The German intelligence estimates in the west, 1885–1914

Little has been known of German intelligence estimates prior to the First World War. The recent discovery of several German intelligence documents, including a classified history of German pre-war intelligence operations which was written during the inter-war period, in addition to some important German pre-war intelligence analysis, now gives considerable insight into the German intelligence estimates as well as their relationship to German war planning from 1885 to 1914.     

‘Stella polaris’ and the secret code battle in postwar Europe

Much has already been written about the September 1944 evacuation of the Finnish intelligence service to Sweden, which was designated Operation ‘Stella Polaris’. Newly declassified intelligence documents found at the US National Archives provide a fresh perspective on the role of the American wartime foreign intelligence service, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and its successor, the Strategic Services Unit, in ‘Stella Polaris’ and its aftermath. The documents reveal that throughout World War II, the OSS secretly obtained sensitive intelligence information concerning America's wartime ally, the Soviet Union, from agents within the Finnish intelligence service. The OSS Stockholm Station purchased Soviet and other foreign government code and cipher materials from the Finns, not realizing until later that the Finns had sold the same material to other states. The Americans responded by recruiting some well-placed agents within the Finnish ‘Stella Polaris’ organization, who provided detailed information about the intelligence activities of the Finns in Sweden, and the work of Finnish intelligence officers in France after the end of the war. Among the key pieces of intelligence obtained was the fact that the French intelligence service was intercepting American radio traffic.     

Allied economic intelligence and strategy during the ‘Phoney War’

This article examines the efforts of French and British intelligence services to assess the German economy before and during the opening stage of World War II. The French and British, attached to a long‐war strategy based on the assumption time worked in their favour, looked to economic intelligence to indicate whether this was in fact the case. Yet for a variety of reasons clear and consistent assessments were impossible. Rather than accept uncertainty, the French and British chose to impose certainty by assuming the worst, a decision which contributed to the abandonment of a long‐war strategy as the Allies began to search for some way to win a short war.     

Bletchley Park and the RAF Y Service: Some Recollections

The RAF Y Service and the German Air Section at Bletchley Park collaborated in producing a great deal of intelligence about GAF (German Air Force) operations in World War II. However, two errors in pre-war planning reduced this output. The first error was the decision that the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) should be responsible solely for cryptography, the interpretation of Sigint to be the task of the Intelligence recipients. The second was the general assumption that the information obtainable from intercepting the low-grade codes and plain language used in the control of Air operations would only be of intelligence interest while the operations were in progress. After-the-event study of these communications by the German Air Section produced unique information needed by the RAF Commands. The Air Ministry took an unduly long time to agree that this information should be provided to them.     

‘No Wishful Thinking Allowed’: Secret Service Committee and Intelligence Reform in Great Britain, 1919–23

The May 2002 tranche of British Security Service files released to the Public Record Office included hitherto classified policy files containing documents on Secret Service Committee meetings held from 1919 to 1923. This body wrote an important yet relatively obscure chapter in British intelligence history: the post-First World War reorganization and retasking of British secret service machinery, the focus now being Soviet Russia. However, by encouraging the deliberate overstatement of the Bolshevik 'subversive' threat and then backing excessive measures to counter it, some British officials may have sown the seeds of government's later inability to detect a much graver peril to national security, that of Soviet espionage.     

Inter-Allied Commando Intelligence and Security Training in Gwynedd: The Coates Memoir

John Gordon Coates was an intelligence instructor with 10 Commando, a force drawn from several European nations in the Second World War. His brief memoir together with supporting documents and oral histories throw light on the intelligence training of a unit whose memorialization has until now been patchy. 10 Commando's Troops (fighting units) were quartered in various Welsh villages according to nationality, for example the French in Criccieth, the Dutch in Porthmadog, and the relatively renowned Jewish group in Aberdyfi. They were dispatched in small numbers as specialist add-ons to military missions engaged in secret operations in occupied Europe, achieving success but a high casualty rate. In an embryonic way, 10 Commando could be regarded as an intelligence-orientated precursor to the idea of a European Union Rapid Reaction Force.     

