Intelligence in War: The Value--And Limitations--Of What the Military Can Learn About the Enemy

by John Keegan

  The Western powers may come to count themselves fortunate that, in their time of troubles during the two world wars, the central targets of intelligence-gathering, enemy communications and secret weapons were susceptible to attack by concrete methods: overhearing, decryption and visual surveillance, together with deception in kind. They have already learnt to regret the emergence of new intelligence targets that lack any concrete form: aggressive belief systems not subject to central authority, shifting alliances of dangerous malcontents, stateless migrants disloyal to any country of settlement. It is from those backgrounds that the agents of anti-Western terrorism are recruited. Their recruiting grounds, moreover, are confusingly amorphous, disguised as they are within communities of recently arrived immigrants, many of them young men without family or documented identity, often illegal border-crossers who take on protective colouring within the large groups of “paperless” drifters merely seeking to avoid the attention of the authorities.

  The United States, protected as it is by its wide oceanic frontiers and its strict and efficient border services, is certainly not impervious to terrorist penetration, as the awful events of 11 September 2001 demonstrated. The Western European states, physically contiguous to countries which hundreds of thousands of young men energetically seek to leave and constrained by their own civil rights legislation from returning illegals to their jurisdictions of origin, even if the facts can be established, are much less well defended. The security problem by which the Western European states are confronted is not only without precedent in scale or intensity but defies containment. The suspect communities grow continuously in size, the nuclei of plotters and would-be evil-doers they conceal thereby acquiring greater anonymity and freedom to prepare outrages. Financial support is not a problem, since the terrorists enjoy access to funds extracted in their countries of origin by blackmail in many forms, including straightforward protection money but also donations represented as contributions to the cause of holy war. The “war on terrorism” may be a misnomer, but it would be foolish to pretend that there is not a historic war between the “crusaders,” as Muslim fundamentalists characterise the countries which descend from the kingdoms of western Christendom, and the Islamic world. It has taken many forms over more than a thousand years, and fortunes in the conflict have ebbed and flowed. A century ago it appeared to have been settled for good in favour of the West, when the region’s technological superiority seemed to have reduced Islam to an irreformably backward and feeble condition. Allah, Muslims might say, is not mocked. Their certitude in the truth of their beliefs has driven those Muslims who see themselves as religious warriors to seek ways of waging holy war that outflank mere technology and promise to bring victory by the power of anti-materialist forces alone. Muslim fundamentalism is profoundly unintellectual; it is, by that token, opposed to everything the West understands by the idea of “intelligence.” The challenge to the West’s intelligence services is to find a way into the fundamentalist mind and to overcome it from within.

  CONCLUSION

  The Value of Military Intelligence

  WAR IS ULTIMATELY about doing, not thinking. The Macedonians beat the Persians at Gaugamela in 331 B.C. not because they took the enemy by surprise—Darius, the Persian emperor, spent the preliminaries of the battle attempting to bribe Alexander not to attack—but by the ferocity of their onslaught. The Knights of St. John saved Malta from capture by the Turks in 1565 not because they got word of their approach but by the tenacity of their defence in a five-month siege. The British and Indian troops repelled the Japanese attempt to invade India via Kohima and Imphal in 1944 not because intelligence had disclosed the enemy’s plan but by stubborn, relentless, sometimes hand-to-hand combat. The Americans took Iwo Jima in 1945 not because intelligence had revealed the lay-out of the Japanese defences—the whole tiny island was one densely fortified position—but because the U.S. Marines, at the cost of thousands of their own lives, inched their way forward from bunker to bunker. In the case of none of these famous and decisive battles did thought play much of a part in bringing victory; courage and unconsidered self-sacrifice did.

