The Defence of the Realm

by Christopher Andrew

  I am very disgusted as in this struggle for life and death I cannot accept excuses or negligence . . . Were it not for my ideals and faith I would abandon this work as having proved myself a failure. I write these messages to send this very night though my tiredness and exhaustion due to the excessive work I have had has completely broken me.

  The errant Abwehr case officer in Madrid, who had failed to ensure that the radio station came on air at 3 a.m., replied apologetically with a fulsome tribute to the quality of GARBO’s intelligence: ‘I wish to stress in the clearest terms that your work over the last few weeks has made it possible for our command to be completely forewarned and prepared.’100 That tribute, which probably caused GARBO and Harris to laugh out loud, was quoted in the Security Service’s June report to the Prime Minister.101

  Before D-Day it had been expected that the fiction of a planned attack on the Pas de Calais could not be maintained for more than ten days after the Normandy landings. ULTRA, however, revealed that the deception remained firmly embedded for far longer in the minds of both Hitler and his high command.102 For the rest of June GARBO and BRUTUS continued to send alarming intelligence reports on the waves of fresh American forces supposedly flooding into Britain and the growing troop concentrations in the south-east of England, apparently poised for an assault on the Pas de Calais. Four weeks after D-Day the German high command still had twenty-two divisions waiting to repel an attack by the non-existent FUSAG.103 The Security Service’s monthly report for June, despatched to Churchill on 3 July, concluded:

  It is known for a fact that the Germans intended at one time to move certain Divisions from the Pas de Calais area to Normandy but, in view of the possibility of a threat to the Pas de Calais area, these troops were either stopped on their way to Normandy and recalled or it was decided that they should not be moved at all.

  Churchill was also informed that Berlin had awarded GARBO the Iron Cross (Second Class); the following German radio message was cited as an example of the praise lavished on him and his imaginary sub-agents: ‘. . . I reiterate to you, as responsible chief of the service, and to all your collaborators, our total recognition of your perfect and cherished work and I beg of you to continue with us in the supreme and decisive hours of the struggle for the future of Europe. Saludos.’ The Security Service’s June report to the Prime Minister also cited ‘an effusive message of encouragement’ to TATE from his German case officer: ‘Your messages about concentrations and movements (more especially signs of troops preparing for action) can be not only fabulously important, but can even decide the outcome of the war.’104 A month after D-Day Eisenhower declared: ‘I cannot overemphasize the importance of maintaining as long as humanly possible the Allied threat to the Pas-de-Calais area, which has already paid enormous dividends and, with care, will continue to do so.’105 Not till the last week of July did the HQ of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, Commander in Chief West, conclude that ‘The more ground Montgomery gains southward from the [Normandy] bridgehead, and the quicker he does this, the less probable it will be that the forces still in England will carry out a seaborne landing at a new point.’106

  Since February 1944 copies of the Security Service’s reports to the Prime Minister had also gone to the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden,107 to whom in December 1943 Churchill had given ministerial responsibility for MI5.108 On 26 June 1944 Petrie wrote to Eden that since becoming director general in 1941 he had ‘perhaps said more hard things of the Service than almost anyone else’, but now wanted to pay tribute to it:

  The role of the Security Service has been particularly important and particularly difficult . . . Before and even after D-Day in the recent operations, the German Abwehr has continued to show unbounded and almost pathetic confidence in reports of agents, which have been described as vitally affecting ‘the whole course of the war’ and in similar terms.

