One Day in August

by David O'Keefe

  From the beginning of their professional association, it was clear that Hall and Godfrey spoke the same language, sharing a common outlook and a “strange similarity of experience.”44 Both had commanded battle cruisers before becoming director; both for different reasons achieved an “anomalous sort” of independence inside the Naval Staff; both eventually shared anxieties about their respective Sea Lords, felt the adverse impact of hostility from outside the Admiralty, shouldered responsibilities, and sometimes made decisions without the help or knowledge of those in higher authority. Both, too, longed to see the return of the day when the Naval Intelligence Division had been the senior intelligence service and a “law unto itself.”45

  But the Intelligence Division Godfrey inherited was no longer the state-of-the-art organization Hall had left behind at the end of the Great War. In what some would categorize as the natural evolution of the trade, and others as an attempt to blunt the strength and influence of the senior service, most of the division’s knowledgeable staff had found new homes in other armed branches of the service, in the rapidly rising Secret Intelligence Service or in the Foreign Office.46 To Godfrey’s dismay, he no longer had aerial reconnaissance, human intelligence, and the best British naval cryptographic minds under his immediate control, as Hall once had. Even the man who had run Room 40, Admiral Sir William “Bubbles” James, had been returned to regular duty as commander-in-chief of Portsmouth.47 Realizing that Godfrey had far fewer of the “cutting-edge” intelligence sources under his direct control, Hall urged him to forge cast-iron links with rival services and the new government departments—in particular, the Government Code and Cypher School and the Foreign Office—and with foreign dignitaries, paying special attention to the then-neutral American ambassador. It was a tall order that required panache and the appropriate inside “machinery,” or network, to carry out. As Godfrey saw it, his first duty was to make preparations for war that were at once practical and imaginative—practical in the sense of putting to use the knowledge, facilities and skilled personnel available; and imaginative in the sense that his whole intelligence empire could be adapted to the needs and opportunities of war.48

  Hall’s concept of “decentralization” proved Godfrey’s saving grace—something he learned first-hand in the opening months of the war when two-thirds of his valuable time was taken up with “press investigations and post-mortems.”49 To remedy this drain on his time, he got approval from the Chief of the Naval Staff for the Sea Lords, as well as the directors of other intelligence branches, to deal directly with the heads of specific sections of his Naval Intelligence Division rather than with him. It was a smart move: as the war ramped up, his staff grew from about a handful to nearly a thousand by 1942.50 He set out to select men with the “right sort of personality and knowledge … [and] to thrust responsibility on them even if they were not quite ready for it,” on the principle that it is “only by experiencing responsibility that one can learn to be responsible.”51

  The Second World War differed vastly from the First in many respects, among them the executive direction of the war. The new war would be war by committee, where restraint would be imposed on formerly idiosyncratic policies and decision making. Godfrey, as Director of Naval Intelligence, sat on the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), a subcommittee of the chiefs of staff, along with his peers in the military and the air force.52 To his relief, he soon found that “neither the First Lord, First Sea Lord nor the Vice Chief of the Naval Staff had time to keep in touch with the DNI’s work,” allowing him a fair degree of freedom to act as he liked.53 He quickly set out to resurrect the division in the Hall tradition, hoping to “cut miles of red tape” and “get what he wanted in a few days instead of a few months.”54 He imaginatively took aggressive steps to recruit “barristers, dons, journalists and graphic designers, geologists and geographers” to work under him, “alongside R.N. hydrographs and Royal Marine majors.”55

  In this respect, Ian Fleming was the ideal personal assistant for Godfrey. He too had no use for pomposity and did not suffer from what his boss termed “very senior officer veneration.” Godfrey expected Fleming to act as his intermediary with other branches of intelligence, to sort out potentially damaging flaps over policy, and to tackle problems of a sticky or perhaps less than gentlemanly nature, such as covering up the death of French double agent Captain Pierre Lablache-Combier at the hands of British intelligence.56 As one intelligence officer later remarked, Fleming was Godfrey’s “link with an appalling range of activities inseparable from modern war; from the cracking of codes to the practice of deception, from the preparation of topographical documentaries on the areas we have been driven from and would return to we hope. He had to keep an eye on these multifarious aspects of naval intelligence and report frequently to this always demanding Admiral.”57 Godfrey was vividly aware of all that Fleming accomplished. He recorded later, as the need for naval intelligence “changes from a sluggish brook to a raging torrent, war … changes the intelligence officer from Cinderella to the Princess.”58

  That summer of 1939, with tremendous efficiency, John Godfrey wasted no time in mobilizing for the expected war. His Naval Intelligence Division quickly grew into a labyrinthine organization. Room 39 was the helm, its workload divided among more than two dozen numbered sections, each one dealing with a range of intelligence duties and located in various rooms within the ever-changing layout of the Old Admiralty Building. Sections 1, 2, 3, 4, 16 and 20 were the geographically organized “country” sections: Section 1 covered Germany, Scandinavia, the Low Countries and occupied France; Section 2, the Americas; Section 3, the Mediterranean and Africa; Section 4, the Far East; Section 16 tracked Stalin’s Soviet Union; and Section 20 hovered over unoccupied France, and portions of Africa, as well as the neutral countries—Spain, Portugal and their possessions. In addition, there were other sections: topographical intelligence, 5; the production of geographical handbooks, 6; enemy technical developments, 7; communications, 9; the security of British codes and ciphers, 10; the photographic library, 11; the intelligence summaries prepared for the chiefs of staff, the prime minister and the War Cabinet, 12; and propaganda, 19.

