War of Shadows
Page 49
12. Moorehead, African Trilogy, 234; Beckett, Rommel, chap. 3; Fraser, Knight’s Cross, 279–280.
13. HBF B39 F8, Cable 318, December 6–8, 1941.
14. Moorehead, African Trilogy, 242–244.
15. FFP, Cable 587, Fellers to Military Intelligence Division, January 14, 1942; Beckett, Rommel, chap. 3.
16. See FDR, PSF Box 147, William J. Donovan, “Memorandum for the President,” February 2, 1942, in which Donovan’s “man in Cairo” reports on an early-January conversation with Admiral Andrew Cunningham. Despite the intense rivalry between the Military Intelligence Division and William Donovan’s Office of the Coordination of Information, Fellers appears to have reported to both.
17. DEFE 3/745, messages from November 23–25, 1941; M. van Creveld, “Rommel’s Supply Problem, 1941–42,” RUSI 119, no. 3 (1974): 69. Accounts of these battles written after the Ultra secret became known may have exaggerated the intelligence available to Auchinleck from German army Enigma. HW 14/30, “Appreciation of Present Position of ‘E,’” March 10, 1942, Appendix II, says the army group of keys labeled Chaffinch was broken fifteen days in November but none in the following months. Jackson, Solving, chap. 21, states that Hut 6 ceased breaking the army Enigma keys for North Africa on November 23, 1941. Many of the breaks for earlier dates were based on captured materials, so the messages were decoded at too great a delay to have operational value.
18. Liddell Hart, Rommel Papers, 168.
19. Liddell Hart, Rommel Papers, 175.
20. HBF B39 F8, Cable 406, December 18, 1941; Cable 419, December 22, 1941.
21. Moorehead, African Trilogy, 258.
22. Liddell Hart, Rommel Papers, 178.
23. HBF B39 F8, Cable 260, November 27, 1941.
24. DFP XIII:385, Papen to Foreign Ministry, October 6, 1941; FO 371/63073, “Telegram from Angora No. 1415 of 10th November 1941,” from a dossier of German documents, captured at the end of the war, on Egyptian contacts with the Axis.
25. Smith, FDR, chap. 23.
26. Kimball, Churchill and Roosevelt, 283–284; Alanbrooke, Diaries, December 8, 1941; CD, December 8–11, 1941.
27. Andrew Roberts, Masters and Commanders: The Military Geniuses Who Led the West to Victory in WWII (London: Penguin, 2009), 70–76; Alanbrooke, Diaries, January 27, 1942; Elizabeth Nell, Mr. Churchill’s Secretary (New York: Coward-McCann, 1958), 72–73.
28. Maurice Matloff and Edwin M. Snell, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare: 1941–1942 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1999), 102–105; Alanbrooke, Diaries, January 14, 1942, February 4, 1942, February 9, 1942, April 9, 1942; Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943 (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), 11–14; Roberts, Masters, 68–84, 123, 139; Smith, FDR, chap. 23. Contrasting portrayals of the abilities of US and British leaders and generals in histories written decades later are so striking, it seems the historians are still fighting the War of 1812.
29. Menzies’s text: HW 1/362, January 22, 1942. Churchill’s typed text: CA CHAR 20/52/17-18. Text received by Roosevelt: Louis Kruh, “British-American Cryptanalytic Cooperation and an Unprecedented Admission by Winston Churchill,” Cryptologia 13, no. 2 (1989): 126–127. Kruh does not give an archival reference.
30. Holburn had been stationed before the war in Berlin and afterward in Moscow and had been embedded with the Nationalist army during the Spanish Civil War. If there was anything unimpressive in his record, it was falling for Nationalist propaganda that Guernica was torched by the Republicans, not bombed.
31. Lampson diary, January 24, 1942, January 21, 1942.
32. Moorehead, African Trilogy, 259–269; Warner, Auchinleck, 131–133; Fraser, Knight’s Cross, 298–299; HBF B39 F8, Cable 468, December 31, 1941; FFP, Cable 503, January 3, 1942; Cable 616, Fellers to Military Intelligence Division, January 17, 1942.
