by John Keegan
37. Ibid., pp. 177–79.
38. Ibid., p. 183.
39. Hinsley et al., vol. 3, part 1, p. 360.
40. Private information, Professor D. C. Watt.
41. D. Irving, The Virus House, London, 1967, passim.
EPILOGUE: MILITARY INTELLIGENCE SINCE 1945
1. N. West, The Secret War for the Falklands, London, 1997, pp. 20, 37–38.
2. A. Finlan, “British Special Forces and the Falklands Conflict,” in Defence and Security Analysis, December 2002, pp. 319, 332.
3. West, p. 144.
4. Ibid., pp. 145–47.
5. Finlan, p. 826.
6. M. Hastings and S. Jenkins, The Battle for the Falklands, London, 1983, p. 316.
CONCLUSION: THE VALUE OF MILITARY INTELLIGENCE
1. The Ultra secret was first revealed, in a book of that title written by F. W. Winterbotham, in 1974. Winterbotham, a regular air force officer, had been head of the air section of MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service, or SIS) and moved to Bletchley in 1939. The reason he was given permission to publish the book—which contains serious inaccuracies—is that there were official British fears of the story coming out anyhow; articles were appearing in Poland, which initiated the attack on Enigma before 1939, describing the Polish success; it was suspected that disclosures about Bletchley would shortly follow.
2. Reinhard Gehlen achieved fame as head of Foreign Armies East, branch 12 of the German General Staff, which collected intelligence about the Red Army. Since Hitler, however, disliked inconvenient facts, and Gehlen failed to insist on his accepting them, he cannot be reckoned a great intelligence officer, though he was a very efficient one. After 1945 the “Gehlen organisation” was adopted by the Americans as a source of Cold War intelligence. It later evolved into West Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the Bundersnachrichtendienst.
Bacler d’Albe achieved fame as intelligence officer to Napoleon, but Bonaparte, like Wellington, usually acted as his own intelligence officer. He travelled with a compact filing-cabinet of essential information, cleverly constructed to display a summary of the contents on the doors of each of its compartments. For Gehlen, see D. Kahn, Hitler’s Spies, New York, 1978.
3. See A. Boyle, The Climate of Treason, Five Who Spied for Russia, London, 1979. Now somewhat outdated factually, it continues to provide the best description of the university traitors’ disposition.
4. See J. Lunt, Imperial Sunset, Frontier Soldiering in the 20th Century, London, 1981, for such exotic forces as the Iraq Levies, the Hadrami Bedouin Legion and the Somaliland Scouts. Histories of the Indian army are many but an interesting modern one is by General S. Menezes, Fidelity and Honour, New Delhi 1993. General Menezes served in the Indian Army both before and after independence.
5. See A. Clayton, France, Soldiers and Africa, London, 1988.
6. See M. Binney, The Women Who Lived for Danger, London, 2002.
7. See J. Horne and A. Kramer, German Atrocities 1914, New Haven and London, 2001, Appendix 1.
8. See R., Kipling, The Complete Stalky & Co, London, 1929. “ ‘The surprises will begin when there is a really big row on . . . Just imagine Stalky let loose on the south side of Europe with a sufficiency of Sikhs and a reasonable prospect of loot.’ “ Stalky was modelled on Kipling’s schoolfellow Dunsterville, who as a First World War general led a sensational intervention into the Caucasus. See Horne and Kramer, Appendix 1.
9. D. Kahn, Seizing the Enigma, London, 1991, p. 91.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sources for the case studies which form the substance of this book will be found in the chapter notes. This bibliography includes some of the more general works on intelligence which the author has found of particular value and in which he has confidence. It does not include many books often cited in bibliographies of “intelligence” which are too often sensationalist or mere compendia of intelligence gossip or speculation. It excludes most biographies and autobiographies of intelligence agents or their controllers, which are rarely reliable.