  Section 14 was Godfrey’s secretariat; and Section 8, the Operational Intelligence Centre (OIC), led by Lieutenant Commander Norman Denning, kept control of and disseminated a vast range of intelligence, from sightings of ships and aircraft from paid observers to information derived from captured documents and prisoners of war. Located in the claustrophobic, dungeon-like atmosphere of the Citadel—the concrete, brown bunker awkwardly attached to the Old Admiralty Building—the OIC handled the most vital of all intelligence traffic: Ultra—Signals Intelligence, or “Special Intelligence” as the navy also called it. Here, via a specifically dedicated underground cable from the Naval Section at Bletchley Park, staff kept their fingers on the pulse of the war at sea, tracking movements of deadly U-boat wolf packs, German raiders, and their super-battleships the Bismarck and the Admiral Von Tirpitz.

  Despite weekly staff meetings and daily conferences of the “inner circle” of the NID, all these sections operated independently of one another. Section 17, Godfrey’s personal staff, including Ian Fleming, was the essential link that conected the whole structure.

  The task Godfrey gave Section 17 was to coordinate intelligence internally and to liaise between Naval Intelligence and the other intelligence bodies. Before long, as the demands of war increased, its role began to enlarge in scope and importance as it connected with the multiple arms of the entire Allied intelligence machinery. Section 17 in turn divided into subsections: 17P handled Ultra, the secret intelligence derived from breaking German and Italian naval ciphers; 17M specialized in German agents’ traffic; 17Z focused on propaganda; and 17F, under Ian Fleming, coordinated and controlled them all.59 Godfrey wasn’t interested in a passive intelligence-collection body that waited for information to arrive on its doorstep from sources that might magically appear. Rather, he demanded that all his staff move aggre
ssively to develop and maintain intelligence pipelines that provided the raw natural resources vital to the Empire’s national interest. To meet that expectation, Section 17, and Fleming, had to maintain close contact with the full range of intelligence departments and committees, ensuring that Godfrey and his inner circle had access to all planning reports, memoranda, operational orders and signals, with advanced warning of all upcoming “futures,” to use the naval parlance for these operations.60

  Fleming’s role in the NID quickly evolved into much more than that of personal assistant or liaison officer, with Godfrey increasingly counting on his dauphin to represent him officially on various interdepartmental committees and to put his operating vision for a decentralized intelligence division into action. Fleming handled both general and highly sensitive portfolios such as the Joint Intelligence Committee, which sent its advice to the chiefs of staff, the prime minister and the War Cabinet. He also maintained an intimate working relationship with the nascent Political Warfare Executive (PWE), designed to attack the German economy in particular, and the highly trained Special Operations Executive (SOE), which had been established by Cabinet in July 1940 “to coordinate all action, by way of subversion and sabotage, against the enemy overseas” and, as Churchill instructed, “set Europe ablaze!”61 Likewise, he was required to meet with Sir Stewart Menzies, who had taken over as the new head, or “C,” of the Secret Intelligence Service and the Ultra pipeline it provided. In addition, Fleming kept in touch with the Inter-Services Security Board (ISSB) and various joint operations and planning staffs—the Chief of Combined Operations (CCO), the Geographical Handbook Section, and one of Godfrey’s beloved personal projects, the Inter-Services Topographical Department (ISTD) based in Oxford.62

  As Fleming’s responsibilities evolved, he took on more than his pay grade demanded, fulfilling in many ways what Godfrey hoped to take from the Blinker Hall tradition. According to Norman Denning, “Ian had enormous flair, imagination, and ability to get on with people … He could fix anyone or anything, if it was really necessary.”63 This talent was not lost on Godfrey, who strangely confided in his memoirs that “Ian should have been DNI and I his naval adviser,” and that “if he had been ten years older and I ten years younger, this might have had the elements of a workable proposition.”64

  Winston Churchill, who told King George VI that “it was thanks to Ultra that we won the war,” at his desk in the Cabinet Room at Number 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s residence. (photo credits 2.5)

  Godfrey enlisted Fleming to act as his intermediary with Winston Churchill, but even then the strained relationship between the PM and the DNI continued to deteriorate throughout Godfrey’s tenure. Churchill’s determination to add “master strategist” to his role as “master statesman” led him to intrude on other people’s responsibilities, and Godfrey had little patience with his constant interference or with his habit of massaging or intentionally misconstruing intelligence to fit his policy and public relations schemes. Early in the war Churchill inflated the number of U-boats sunk to boost public morale; and he constantly flooded Naval Intelligence with his “prayers”—nightly letters that began “Pray tell me …” or “Pray, why does this have to be?”—for which he insisted the explanations and answers must be provided the following day. Making matters worse, these requests usually came in the form of pointed, harshly toned attacks that Godfrey found condescending and challenging to answer. In an effort to placate the prime minister and keep him at arm’s length, he turned the task over to Fleming, who, with his writer’s skill, accomplished it with great aplomb.

