March 10, 1942.

  23. Greenberg, Welchman, 125, 138–139.

  24. Liddell Hart, Rommel Papers, 98–111.

  25. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 3: The Grand Alliance (London: Cassell, 1950), 13–27, 83–97; Weinberg, World at Arms, chap. 4.

  26. HBF, B39 F8, Fellers to War Department via State Department, Cable 1822, February 24, 1941.

  27. HBF, B39 F8, Fellers to War Department via State Department, Cable 1824, March 1, 1941.

  28. Ranfurly, To War, February 17, 1941.

  29. Wavell to Churchill, March 2, 1941; Wavell to Churchill, March 27, 1941, both in Churchill, Grand Alliance, 174–179; Liddell Hart, Rommel Papers, 104.

  30. Liddell Hart, Rommel Papers, 105–111; DEFE 3/686 OL27 15:30, April 2, 1941.

  31. Liddell Hart, Rommel Papers, 109–111.

  32. Martin van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (London: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 185, citing German general staff evaluations of February 11, 1941.

  33. Liddell Hart, Rommel Papers, 111.

  34. Moorehead, African Trilogy, 139–144; Fraser, Knight’s Cross, 232–233.

  35. Ranfurly, To War, April 4, 1941, April 8, 1941.

  36. Liddell Hart, Rommel Papers, 114–119.

  37. HBF B39 F8, Fellers to War Department, Cable 1857, April 19, 1941.

  38. Fellers was still sending via the State Department on April 7. By April 14 his cables show he was sending directly to the War Department. HBF B39 F8.

  39. Van Creveld, Supplying War, 187; Liddell Hart, Rommel Papers, 133–134.

  40. War Journal of Franz Halder (Office of the Chief Counsel for War Crimes, 1948), April 23, 1941, http://ia802805.us.archive.org/31/items/HalderWarJournal/Halder%20War%20Journal.pdf (accessed June 24, 2019); Reuth, Rommel, 134–136. German air force messages paraphrased in DEFE 3/686 detail the supply crisis of Rommel’s forces, including the lack of aircraft fuel.

  41. DEFE 3/686 OL34, 04:34, April 5, 1941, OL35, 08:20, April 5, 1941.

  42. HBF, Declassified files HIA-R 5C-11-714-9.

  43. HBF, B39 F8, Cable 1861, April 19, 1941.

  44. Ranfurly, To War, April 17, 23, 28, 30 and May 2, 3, 1941; RPP, unpublished fragment marked Cairo 1940, actually describing 1941; HBF, Declassified files HIA-R 5C-7-554-2; HBF B39, F8, Cable 1868, April 23, 1941; “U.S. Flier Killed on Study of R.A.F,” New York Times, April 23, 1941, p. 9.

  45. RPP, unpublished typescript fragment from Ranfurly’s diary, marked in pencil “Cairo, May 1941.” Kirk had become ambassador in March.

  46. HW 1/3 C/6112, Menzies to Churchill, March 28, 1941, with Churchill annotation, March 29, 1941; CX/JQ/799/T7, March 28, 1941. The orders to move the divisions followed Yugoslavia’s joining the Tripartite Alliance; when Yugoslavia reversed direction, the troop movement was apparently delayed for the brief Yugoslavia campaign.

  47. Churchill, Grand Alliance, 319–323.

  48. HW 1/3, CX/JQ/923/T19, May 7, 1941.

  49. HBF B39 F8, Cable 1857, part 7, April 19, 1941.

  50. Wichhart, “Intervention,” 10
5, 122–132; Basheer M. Nafi, “The Arabs and the Axis,” Arab Studies Quarterly 19, no. 2 (1997); Norman Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), 116–117; “The Iraqi Government Committee for the Investigation of the Events of June 1 and 2, 1941,” in Stillman, Jews of Arab Lands, 405–417.

  51. DEFE 3/686 OL 261, May 9, 1941; OL 272, May 11, 1941; OL 367, May 15, 1941; OL 400, May 22, 1941.

  52. DEFE 3/687 OL 302, May 13, 1941; DEFE 3/686 OL 339, May 16, 1941; OL 341, May 16, 1941; OL 370, May 19, 1941; OL 394, May 21, 1941; HBF, Declassified files HIA-R 5C-1-519-7, Fellers, Report 9900, “Airborne Invasion of Crete,” September 8, 1941; Moorehead, African Trilogy, 155–167; Welchman, Hut Six, 129. There is a long debate on Freyberg’s handling of Crete’s defense, especially the defense of the Melame airfield. Ralph Bennett, Intelligence Investigations: How Ultra Changed History (London: Frank Cass, 1996), 195–203, argues persuasively that the charges against Freyberg are based on hindsight.

  53. On the perception that “special intelligence” had failed, see Ralph Bennett, Ultra and Mediterranean Strategy (New York: William Morrow, 1989), 51.