Beesly, Patrick. Very Special Intelligence: The Story of the Admiralty’s Operational Intelligence Centre 1939–45. London, 1977. The author worked in the OIC during the Second World War and this scholarly and reliable book conveys a valuable picture of its methods and achievements. It does not cover operations in the Mediterranean or Pacific.
Bennett, Ralph. Ultra in the West: The Normandy Campaign, 1944–5. London, 1979; and Ultra and Mediterranean Strategy. London, 1989. The author, a young Cambridge history graduate, worked at Bletchley in Hut 3, which interpreted deciphered German army and air force intercepts, from February 1941 until the end of the war. He sets out to demonstrate in detail how the intercepts influenced the conduct of operations, a daunting task in which he largely succeeds. His book is one of the most original and valuable on “the Ultra secret.” After the war he returned to Cambridge where he eventually became President of Magdalene College.
Boyle, Andrew. The Climate of Treason: Five Who Spied For Russia. London, 1979. A professional writer rather than historian, Boyle deserves attention because of his exceptional ability to portray individual character and social atmosphere. His portrait of the “Cambridge spies,” Burgess, McClean and Philby particularly, are highly convincing, as is his evocation of the ethos of their public and private lives. Though now a little dated, and inaccurate in places, The Climate of Treason is indispensable to anyone seeking to understand the attraction of Soviet Communism to the university-educated in Britain before and after the Second World War.
Calvocoressi, Peter. Top Secret Ultra. London, 1980. Calvocoressi, a member of the long-established Greek community in Britain, educated at Eton and Oxford, spent 1940–45 as a Royal Air Force officer at Bletchley. His memoir is especially valuable for the picture it provides of how Bletchley worked day-to-day.
Chapman, Guy. The Dreyfus Trials. New York, 1972. A meticulous study, by a professional historian, of the most notorious intelligence scandal of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The long drawn-out investigation of a suspected traitor remains an object lesson in how not to conduct counter-espionage proceedings. Professor Chapman was a historian of France rather than of the intelligence world but his work is of great value to intelligence organisations everywhere.
Clark, Ronald. The Man Who Broke Purple: The Life of the World’s Greatest Cryptologist Colonel William F. Friedman. London, 1977. Friedman has been called by David Kahn, himself the leading historian of intelligence, “the world’s greatest cryptologist.” Certainly his achievement in breaking the Japanese machine cipher, called PURPLE by the Americans, just before the outbreak of the Second World War, was one of the greatest cryptanalytic feats of all time. Friedman suffered a severe nervous breakdown in the aftermath but recovered sufficiently to become chief technical consultant to the National Security Agency, the principal code and cipher service of the United States.
Clayton, Aileen. The Enemy Is Listening. London, 1980. Clayton, a Women’s Auxiliary Air Force officer, worked during the Second World War in the Middle Eastern Y Service, the organisation that intercepted and interpreted “low level” transmissions on the battlefield. Y is a neglected subject, despite its great importance, and her book is one of the few studies of it.
Cruickshank, Charles. SOE in the Far East. Oxford, 1983; and SOE in Scandinavia. Oxford, 1986. Special Operations Executive (SOE) was the subversive organisation set up by Winston Churchill in July 1940 to “set Europe ablaze.” Branches were later formed in Scandinavia and the Far East, their work being described by the author in these semi-official histories.
Davidson, Basil. Special Operations Europe: Scenes From the Anti-Nazi War. London, 1980. Davidson served as an officer in the SOE both in its Mediterranean headquarters in Cairo and in the field in Hungary, Italy and Yugoslavia. He had strong left-wing views and was instrumental in transferring support from the royalist Cetniks in German-occupied Yugoslavia to Tito’s Communist partisans. His account illuminates how easily
the fostering of short-term “subversion” leads to the fomentation of civil war and atrocity, with deplorable long-term results.
Deakin, F. W. The Embattled Mountain. London, 1971. Deakin, later Sir William, and Warden of St. Antony’s College Oxford, was a liaison officer for the SOE with Tito’s partisans. His celebrated book is both a wonderful adventure story, in the T. E. Lawrence tradition, and a chilling account of Communist ruthlessness in widening internal conflict for post-war political advantage.