  The first eighteen months of the war were desperate times for Great Britain. Starting in September 1939, Hitler’s Nazi Germany overran Poland in just six weeks; then in April 1940 invaded Norway and Denmark, followed by Holland, Belgium and France a month later. By the end of May, in the legendary “Miracle of Dunkirk,” some 330,000 British and French troops were hurriedly evacuated from the beaches around the French Channel port and brought back to England in more than seven hundred vessels, large and small, many of them pleasure craft, fishing smacks, barges and even paddle steamers. The dramatic and historic events changed the balance of power in Europe, with Germany now in firm control on the continent. Soon, Hitler turned his focus to the British Isles, planning to defeat the defending Royal Navy and Air Force as a precursor to a cross-channel seaborne invasion of England known as Operation Sea Lion. Great Brtiain would be the final—and triumphant—point in his expansion west. Beginning in August 1940, the Battle of Britain raged as RAF fighters tangled with the Luftwaffe over the Channel and southern England. On September 7 the first bombs fell on London, and the terrorizing Blitz began. Meanwhile, Italy had announced a blockade of Britain’s Mediterranean and African territories and, one month later, invaded Egypt. The tough, long-drawn-out campaign in North Africa began.

  How far could Britain’s armed forces be stretched? Already fighting to the death to defend their own country, they had now to protect their strategically important interests and territories in the Mediterranean, the Middle East and North Africa—all without the support they had counted on from France and its navy. And there was more: the British Isles are small, but over several centuries they had built up a vast empire reaching into North America, East and Southeast Asia, the Antipodes and Africa. Their prosperity and their glory depended on exporting what they produced at home and importing the raw materials from their colonies or dominions abroad. Now their very survival depended on command of the sea lanes to bring in the food, oil, military supplies and troops they needed to win the war. An unexpected break came near the end of September 1941 when Hitler, his Luftwaffe stunned by the RAF, suddenly called off the Battle of Britain. That led Churchill famously to declare to the battered but resilient island, “Never in the history of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.”

  Hitler, turning his forces to the east, launched an invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941. For Britain, even this momentous event came with a price: Stalin would join Great Britain in her fight against the Axis Powers, but to participate fully in the struggle, he demanded supplies—and in vast quantities for a vast nation. To seal this fragile new alliance, Churchill promised Stalin that convoys of ships would deliver essential military and other goods to the northern ports of Archangel and Murmansk. And so British command of the sea lanes suddenly extended northeast far into the Baltic as well.

  In these dire circumstances, Churchill counted on men with imagination and daring to help shape the war effort. And characters such as John Godfrey and Ian Fleming were more than happy to play a role.

  Godfrey had early on allowed Fleming the freedom to exercise his initiative and his creative abilities. Before long, the young assistant took over intelligence planning within the Naval Intelligence Division, “for which he had a marked flair.” To Godfrey, Fleming was, above all, a classic “ideas man.”65 In truth, however, Fleming’s original and creative approach to intelligence planning and gathering bounced between the professional and the amateurish. He believed in being open to “the unexpected” or “the chance remark” that might provide a shortcut to answer some unsolved riddle.66 As Dennis Wheatley, the bestselling writer of thrillers and adventure stories, who was also one of Churchill’s “Deception Planners” charged with developing ways to deceive the enemy, recalled, “I had quite a number of dealings with Fleming … he was full of ideas not only for helping to stop the invasion, but for our eventual plans to land on the continent.”67 Their relationship included the planning period for both the Dieppe Raid and Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa in November 1942, where Lieutenant Alan Schneider, an American officer specifically attached to Fleming from the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, recorded that “we were both ideas men and would come up with all sorts of hare-brained schemes, making sure that someone else would have to carry them out.”68

  In the desperate and wild atmosphere of the war, schemes tha
t today seem absolutely fantastic were regularly hatched by men and women—many of them very young—striving by any means to derail the Germans. Some were remarkably successful. Fleming began with modest yet devious ruses, such as employing an actor to create a character who would appeal to the vanity and snobbery of a particular highbrow German naval officer during interrogation, or disguising an officer as a priest to extract vital information from a U-boat captain during confession.69 He then went on to more creative schemes, such as his plan with another writer, Aleister Crowley, an occultist and self-proclaimed “wickedest man in the world,” to interfere with the reliance some in the Nazi hierarchy placed on astrology and the occult. He had two objectives in mind: to lure a high-ranking Nazi official to defect, and to buy time for Britain to recover from the fall of France by persuading German authorities through deliberately placed deceptive horoscopes that an invasion of England in the summer of 1940 was not in the stars.