33. Liddell Hart, Rommel Papers, 179–181.
34. Fraser, Knight’s Cross, 292–293, 299–302; Janusz Piekalkiewicz, Rommel and the Secret War in North Africa, 1941–1943 (West Chester, PA: Schiffer Military History, 1992), 102, 110.
35. Almasy, With Rommel’s Army, 57–65.
36. WO 208/1561, Security Summary Middle East No. 11, January 5, 1942.
37. MLD, January 22, 1941, January 29, 1941; Cooper, Cairo, 162.
38. The main sources for the account that follows are MLD entries from January 5 to February 5, 1942, Lampson’s cables in FO 371/31567 from February 4 to February 10, 1942, and his report on political events in Egypt, March 12, 1942, in FO 403/466. Other sources are noted below.
39. Al Aharam, January 25, 1942.
40. CUOH, Laszlo Pathy, 1976, 21.
41. Walter Monckton had been legal adviser to Edward VIII. Andrew Walker, “Profile: Walter Monckton,” BBC, January 29, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2702371.stm (accessed June 12, 2017).
42. Wichhart, “Intervention,” 173; FFP, Cable 778, Part 3, February 8, 1942; Diana Cooper, Trumpets from the Steep (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1960), 149.
43. FFP, Cable 778, Part 3, February 8, 1942.
44. Cooper, Trumpets, 150.
45. Mohi El Din, Memories, 16; FO 371/31567, Lampson to Foreign Office, February 10, 1942; FO 141/841, Jenkins to Tomlyn, February 9, 1942, and attached agents’ reports. Jenkins was the district security officer, the MI5 representative in Egypt. One of his informants put the number of officers present at “about 1,000.”
46. Sadat, Identity, 32.
47. FFP, Cable 778, Part 3, February 8, 1942.
48. CD, February 7, 1942.
49. Barrie Pitt, The Crucible of War 2: Auchinleck’s Command (London: Macmillan, 1986), 167–168; cf. van Creveld, Supplying War, 193.
50. Weinberg, World at Arms, chap. 6.
51. The main sources for Almasy’s journey are Gross, Rolke, and Zboray, Salam, including primary sources first published there: Almasy’s diary for the operation, Sandstede’s memoir-diary, and decrypted Abwehr messages from HW 19. Also KV/2/1467, 1st Consolidated Report on Activities of a) Eppler, Johann (alias Hussein Gaafar) b) Sandstede, Heinrich Gerd (alias Peter Muncaster), July 29, 1941; Kelly, Lost Oasis, 192–219; Almasy, With Rommel’s Army, 96–109. Other sources are noted below.
52. Batey, Dilly, chap. 10.
53. “Jean Howard: Wartime Intelligence Officer,” Times (London), July 9, 2007, www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jean-howard-wartime-intelligence-officer-mgmjh7vj5mp (accessed August 8, 2019).
54. Gross, Rolke, and Zboray, Salam, 294; HW 19/30, ISOS 28341, via Gross, Rolke, and Zboray, Salam, 373; Kelly, Lost Oasis, 202.
ACT III. CHAPTER 1. THE WOMAN OF DAUNTING INTELLIGENCE
1. Copies of CX/MSS/919/T4 exist in HW 5/84 and HW 1/521. The version in the latter file is the one that MI6 director Stewart Menzies gave to Winston Churchill and shows Churchill’s markings in red ink. However, some of the time markings and the notation of the Enigma key in which the message was sent appear only in the HW 5/84 version. These differences are typical of HW 1 and HW 5 files. Sources for the workings of Hut 6 and 3 in spring 1942 include HW 77/12, Hut 6 Weekly Reports; Calvocoressi, Top Secret, 54–57; Welchman, Hut Six, 128–131, 145–148; Ralph Bennett, “The Duty Officer, Hut 3,” in Hinsley and Stripp, Codebreakers, 30–40; Erskine, “Breaking Air Force and Army Enigma,” 57.
2. HW 14/46, “Following from CSS,” February 19, 1942. Originally, it appears, the diplomatic section was to remain in the countryside at Wavendon.