Deakin, F. W. and Richard Storry. The Case of Richard Sorge. New York, 1966. Richard Storry, a Fellow of St. Antony’s during Deakin’s wardenship, was a historian of Japan and a wartime Japanese-language intelligence officer in the Far East. Their study of the most important Soviet spy to operate inside any Axis country during the Second World War brilliantly illuminates the limited usefulness even of the best placed agent.
Foot, M. R. D. SOE in France: An Account of the Work of British Special Operations Executive in France, 1940–44. London, 1966. The official history of the Special Operations Executive in France, by an academic historian who served as a Secret Intelligence Service officer during the Second World War. It provides an extremely detailed account of the operations of all the SOE networks in France and of their political affiliations, which were complex. Despite its scholarly objectivity, it reaches conclusions which exaggerate the military contribution made by the French resistance to Anglo-American victory in France in 1944.
Garlinski, Josef. Intercept. London, 1979. Garlinski is understandably concerned to set on record the pioneering achievement of his fellow Poles in breaking into Enigma traffic before the outbreak of the Second World War and of how their work contributed to the success of Bletchley.
Giskes, Herman. London Calling North Pole. London, 1953. Giskes was the German counter-espionage officer responsible for capturing and “turning” Dutch agents of the Special Operations Executive parachuted into the German-occupied Netherlands during 1940–43. In a highly successful counter-espionage campaign, the Germans captured almost all agents as they arrived and persuaded them to transmit back to Britain at German direction. The “England game,” as the Germans called it, severely strained Dutch-British relations during the war and for some years afterwards. The episode has now been fully investigated and recounted by M. R. D. Foot in SOE in the Netherlands, London, 2002.
Handel, Michael, ed. Leaders and Intelligence. London, 1989. Handel, a professor at the U. S. Army War College, is a productive writer and editor, whose chief subject is operational intelligence. When not the principal author, he can be counted upon to assemble contributions from leading intelligence writers, such as Professor Christopher Andrew of Cambridge. All his compilations, including War, Strategy and Intelligence, London, 1989, and Intelligence and Military Operations, London, 1990, contain valuable material, bearing both upon the past and the present.
Hinsley, F. H., with E. E. Thomas, C. F. G. Ransom and R. C. Knight. British Intelligence in the Second World War: Its Influence on Strategy and Operations, Vol. 1, 1979; Vol. 2, 1981; Vol. 3, Part 1, 1984; Vol. 3, Part 2, 1988; Vol. 4. London, 1990. Hinsley’s five volumes, the official history of British intelligence in the Second World War, are the most important single publication on the subject of their subtitle: how intelligence effects decision-making in wartime. Hinsley appears to cover almost every topic in his remit, including how Enigma was broken, how Ultra worked, how British intelligence successes and failures are to be judged in comparison with those of her enemies, and how intelligence affected the outcome of the war as a whole. His work has been criticised as “by a committee for a committee”; but that is unfair. It is an achievement of the greatest value and interest.
Hinsley, F. H. and Thripp, Alan, eds. Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park, Oxford, 1993. A fascinating collection of thirty-one essays by B. P. initiates, on such varied subjects as how the watch system worked and the building of the famous huts. An essential companion to Hinsley’s official history.
Howard, Michael. British Intelligence in the Second World War. Vol. 5, Strategic Deception. London, 1990. The last volume of Hinsley’s great work, by Britain’s leading military historian of the twentieth century, is a fascinating account of British efforts to deceive the enemy, with mixed results but some success against Germany’s secret weapons campaign.
James, William. The Eyes of the Navy: A Biographical Study of Admiral Sir Reginald Hall. London, 1955. Admiral Hall, known as “Blinker” in the Royal Navy because of a nervous facial tic, was the founder of the immensely successful intelligence organisation known as O.B. 40 (Old Building Room 40), by which the Admiralty achieved complete intelligence dominance over its German equivalent during the First World War. Its achievements were later compromised by boastful disclosure of its successes, particularly in cryptanalysis, in the interwar years.