  Eden replied on 7 July that MI5 ‘could take legitimate pride in what has been achieved’.109 For the Security Service the aftermath of the FORTITUDE deceptions brought a stream of congratulations and gratitude not often seen in the organization’s history and far removed from the open criticism of the early war years. On 21 August, Colonel Bevan wrote, as controlling officer of the LCS: ‘I honestly believe that whatever success may have been achieved in our line of business is due in very large measure to the support given by B1A.’110

  The Security Service’s August report informed Churchill that a German map, captured in Italy, showing the location of British ground forces in the UK, accorded ‘precisely’ with the disinformation fed to the enemy by the double agents and wireless deception.111 It added, with an understandable air of triumph: ‘Conversations between Hitler and his generals . . . show that the threat to the Pas-de-Calais caused Rommel to delay committing the full weight of his armour until the bridgehead had become sufficiently established to enable us to repel his attack.’ Churchill minuted ‘Let me see’ against this passage, and wrote ‘Good’ on the report as a whole.112

  Later in the year, having already been promised the Iron Cross by his German case officer, GARBO became the first British agent (as opposed to intelligence officer) to be awarded the MBE. Since it was thought inappropriate for a double agent to meet the King, the presentation was made instead by the DG, Sir David Petrie, in a private ceremony attended by Tomás Harris and senior members of B1a. Petrie, noted Liddell, ‘made a nice little speech’: ‘Later we lunched at the Savoy when GARBO responded to the toast in halting but not too bad English. I think he was extremely pleased.’113

  B1a continued to use double agents for deception purposes until the last week of the war. The most serious German threat to which the Security Service had to respond in the aftermath of the Normandy landings was the V-weapons (Vergeltungswaffen) which were mainly targeted on London. The first V-1 flying bombs (small pilotless planes) hit London on 13 June, only a week after D-Day. GARBO complained that, despite being a London resident, he had not been given advance warning of the attack (for which the Abwehr apologized), but applauded ‘this fantastic reprisal weapon, the creation of German genius’. On Sunday 18 June a V-1 landed on the Guards Chapel at Wellington Barracks in the middle of morning service, killing 121 of the worshippers. The explosion was heard in MI5’s St James’s Street offices. Since the attack was publicly announced, GARBO duly reported it but added the improbable claim that the initial public alarm generated by fear of flying bombs had none the less ‘disappeared’.114 Though a majority of the V-1s crashed or were shot down before they reached the target area, 2,419 hit London, about thirty Southampton and Portsmouth, and one Manchester, killing 6,184 people and injuring 17,981.115

  GARBO reported that 17 per cent of the V-1s to reach England during June had hit the Greater London area; in fact the figure was over 27 per cent. Though it was believed that the V-1s were aimed at central London, probably Charing Cross, the Ministry of Home Security located their ‘mean point of impact’ (MPI) as around North Dulwich Station, where large expanses of open ground reduced the level of casualties. Since only a slight correction would bring the MPI into central London, both the Air Ministry and Home Defence Executive attempted to devise ways not merely to discourage the Germans from correcting their aim but also to persuade them to worsen it by using the double agents to send reports that they were overshooting their targets in the hope that they would then conclude that they needed to shorten their aim, with the result that fewer of the V-1s would reach central London. Meeting on 29 June, the Twenty Committee welcomed this deception, which fitted in well with reports already sent by GARBO to his case officer that the flying bombs were falling mainly in an arc to the north and west of London.116

  It was decided, however, that continuing to use GARBO to send disinformation on the flying bombs carried too great a potential risk to the credibility of B1a’s star double agent. A pretext had therefore to be found for him to cease reporting on the V-1s. On 5 July a radio transmission to the Abwehr from GARBO’s (non-existent) second in comma
nd reported him missing, followed by an even more alarming report two days later that he had been arrested. Decrypted Abwehr traffic made clear its consternation and its qualified relief on 10 July when GARBO’s deputy reported his release. On the 14th GARBO sent details of his arrest by courier to the Abwehr office in Madrid. While investigating flying-bomb damage in Bethnal Green, he had been stopped by police and taken into custody after being caught attempting to dispose of his notes. Happily he had been released after a protest by his supposed employers in the Ministry of Information (MoI); GARBO enclosed both the warrant for his arrest and a letter from the Home Office to the MoI apologizing for the officiousness of the police. Joy was unconfined in the Madrid Abwehr, which, as expected, insisted that GARBO take no more risks reporting on the V-1s: ‘Cease all investigations of the new weapon.’ He was told there must be ‘a period of complete inactivity’ during which he suspended contact with his extensive network of (non-existent) sub-agents. The apparent near-disaster to the GARBO network led the Abwehr to send similar instructions to BRUTUS, whom it considered its second most valuable agent, for fear that he too might put himself at risk. To reassure GARBO of the high regard in which he was held in Berlin, his case officer informed him on 29 July ‘with great happiness and satisfaction’ that the Führer had decided to award him the Iron Cross for his ‘extraordinary merits’. It is easy to imagine the secret hilarity with which, assisted by Harris, GARBO composed his reply: ‘I cannot at this moment, when emotion overwhelms me, express my gratitude in words.’117