3. Photos of Travis: Greenberg, Welchman, plate after 142; “Sir Edward Wilfrid Harry Travis,” National Portrait Gallery, November 21, 1946, www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitZoom/mw110783/Sir-Edward-Wilfrid-Harry-Travis (accessed August 20, 2019).
4. Welchman, Hut Six, 121, 127.
5. HW 14/36, “Secrecy,” filed with material from early May 1942.
6. Russell-Jones, My Secret Life, 80–81, 137–144.
7. HW 50/22, “Security: Personnel, Vetting, Breaches, Official Secrets Act,” 2, notation for May 1, 1943.
9. Aleric W. Rowntree, The Hungry Ones (unpublished memoir, undated), IWM, Document 11910, 56–96; Churchill, Hinge of Fate, 260–270; Moorehead, African Trilogy, 331–336.
10. Churchill, Hinge of Fate, 261–262. The quoted words are Churchill’s paraphrase of Auchinleck.
11. HW 1/537, CX/MSS/886/T18, April 14, 1942, plus response, unsigned but certainly from Menzies, and subsequent response from RAF HQ in Cairo. C. J. Jenner implies that the information in this cable came from the same source as the other leaked information from Cairo. While the timing makes this possible, I have not found proof that is the case in the form of a cable from the source or the language of the German message. C. J. Jenner, “Turning the Hinge of Fate: Good Source and the UK-U.S. Intelligence Alliance, 1940–1942,” Diplomatic History 32, no. 8 (2008): 195–196.
12. US NARA, RG 319, Entry 47, 270/5/18/7, Box 379, File 350.07–350.09, Report 6000, May 8, 1942, “Diary of Colonel Fry’s Visit to British Armored Units in the Western Desert.”
13. US NARA, RG 319, Entry 47, 270/5/13/5, Box 125, File 315–452.1, Fellers to Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, “Organizational Chart,” January 21, 1942; A. Khairi, “Places Occupied by the United States Mission in Cairo (Historical),” July 14, 1988. My thanks to the US embassy in Cairo for this document.
14. “Egypt-Libya: The U.S. Army Campaign of World War II.” Last updated October 3, 2003. U.S. Army Center of Military History. https://history.army.mil/brochures/egypt/egypt.htm (accessed May 8, 2015). Associated Press reported Maxwell’s arrival in Cairo on November 22, 1941. See “American Military Mission in Cairo,” Ellensburg Daily Record, November 22, 1941, 1, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=860&dat=19411122&id=pbo0AAAAIBAJ&sjid=Q4MFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4735,3636331&hl=en (accessed April 28, 2016). Maxwell’s radiograms carried Fellers’s numbering and were often signed by Fellers. See, e.g., FDR, Henry L. Hopkins Papers, Box 139, Egypt file.
15. FDR, Map Room, Box 45, Army Dispatches, April 7–15, 1942, Cable 963, April 11, 1942. On Fellers’s official status as US liaison officer to the Middle East Command, see WO 201/2158.
16. FFP, Cable 987, April 22–25, 1942; Cable 1018, May 5, 1942; Cable 1080, May 30, 1942; HBF, Declassified files HIA-R 5C-11-714-9, Fellers Report 2437, May 13, 1942.
17. Roberts, Masters, 120–196, passim.
18. Cole C. Kingseed, “Eisenhower and MacArthur: Toil, Trouble and Turbulence in the Philippines,” Association of the United States Army, January 13, 2015, www.ausa.org/articles/eisenhower-and-macarthur-toil-trouble-and-turbulence-philippines (accessed November 12, 2019); Ranfurly, To War, November 26, 1943. Fellers’s daughter, Nancy Finch, in a letter describing an unpublished biography of her father that she had written, wrote that Fellers was the “only witness” to the falling out between Eisenhower and MacArthur. HBF B45 F12. The archive does not contain Finch’s manuscript.