Jones, R. V. The Wizard War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939–45. London, 1978. Jones, a young scientific civil servant, came to enjoy the favour of Winston Churchill during the Battle of Britain and afterwards because of his discovery of how the Luftwaffe used radio beams to guide its bombers to British targets. The “man who broke the beams” thereafter rose ever higher in the service, eventually outfacing Lord Cherwell in the dispute over the V-weapons threat in 1944. His account of scientific intelligence is one of the war’s most valuable personal stories, though it fails to disclose why he fell into obscurity after 1945.
Kahn, David. The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing. Rev. ed. New York, 1996. Kahn’s book is a veritable encyclopaedia of cryptanalysis, superior to any other publication in the field. The original edition was published before the disclosure of the Enigma secret; the revised edition repairs the deficiency. Its great length (1,181 pages) and density will deter the casual reader but it repays the effort to persist.
Kahn, David. Hitler’s Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II. New York, 1978. The title is a misnomer. The book is a study of how the German military intelligence organisation worked in the field and is a rare example of an effort, by an expert, to relate intelligence inputs to operational outcomes.
Lewin, Ronald. Ultra Goes to War. London, 1978. Lewin’s book, published four years after Winterbotham’s Ultra Secret (1974), which first disclosed the Bletchley secret, was an attempt to correct its more serious mistakes and to set the Ultra achievement in a wider context. It remains a valuable account of the Bletchley story.
Masterman, J. C. The Double-Cross System in the Second World War. London, 1972. Masterman, an Oxford don who became Provost of Worcester College after the war, chaired the Double-Cross (XX) Committee during its course, a body dedicated to manipulating information so as to mislead the enemy. Its most important work was in deluding the Germans about the success of their secret weapons campaign during 1944–45.
McLachlan, Donald. Room 39: A Study in Naval Intelligence. London, 1968. Although published before the disclosure of the Ultra secret, and so able to refer to Bletchley only as “Station X,” this has been described as “one of the best books on intelligence ever written.” It is an account of the workings of the Naval Intelligence Division, by one of its officers, during the Second World War.
Powers, Thomas. The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA. New York, 1979. A biography of the Director of Central Intelligence, 1966–72, under Presidents Johnson and Nixon, by a Pulitzer Prize winner, which is also a history
of the CIA from its earliest years. Cool in tone and objective in approach, it
provides a wealth of information about not only intelligence procedures and operations but also about the influence of intelligence on policy and decision making.
Sweet-Escott, Bickham. Baker Street Irregular. London, 1965. Sweet-Escott, like Peter Calvocoressi, a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, held a large member of staff positions in the SOE and describes its methods and many of its personalities crisply and convincingly.
Trevor-Roper, Hugh. The Philby Affair: Espionage, Trea
son and Secret Services. London, 1968. Trevor-Roper, later Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and ennobled as Lord Dacre, knew Philby well and, though himself only a junior intelligence officer, provides a subtle and penetrative portrait of his ex-colleague. The book also includes an essay on Admiral Canais, head of the German Abwehr during the Second World War.
Tuchman, Barbara. The Zimmermann Telegram. New York, 1958. This short book made the reputation of the famous American historian. Her account of how the British Admiralty deciphered the Germans’ diplomatic traffic in 1917, so revealing their efforts to persuade Mexico to attack the United States and thus bringing about America’s entry into the First World War on the Allied side, is a masterpiece of intelligence history. Incomplete in part, it nevertheless stands the test of time.
Welchman, Gordon. The Hut Six Story. London, 1982. In 1939, Welchman was a mathematics don at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, one of the many recruited to join Bletchley Park at the outbreak of war. He proved highly successful at attacking Enigma and was instrumental in re-organising Bletchley to meet the challenge of all-out war. His book, besides being wholly authoritative, also provides the most comprehensible account of how Enigma worked and how Bletchley progressively broke it. Indispensable.