  In the absence of GARBO and BRUTUS, the main double agents left to report on the impact of the V-weapons were TREASURE, TATE and ZIGZAG. TREASURE, however, was no longer trusted by B1a to transmit even under supervision.118 While TREASURE’s career as a double agent was being abruptly ended,119 the Abwehr was completing final preparations forZIGZAG’s return to Britain, one of his assignments being to report where V-1s were landing and the damage they caused.120 The Security Service informed Churchill that the ‘outstanding event’ of the last week of June was the triumphant homecoming of ZIGZAG, who had landed by parachute in Cambridgeshire from a Junkers 88 after fifteen months of extraordinary adventures with the Abwehr:

  For his sabotage of the Hatfield works (organised by us)121 and other services, he appears to have received rather more than 100,000 marks as a bonus from the Germans. Since that date he has been given an extended holiday in Norway, where he has indulged in yachting and other recreations and has successfully withstood various psychological and other tests, all of which have served to fortify German belief in him.

  ZIGZAG described Berlin as a ‘complete shambles resembling the ruins of Pompeii’, and German morale as visibly low. But during none of his three visits to the capital had there been an opportunity to carry out his plan to kill the increasingly reclusive Führer.122 During ZIGZAG’s first month back in Britain, most of his radio messages to the Abwehr, apart from complaining about transmission problems, consisted of reports on the times and places of impact of flying bombs.123 B1a judged him ‘indispensable to the bomb damage deception scheme’.124 The deception, however, had to be suspended on 25 July after London evening papers published maps showing where V-1s had actually fallen.125 To provide a pretext for failing to provide further reports on the flying bombs, ZIGZAG told the Abwehr that he was concentrating on trying to acquire a sample of secret equipment it had tasked him to obtain.126

  For two months after the beginning of the flying-bomb offensive, the cabinet balked at a full-scale deception which would lead the Germans to believe they were overshooting and unintentionally target the south of Greater London. Though total casualties and disruption would be reduced (a claim contested by some), the deception would be directly responsible for the deaths of Londoners who would otherwise have survived. The main aim was therefore initially to prevent the Germans from improving their aim rather than to persuade them to redirect the V-1s to south London. In mid-August, however, the cabinet finally approved a deception designed to persuade the enemy to shift his aim ‘to a slight extent . . . towards the south-east’.127 By then, however, the main V-1 offensive had only a fortnight to go. On 18 August the Germans began closing down the V-1 launch sites in northern France before they were overrun by the Allied advance. The last flying bombs in the initial offensive were fired on the night of 30/31 August, nine of them hitting central London.128

  The threat from the V-2 rocket missile offensive, of which intelligence had provided advance warning, was much more serious than that from the flying bombs. Unlike the V-1s, they could not be shot down before they reached their targets and worst-case forecasts of casualties by the Ministry of Home Security reached 100,000 fatalities a month (vastly more than actually occurred); in August there were mass evacuations from London.129 Guy Liddell took the threat from the V-2s so seriously that he favoured using the threat of atomic retaliation to deter Hitler from continuing with it. He noted on 25 August 1944:

  I saw ‘C’ [Menzies] today about the uranium [atomic] bomb and put to him the suggestion that it should be used as a threat of retaliation to the Germans if they used V.2. ‘C’ said that he had no reason to think V.2 was imminent although it was possible to think that it might start in the near future. He felt however that there was nothing to be lost and that he would put this suggestion to the P.M.130

  What Churchill said in reply is not recorded. V-2 attacks were more imminent than Menzies realized. The first to reach England crashed on Chiswick only a fortnight later, on 8 September. To Liddell in M15‘s St James’s Street headquarters, it sounded much nearer than it was and was followed by an echo: ‘It is said that the [V-2] fragments found at Chiswick were in part so hot you couldn’t touch them and in part coated with ice. The rocket is supposed to have gone 38 miles high.’131 Liddell noted a week later: ‘V2 continues at the rate of two or three per twenty-four hours. The remarkable thing is that the explosions are heard quite definitely even when the rocket falls at a distance of up to twenty miles away.’132

  Though implemented by B1a and the double agents, the deception plan designed to convince the Germans that the V-2s had overshot their targets (a more complex deception than for the V-1s, involving precise calculation of bogus timings for the hits they achieved), was devised by the Security Executive.133 After GARBO’s reported arrest during his investigations of the V-1 attacks, the Abwehr decided not to take the risk of asking him to report on the V-2s. For ‘data about place and time of the explosions’, it initially relied mainly on ZIGZAG134 and TATE.135 ZIGZAG’s inquiries were cut short by the abrupt end of his career as a double agent. Tin-eye Stephens had great respect for ZIGZAG’s bravery and nerve but regarded him as a ‘vain crook’ and moral degenerate: ‘He did not blush when he related how, having infected a girl of eighteen with VD, he blackmailed her by threatening to tell her parents that she had given it to him!’136 As ZIGZAG renewed old acquaintances in the criminal underworld after his return to London, he was discovered to have bragged about the secrets of his double life to a convicted safe-breaker (as well as earlier to a girlfriend while in Norway).137 Probably the final straw came at the end of October, when he was found discussing the publication of a book of his experiences with a convicted pre-war Soviet agent, Wilfred Macartney.138 Only four months earlier the Security Service had described ZIGZAG to Churchill as one of its finest double agents. Early in November he was abruptly dismissed.139 Eddie Chapman (no longer double agent ZIGZAG) and Macartney were later fined £50 each plus expenses at a trial in camera for the breaches of the Official Secrets Act involved in the writing of Chapman’s memoirs which, MI5 acknowledged in a report to Number Ten, were ‘very readable and very accurate’.140

  With ZIGZAG’s demise, the main role in the V-2 deception passed to TATE. The chief supporting role was taken by a new recruit to the double-agent stable: ROVER, a Polish naval officer who had joined the Abwehr in order to find an opportunity to escape to Allied territory. ROVER was probably the last Abwehr agent to arrive in England
during 1944.141 Masterman wrote later: ‘What made him attractive to us was the fact that he had had a year’s training in morse, the construction of wireless sets, and secret writing; we could not believe that the Germans would lavish so much care on someone in whom they did not believe.’ To the surprise and disappointment of B1a, however, the Abwehr initially failed to reply to ROVER’s early transmissions. In September B1a decided to abandon the case and send ROVER to rejoin the Polish navy. ‘We were no doubt too impatient’, wrote Masterman, ‘for hardly had this been done when the Germans started to call ROVER.’ Further disruption followed. Though communication between ROVER and his German case officer began in October 1944, it had to be suspended in November when his B1a radio operator went into hospital and later died. Via a second radio operator early in January, ROVER explained that he had been knocked over by a lorry and spent some time in hospital, suffering from broken ribs, a dislocated collarbone and internal injuries. It was hoped that, if the Abwehr noticed the changed rhythm of his transmissions (frequently detectable when a radio operator was replaced), they would put it down to his damaged shoulder. In the event the new radio operator seems to have aroused no suspicion.142