  War is not an intellectual activity but a brutally physical one. War always tends towards attrition, which is a competition in inflicting and bearing bloodshed, and the nearer attrition approaches to the extreme, the less thought counts. Nevertheless, few who make war at any level, from commander to soldier in the line of battle, seek to win by attrition. All hope for success at lesser cost. Thought offers a means of reducing the price. It may identify weaknesses in the enemy’s method of making war or in his system of defence; detailed reconnaissance of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall identified the best places to land before D-Day. It may reveal defects in his armoury or suggest countermeasures to his weapons; Britain’s espousal of radar before 1939 laid the basis for national survival during the Battle of Britain. It may give warning of the enemy’s concealed intentions or secret devices; foreknowledge played a major part in the—partial—defeat of the flying bomb, if not the V-2 rocket, in 1944. It may unveil treachery within; during the Cold War, patient if retrospective analysis of how state secrets were betrayed to Soviet Russia, and the identity of those responsible, closed a potentially fatal gap in national security. It may disclose the nature of an enemy strategy, which threatens to strangle essential lifelines of supply, as inspired thought by a single individual in 1917 revealed how the U-boat blockade of Britain could be defeated by a simple reorganisation of shipping. It may, at its most creative, unlock a whole world of enemy secrets, as Bletchley Park’s attack on the German Enigma ciphers did from 1940 onwards.

  The story of the breaking of Enigma, and of Ultra, the intelligence it yielded, together with the story of Magic, the product of the American unravelling of the Japanese ciphers, is of the highest drama and the greatest importance to our understanding of the conduct of the Second World War. Without our knowledge of Ultra and Magic, it would be impossible to write the war’s history; and, indeed, all history of the war written before 1974, when the Ultra secret was revealed for the first time, is flawed by reason of that gap.1 However restrained the claims made for the influence of Ultra in bringing eventual victory—and those made by its official historian, F. H. Hinsley, are very carefully restrained—the availability of day-to-day, sometimes hour-by-hour details of the enemy’s tactical control of his U-boat forces, for example, of the resupply of his ground forces in the Western Desert, sometimes of their deployment for action also, occasionally of strategic initiatives of the greatest regional significance, such as the plan to capture Crete by airborne descent in 1941, helped very greatly to win the war for the Allies and, as Hinsley demonstrates, materially shortened its course. The same is true of Magic in the Pacific. Moreover, in both theatres, the ability to overhear the enemy was an advantage the Allies enjoyed which—with certain exceptions—their opponents did not.

  If there is such a thing as an ideal of military intelligence, when one side was privileged to know the other’s intentions, capabilities and plan of action in place and time—how, where, what and when—while its opponent neither knew as much in return nor that his own plans were uncovered, Ultra—and Magic—occasionally met the ideal standard. The Americans before Midway were in such a position in June 1942; so were the British before the German airborne invasion of Crete in May 1941.

  Yet, as we know, the British nonetheless lost the Battle of Crete. There have been several attempts to explain why, the intelligence circumstances appearing to make defeat an impossibility. It has been suggested that General Freyberg, commanding the island, believed the airborne assault to be the prelude to a later seaborne invasion, or that he was overburdened by the risk of revealing the Ultra secret, or both; in either case, misbelief or paralysing anxiety, he failed to redeploy his troops to positions which would have made the capture of Maleme airfield, the vital ground, impossible. Neither, in fact, seems to provide a complete explanation. Freyberg did fear a seaborne invasion and he was also weighed down by
the need to keep the Ultra secret. He might, nevertheless, with the troops available, his highly capable and determined New Zealanders, have held the airfield had he impressed on the local commander, a brave man of proven fighting ability, the necessity of staying put and yielding not an inch. Instead, the local commander got the impression that it would be possible to retire, regroup and successfully counterattack next morning, giving his men a pause he thought they required. Next morning proved too late. In real time, the by then desperate Germans took advantage of a momentary weakening of the New Zealand defence to stage one of the most extreme do-or-die exploits in military history. They had already offered up to sacrifice the bulk of the Assault Regiment, by crash-landing its gliders into the waterless bed of the River Tavronitis, an attack the New Zealanders had largely blunted. On the morning of 21 May, they began to use the Ju52 aircraft carrying the 5th Mountain Division in almost the same way, landing them under fire on the airfield and ruthlessly ditching those hit on the runway. The death ride of the Ju52s should have resulted in disaster; but there was just not enough New Zealand fire, and that from too long a range, and just too much German recklessness. At enormous cost, in loss of both machines and lives, the Germans succeeded in building up a superiority of force at the decisive spot, seizing the airfield and using it as the point of departure for a battle-winning offensive.