19. HBF, Declassified files HIA-R 5C-7-553-3, Marshall to Fellers, Cable 875, June 6, 1942.
20. Interviews and correspondence, Swinhoe, Flemons, Hodsdon, Downes, Wiggin.
21. HW 50/22, “W/T Security and Deception”; “Security Allied Cyphers,” Section D, “The Enemy Naval Y Service”; HW 43/11, Frank Birch, GC&CS Naval Sigint, vol. 2: The Organization and Evolution of British Naval Sigint, 141; US NARA, RG 457 HCC, Box 92, V. Cole et al., GC&CS Air and Military History, vol. 11: Special Studies, 232–233. An appendix to the last of these works, on page 286, lists the Kesselring message of April 24, CX/MSS/919/T4, as the first of a series of German signal intelligence successes. The list includes serial numbers for two messages that would appear to be earlier: CX/MSS/853/T11 and CX/MSS/853/T20. In fact, the numbers were miscopied when this history was written after the war. The correct numbers are CX/MSS/993/T11 and CX/MSS/953/T20.
22. Copies of CX/MSS/919/T4 exist in HW 5/86 and HW 1/537. The former version includes handwritten notations of when the intercept came in and what Enigma key was used. The latter version went to Churchill; he made no notations.
23. HW 50/22, “Security: Sigint Dissemination and Breaches of Security (Ultra Regulations),” notation for April 23, 1942.
24. Welchman, Hut Six, 123–124.
25. HW 14/30, “Appreciation of the Present Position of ‘E,’” March 10, 1942; HW 14/32, “Classification of Headings Under Which MSS Information Is Obtained,” filed for last third of March 1942.
26. Jackson, Solving, chap. 21; HW 14/36, “Proportion of Bombe Time Spent on Various Colours for April, 1942,” May 3, 1942; HW 77/12, Hut 6 weekly report for week ending May 2, 1942.
27. Liddell Hart, Rommel Papers, 138–139.
28. Patrick Bernhard, “Behind the Battle Lines: Italian Atrocities and the Persecution of Arabs, Berbers and Jews in North Africa During World War II,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 26, no. 3 (winter 2012): 425–446; Patrick Bernhard, “Guerre et violences en Afrique du Nord,” in La guerre du desert, 1940–1943, ed. David Reynolds, Olivier Wieviorka, and Nicola Labanca (Paris: Perrin, 2019), 181–220.
29. Sources on deportation of the Jews of Cyrenaica include Esther Eran, “Redifat Yehudei Luv (Kefi Shehi Mishtakefet Bedivuhei Hakonsulia Hagermanit Betripoli),” Yalkut Moreshet 33 (June 1982): 153–156; Rachel Simon, “Yehudei Luv Al Saf Shoah,” Peamim 28 (5746 [1986]): 44–77; Abramski-Bligh, Pinkas Hakehillot, 87–92, 114–121, 131–136, 198–201; Roumani, Jews of Libya, 28–35; and oral histories from the YVA testimony collection, including that of Rahamim Bukra, 1984, file 8464.
30. HW 14/46, “Report by Lt. Colonel J. H. Tiltman on His Visit to North America, March and April 1942”; Friedman to Tiltman, May 13, 1942; NSA OH 07-78 Tiltman Oral History; Brigadier John Tiltman, 35–40. On breaking JN-25, see Budiansky, Battle of Wits, passim.
31. HW 14/36, CBME to Denniston, May 6, 1942; Denniston to Jacob, May 8, 1942.
32. Zerubavel Gilad, ed. Magen Beseter (Jerusalem: Jewish Agency, 5712 [1951–1952]), 177–178; “Eliahu Ernst Gottlieb,” Irgun Hahagana, www.irgon-haagana.co.il/info/n_show.aspx?id=24290 (accessed August 25, 2019).
33. Sources on Buck and the SIG include WO 201/727, Haselden to Graham, April 1942; WO 201/732, “Transport for Special Interrogation Group,” April 1, 1942; WO 416/45/1, “Buck, Herbert Cecil”; “Maurice Tiefenbrunner,” Telegraph, August 2, 2013, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10219109/Maurice-Tiefenbrunner.html (accessed June 25, 2017); John Sadler, Operation Agreement: Jewish Commandos and the Raid on Tobruk (Oxford, UK: Osprey, 2016), chap. 1, iBook.