  54. War Journal of Franz Halder, May 28, 1941.

  55. Brenner, Ium Haplishah, 39–41; Gelber, Matzadah, 25–34.

  56. Ritter, Code Name, 172–175; KV 2/88, “Final Report on Obstlt. Fritz Adolf Ritter,” Appendix D, January 16, 1946.

  57. Kelly, Lost Oasis, 169–172; cf. FO 141/852 983/17/429, “A Report on Two Interviews with Aziz El Masri Pasha,” August 24, 1942.

  58. QDA Coll 17/10(4) [IOR/L/PS/12/2863], Cornwallis to Eden, July 29, 1941; “The Iraqi Government Committee for the Investigation of the Events of June 1 and 2, 1941” and Boyd to Driver, April 29, 1942, in Stillman, Jews of Arab Lands, 405–418. For Rabbi Yosef Haim’s rulings, see his Ben Ish Hai: Helek Hahalakhot (Jerusalem: Merkaz Hasefer, 5746 [1985–1986]).

  59. Warren F. Kimball, ed., Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1: 178–197: Roosevelt to Churchill, May 1, 1941; Churchill to Roosevelt, May 3, 1941; Roosevelt to Churchill, May 10, 1941, May 28, 1941.

  60. HBF, B39 F8, Cable 1857, part 11, April 20, 1941.

  61. Ritter, Code Name, 177–191; KV 2/88, “Final Report on Obstlt. Fritz Adolf Ritter,” January 16, 1946; HW 19/8, ISOS 6861A, June 26, 1941, via Gross, Rolke, and Zboray, Salam, 356. The account of Almasy’s argument with Ritter on the tarmac is in KV 2/1467, “Third Detailed Interrogation Report of: Eppler, Johann,” August 2, 1942. Eppler’s testimony is secondhand, based on conversations with Almasy and perhaps others, and includes a number of questionable details.

  62. Liddell Hart, Rommel Papers, 148.

  63. Churchill, Grand Alliance, 319–323. Both Churchill’s motives and Stalin’s response have been discussed in scholarly accounts too numerous to list. Weinberg’s reading in World at Arms, chap. 4, is persuasive.

  64. See Weinberg, World at Arms, chap. 4.

  ACT II. CHAPTER 5. THE LADY WHO SPIED ON SPIES

  1. CD, June 21–23, 1941.

  2. RPP, unpublished typescript fragment from Ranfurly’s diary. In pencil it is marked “1943,” but references in the text suggest that earlier dating is possible.

  3. DFP 12:350, Ettel to Ribbentrop, April 15, 1941.

  4. DFP XII:427, Ribbentrop to Ettel, April 30, 1941.

  5. DFP XIII:66, Ettel to Ribbentrop, July 3, 1941.

  6. RPP, unpublished fragment marked Cairo 1940, actually describing 1941; Ranfurly, To War, diary entries from December 1, 1940, to June 28, 1941.

  7. HS 3/192. Entitled “Anti-SO2 Dossier,” the file is devoted to scathing reports on SO2 operations in the Balkans and Middle East directed from Cairo, along with rebuttals and countercharges. As of May 2019, some sections remained redacted. Cf. Mackenzie, Secret History of SOE, 175–176. On the ship, known as the Darien, see Bauer, From Diplomacy, 193.

  8. Barry Rubin, “Anglo-American Relations in Saudi Arabia, 1941–45,” Journal of Contemporary History 14 (1979): 253–267.

  9. HS 8/266, CD to Jebb, February 14, 1941.

  10. Saul Kelly, “A Succession of Crises: SOE in the Middle East, 1940–45,” Intelligence and National Security 20, no. 1 (2005): 126.

  11. Report by Moshe Dayan on the operation in Lebanon; undated, attached to an undated letter to which he received a reply on October 29, 1941; sold at auction in 2015: “Lot #1: Moshe Dayan Archive of Signed Letters & Documents Related to the Famous Loss of His Eye,” Nate D. Sanders Auctions, natedsanders.com/moshe_dayan_archive_of_signed_letters___documents_-lot37277.aspx (accessed July 8, 2019); PMA 1/1/4, Reports on Actions of Groups 1–10, June 7, 1941; Gelber, Matzadah, 36–37.

  12. Weinberg, World at Arms, chap. 4.

  13. HS 2/192, Pollock to Wavell, “Report on SO2 Activities in Syria, Other Than Propaganda, in Connection with the Occupation by Allied Forces,” June 12, 1941.

  14. Robert Louis Benson, “SIGINT and the Holocaust,” undated NSA document, Internet Archive, https://archive.org/download/sigint_and_the_holocaust-nsa/sigint_and_the_holocaust.pdf (accessed July 10, 2019); Robert J. Hanyok, Eavesdropping on Hell: Historical Guide to Western Communications Intelligence and the Holocaust, 1939–1945 (Fort Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, NSA, 2005), 82; Budiansky, Battle of Wits, 197–200; Jackson, Solving, chap. 26.

  15. HW 1/30, “German Police,” original message August 23, 1941, decrypt August 27, 1941.

  16. “Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s Broadcast to the World About the Meeting with President Roosevelt,” ibiblio, August 24, 1941, www.ibiblio.org/pha/timeline/410824awp.html (accessed July 10, 2019).