  The events of 20–21 May 1941 in Crete demonstrate one of the most important of all truths about the role of intelligence in warfare: that however good the intelligence available before an encounter may appear to be, the outcome, given equality of force, will still be decided by the fight; and, in a fight, determination, again given equality of force, will be the paramount factor. The New Zealanders were troops of the very first quality; Rommel, their opponent in the desert, testified that they were the best soldiers he ever met, including his own. On Crete, however, they met other soldiers who preferred collective death to defeat. The men of the 7th Airborne Division and the 5th Mountain Division were in berserker mood. It was their almost mindless courage that allowed them to prevail.

  The events of 4 June 1942 at Midway provide another perspective: that, even when intelligence seems to provide the explanation of a victory, closer examination of the facts may reveal that some other factor, in that case chance, lies at the root of the matter. The Americans in 1942 were in much the same position of strategic inferiority as the British had been in 1940–41: though equipped to overhear the enemy’s secret signals, they were at a severe military disadvantage by reason of recent defeats. They had lost their battle-fleet, they had lost much territory of crucial importance, and they were outnumbered in key categories of weapon systems, particularly aircraft carriers. It was greatly to their credit that, during a period of acute parsimony in defence spending, they had nevertheless succeeded in penetrating the main Japanese naval code, JN-25A, before Pearl Harbor and had had success against the more complex JN-25B by early 1942. By a combination of interception, decoding, informed speculation about Japanese intentions and, crucially, a cunning exercise in the art of the baited signal—the false revelation that Midway was suffering a water shortage—the U.S. Pacific Fleet had, as events would show, accurately persuaded itself by May 1942 that the next stage of Japanese expansion would not be westward into the Indian Ocean or southward towards Australia but eastward, from the Japanese home islands, to seize Midway, the last American-held outpost in their proximity. Covert deployment of America’s only three Pacific-based aircraft carriers positioned the surviving American capital forces to take the approaching Japanese strike fleet, of four aircraft carriers, by surprise and achieve a victory.

  Carrier fleets, however, consist of two elements, the ships themselves and their air groups. An air group whose carrier is sunk, while it is aloft, becomes a refugee organisation, seeking to land where it may, or to ditch if no landing place offers. A carrier without its air group is no more harmful than any cargo ship. On the morning of 4 June, the Japanese carrier striking force, surprised by five out of the six squadrons of the American carrier air groups, destroyed them all. The sixth group had got lost. Its leader, almost at the limit of fuel endurance, then spotted a Japanese destroyer, which had been detached to attack an American submarine, making speed to rejoin the main force. The white streak of its wake, on the deep blue of the ocean on a perfect Pacific day, indicated the direction he and his fellow pilots should follow. They did and, being dive-bombers arriving at 12,000 feet, while the Japanese fighters of the combat air patrol had just descended to sea level to destroy the last American torpedo-aircraft attack, found a clear run to the target. Three out of the four Japanese aircraft carriers were destroyed in five minutes.

  The success of the dive-bombers made Midway a great naval victory, the greatest naval victory of all time. It was crowned later in the day by the destruction of the surviving fourth Japanese carrier. Nevertheless, it cannot be claimed that Midway was a pure intelligence victory, open and shut though the case superficially seems. The events of 4 June, up to the destruction of the fifth of the American attacking squadrons, had indeed been the outcome of decisions taken in light of an intelligence advantage; the final and decisive event, the descent of the sixth squadron on a by then defenceless Japanese carrier formation, was the result of luck. Had the U.S. submarine Nautilus not strayed into the path of the Japanese carriers, causing the detachment of the destroyer Arashi to attack it, the lost dive-bomber squadron, Bombing 6, would not have been redirected by its wake on to the target; and had Arashi lingered longer on its search, Bombing 6 would again not have known which way to go and would have had to turn back, mission unaccomplished, at the limit of its endurance.