34. FDR, Map Room, Box 44, Army Dispatches, From M/A Cairo, March 6, 1942.
35. Warner, Auchinleck, 163–174; Churchill, Hinge of Fate, 277–278.
36. WO 201/202, 201/227; Gelber, Matzadah, 48–51. Trenches, emplacements, and tank barriers on the Carmel remained intact as of August 2017.
37. Moshe Sharett, Ma’avak Medini 1942: Yanuar–Mai—Kovevetz Ne’umim Umismakhim (Political Struggle 1942: January–May—an Anthology of Speeches and Documents), ed. Shifra Kolat (Tel Aviv: Society to Commemorate Moshe Sharett, 2009), 441–463.
38. YTA 15-46/169/4/14, Yisrael Galili to Tziporah Galili, March 23, 1942.
39. Haim Gouri, interview, May 6, 2015.
40. YTA 15-46/169/4/14, Yisrael Galili to Tziporah Galili, March 20, 1942; HS 7/266, SOE War Diary, July 1942, 36–38.
41. Brenner, Ium Haplishah, 10, gives the date as April 26. Sources on the Mishmar Ha’emek camp include YTA 12/3/132/2, Abba Eban OH, February 15, 1960; Gouri interview; Stephen Russell Cox, “Britain and the Origin of Israeli Special Operations: SOE and PALMACH During the Second World War,” Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict 8, no. 1 (2015): 70–73; Richard Clogg, “Nicholas Hammond,” Guardian, April 5, 2001, www.theguardian.com/news/2001/apr/05/guardianobituaries1 (accessed August 28, 2019); David Armstrong, At Close Quarters: SOE Close Combat Pistol Instructor Colonel Hector Grant-Taylor (Stroud, UK: Fonthill, 2013), chap. 5, iBook; Yaakov Markovitzki, Hayehidot Hayevashtiot Hameyuhadot Shel Hapalmah
(Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 1989), 60–64. The formative role of the Palmah in the lives of many of Israel’s founders created an almost instant mythology around the Mishmar Ha’emek camp and an extensive nostalgic literature. The loss of the Palmah’s early records and of a large portion of the SOE’s records has impeded efforts for an account based on contemporary documents.
42. HS 7/266, SOE War Diary, July 1942, 36; August 1942, 116. Possibly explaining the discrepancy, Galili wrote in advance that 150 Palmah fighters would be mobilized full-time by the SOE, and another 250 would be reservists training for a week a month. YTA 15-46/169/4/14, Yisrael Galili, March 20, 1942. The numbers 150 and 400 likewise appear in a memorandum by Palmah commander Yitzhak Sadeh from June 15, 1942: Brenner, Ium Haplishah, 90.
43. YTA 12/3/132/2, Abba Eban OH, February 15, 1960; Gouri interview; Abba Eban, Personal Witness: Israel Through My Eyes (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1992), 30–43; HS 9/466/6, Eban, Major Aubrey S. (Mr. Abba Eban) personnel file; HS 7/234, SOE War Diary, June 1942, 4239; KV 2/3860/3 Eban, Aubrey Solomon—MI5 file.
44. YTA 15-46/169/4/14, Yisrael Galili, March 23, 1942; Gelber, Matzadah, 50–54. On pilgrimages to Masada and the site’s role in memory of 1942, see Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1995), 62–75, 119–127.
45. For later testimony that the “Northern Plan” or “Tobruk on the Carmel” was an operational plan, see Brenner, Ium Haplishah, 145–160. Gelber (Matzadah, 50–56) convincingly shows that this testimony is misleading and the proposal was never more than theoretical.
46. HW 5/87, CX/MSS/945/T8, CX/MSS/945/T3.
47. On inaccurate German intelligence on the British order of battle, see US NARA, RG 457 HCC, Box 92, V. Cole et al., GC&CS Air and Military History, 11: 231–242. On Thirteenth Corps, see, e.g., FFP, Cable 999, Part 4, April 28, 1942.
48. HW 5/89, CX/MSS/968/T15. The German message was sent on May 9, 1942; the decrypt is dated May 11.
49. Cf. HW 1/642, where Menzies explicitly avoids informing Churchill of a related problem until he has answers.