  17. Smith, FDR, chap. 22.

  18. “Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s Broadcast to the World About the Meeting with President Roosevelt.”

  19. HW 50/22, “Official Breaches and Use of Material,” undated; Budiansky, Battle of Wits, 199–201.

  20. Cüppers, Walther Rauff, 110–142. Cüppers concludes that 400,000 to 500,000 people were murdered in gas vans. Other sources give even higher estimates. See “Gas Vans,” Yad Vashem, www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206236.pdf (accessed July 10, 2019).

  21. US NARA, RG 165/390/31/30/7, Box 749, file 2200, March 25, 1941, James T. Scott, “Fellaheen Living on Four Cents a Day”; Schewe, Siege, 178–183.

  22. Moorehead, African Trilogy, 182–200.

  23. Warner, Auchinleck, 35–38; Moorehead, African Trilogy, 222–223. Photo of Wavell and Fellers: FFP.

  24. Churchill, Grand Alliance, 153–160.

  25. Liddell Hart, Rommel Papers, 134–139, 149–151.

  26. Sebag-Montefiore, Enigma, chap. 10; McKay, Secret Life, 13–14.

  27. DEFE 3/688 OL 861, August 1, 1941; OL 888, August 6, 1941; OL 897, August 8, 1941; Bennett, Ultra and Mediterranean Strategy, 70–79.

  28. Sebag-Montefiore, Enigma, chap.11–15.

  29. R. A. Ratcliff, Delusions of Intelligence: Enigma, Ultra and the End of Secure Ciphers (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 131–135.

  30. WO 208/5520, 1st Consolidated Report on Activities of a) Eppler Johann (alias Hussein Gaafar) b) Sandstede Heinrich Gerd (alias Peter Muncaster), July 29, 1941; 5th Consolidated Report, August 23, 1941; Gross, Rolke, and Zboray, Salam, 284–287, 336–337. The latter pages are from Sandstede’s previously unpublished memoir, written in diary form but years later. The account here depends as much as possible on Sandstede’s testimony rather than Eppler’s, which is less reliable. In British documents, the spelling of Eppler’s Egyptian last name and that of his half brother sometimes appears as Gafaar. In various accounts, Sandstede’s name has also appeared as Sandstete, Sandstette, or Sandstetter.

  ACT II. CHAPTER 6. THE ORACLES SPEAK GIBBERISH

  1. HW 8/129, entries for December 3, 1941; HW 1/288, 1/290, 1/294, 1/296, 1/297, 1/298, 1/303.

  2. HW 1/298; HW 8/129, entries for December 5, 1941.

  3. Smith, FDR, chap. 23; David Kahn, The Codebreakers: Th
e Story of Secret Writing (New York: Scribner, 1996), 1–3, 44–59; Frederick D. Parker, Pearl Harbor Revisited: U.S. Navy Communications Intelligence, 1924–1941 (Fort Meade, MD: Center for Cryptological History, National Security Agency, 2013), 43–45, www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/about/cryptologic-heritage/historical-figures-publications/publications/wwii/pearl_harbor_revisited.pdf (accessed July 18, 2019).

  4. HBF B15, F7, Fellers to Kimmel, March 6, 1967.

  5. On the racial bias that led American commanders, especially those at Pearl Harbor, to underestimate the Japanese and therefore fed conspiracy theories after the fact, see Weinberg, World at Arms, chap. 4.

  6. HBF B39, F8, Cable 297, December 3, 1941; Cable 309, December 5, 1941; Cable 316, December 6, 1941; Cable 318, December 6–10, 1941; Ranfurly, To War, January 2, 1941.

  7. Special Forces, 276–283, 416–419. Cf. Liddell Hart, Rommel Papers, 156. British and German accounts of the raid predictably differ; both are based on very few surviving witnesses.

  8. Laszlo Almasy, With Rommel’s Army in Libya, trans. Gabriel Francis Horchler (Bloomington, IN: 1st Books Library, 2001), 35–39. Many of the details in Almasy’s memoir, written in Hungarian during the war, are certainly mistaken.

  9. In parallel with this raid, the nascent Special Air Service attempted to land fifty-five commandos by parachute in order to attack Axis airbases in Libya. The LRDG was to pick up the commandos after the raids. Parachuting proved a failure. The men were scattered and never carried out the raids. Twenty-one of the fifty-five made it to rendezvous points with the LRDG. This, together with the Beda Littoria raid, led to the conclusion that it was more effective to exploit the LRDG to deliver commandos. See Special Forces, 308–310.

  10. Bagnold, Sand, Wind, 136–137. Bagnold attributes the appellation “mosquito army” to Wavell.

  11. “Panzergruppe Afrika Intelligence Assessment—18 November 1941,” located and translated by Andreas Biermann, The Crusader Project, rommel sriposte.com/2013/11/19/panzergruppe-afrika-intelligence-assessment-18-november-1941 (accessed September 15, 2015); Hans-Otto Behrendt, Rommel’s Intelligence in the Desert Campaign (London: William Kimber, 1985), 99. On Seebohm, see HW 73/6.