  There are other complexities, concerning particularly failures of reporting by Japanese reconnaissance and failure of clear thinking by the Japanese high command. Had the Tone’s floatplane made an earlier and more exact report when it sighted the American task force, the Japanese carriers would have been alerted to the presence of the American carriers before their aircraft took off. Had Admiral Nagumo thought more quickly and analytically once the battle began, in particular not been distracted by the intervention of land-based aircraft from Midway, he could have initiated a much earlier attack on the American carriers, manoeuvred to a new position and avoided being caught with his flight decks cluttered with ordnance, fuel lines and fully fuelled aircraft, potential—actual, as things turned out—firebombs. Though Midway turned out to be a great American victory, in the making of which the intercept and decryption services played an essential part, it might have been exactly the opposite: a great American defeat, into which the U.S. Pacific Fleet had been drawn by the very success of its own intelligence operations.

  War is the arena of chance; furthermore, nothing in war is simple. Midway bears out the truth of both of these observations. Their truth is further borne out by the course of the German cruiser campaign in the Pacific and South Atlantic in 1914. On the face of it, von Spee, with his little fleet, should have been able to make his way back to Europe from China unscathed; he might even, by careful selection of his targets, have inflicted considerable damage on his enemies’ merchant shipping on the way. The vastness of the Pacific provided a perfect cloak for his movements; once in the Atlantic, an ocean half its size, a swift break for home, via the stormy waters of the northern seas, might have brought his ships back to German bases intact. The Etappen system, which efficiently arranged for colliers and store ships to be met at neutral harbours or remote anchorages, would have provided resupply. The ports of South America, on both coasts, teemed with German merchants and sympathisers. There promised, for von Spee and his men, the makings of a clear run home.

  All the more so because of the deficiencies of contemporary wireless telegraphy. Marconi’s invention, only thirteen years old, had achieved the success of an idea whose time had come. Cable telegraphy, after the first demonstration of its practicality in 1828, had taken decades to provide links between countries, even longer between continents. Not unt
il 1850 were Britain and France connected by an undersea cable, not until 1866 Britain and North America. Thereafter the interconnections proceeded more quickly. By 1870, Britain was connected to Africa, by 1872 to India, by 1878 to Australia and New Zealand. Nevertheless, the creation of a worldwide cable network had taken fifty years. The installation of a worldwide wireless network took only ten, but it was not perfect. There were several gaps—Australia and New Zealand, for example, did not connect with either India or Africa—and signals often had to be repeated or reinforced by cable to ensure reception. The system was also liable to interference from atmospherics, lacked directionality and was easily overheard.

  Radio did little to assist directly with the interception and destruction of von Spee’s squadron, because he was generally scrupulous about maintaining radio silence (though an intercept at Samoa on 4 October 1914, transmitted in a broken code, revealed that he was en route from the Marquesas to Easter Island). British lapses, on the other hand, helped von Spee. It was Cradock’s decision to detach Glasgow to Coronel to send a cable that disclosed the presence of his squadron in those waters and led to the battle. Indirectly, of course, the influence of radio on von Spee’s fate was malign. Had he not decided to raid the Falklands, largely for the purpose of putting out of action its wireless station, he would not have run straight into Sturdee’s hands. That was bad luck, compounded by recklessness. Had he avoided the Falklands, made his way circumspectly up the east coast of South America, picking up supplies as he went and avoiding attacks on British merchant shipping, he might have got undetected to within rapid steaming distance of home and returned to a hero’s welcome. He would have had to have luck in the final stages, to avoid the cruiser patrols off the north of Scotland, but, in the winter weather of those latitudes, he might just have done it. The German battleship Bismarck, sailing an opposite course in May 1941, got from Germany to the North Atlantic, eluding the British Home Fleet for several days, and that in the era of radar and long-range aerial reconnaissance. Moreover, real-time intelligence was then provided by an Enigma transmission in a Luftwaffe key Bletchley could read; a senior Luftwaffe officer, with a son aboard the battleship, enquired where he might expect his son to arrive. The answer was Brest, which solved the mystery of where the ship was headed and directed the chase onto her course.