Project Abstract: an Anglo-American intelligence operation in 1947 to recover guided weapon technical documentation buried in Germany

In early 1947, American intelligence organisations learned that there were hidden collections of technical documentation that pertained to World War II German guided weapon development that were not recovered by Allied investigators in 1945. A joint Anglo-American intelligence operation was initiated in February of that year, dubbed ‘Project Abstract’ by the Americans, to recover the caches. Project Abstract was a concerted effort by British and American scientific and technical intelligence experts to round up the last material remains of the World War II guided weapon programmes at the renowned experimental and testing establishments at Peenemünde in northern Germany.     

Jones' Paradigm: The How,Why, and Wherefore of Scientific Intelligence

Scientific intelligence was coined during World War II, yet despite its age and relative importance it has not received the attention it should have. This is surprising given the recent and growing interest in WMD programmes. This article sets out the main components of scientific intelligence, seeking to explore how scientific intelligence has been defined, how it operates, and contemplates the key issues involved. In doing so it aims to set an agenda for future research into this crucial area.     

Too Little,Too Late: The CIA and US Counteraction of the Soviet Initiative in the Six-Day War, 1967

The authors' previous research has established that the 1967 Arab–Israeli Six-Day War resulted from a deliberate Soviet plan to provoke Israel into a pre-emptive strike, which would legitimize and trigger a massive Soviet military intervention to aid an Egyptian–Syrian counteroffensive. However, US documents released until recently provided no evidence that the American intelligence community, and particularly the CIA, detected this threat or informed the political leadership about it – even though some indications were picked up at the field level. A newly declassified, retrospective report appears for the first time to show that there was awareness of major components of the Soviet operation (preparations for a naval landing and parachute drop). But closer scrutiny finds that this report reflects Soviet propaganda more than factual intelligence – thus further tarnishing what has hitherto been held as an outstanding achievement for the Agency and its chief.     

TICOM: The Last Great Secret of World War II

Recent releases from the National Security Agency reveal details of TICOM, the mysterious 1945 operation targeting Germany's cryptologic secrets. Often mentioned by such authors as Kahn, Bamford, Parrish and Aldrich, for the first time the public has access to this information. This article provides a review in greater depth than has been previously covered in the open literature of the history of the TICOM operation, and its resulting intelligence, including the Germans' efforts against Soviet communications. In addition, some comments are provided on why TICOM has remained classified long after other similar information from World War II was declassified, and why locating TICOM documents is still difficult.     

Room 40 and German intrigues in Morocco: re-assessing the operational impact of diplomatic cryptanalysis during World War I

During World War I, Germany sought to provoke numerous insurrections throughout the British and French Empires. Examining the influence of signals intelligence within one of these colonial settings provides an opportunity to measure the operational importance of wartime cryptanalysis. Through a careful analysis of the original intercepts, this article reconstructs the responses of Room 40, the Admiralty’s cryptology department, to Germany’s Moroccan intrigues and highlights the development of intelligence practices. It argues that strategies to deploy diplomatic intelligence emerged gradually, but that Germany’s enduring support for Moroccan dissidents suggests diplomatic cryptanalysis only secured modest results within an operational context.     

Correspondence

The origins of the Anglo-American intelligence relationship are usually dated to the early years of the Second World War. This article suggests that the First World War interaction between the intelligence staffs of the British and American Expeditionary Forces was a significant precursor to the emergence of the later relationship. Using primarily American archival sources, the article reveals an intimacy that emerged in the summer of 1917 and continued, to a lesser extent, until the armistice. The emergence of this close relationship is attributed to a common language, independent-minded intelligence leaders, and an element of chance.     

The Fate of an Orphan: The Hawley Board and the Debates over the Postwar Organization of Medical Intelligence

The US Army's medical intelligence program developed during World War II to meet the requirements for information on the medical threat facing soldiers deployed in the first truly global military conflict. The war served as a proving ground for the application of medical intelligence on a strategic, operational and tactical level. However, hasty postwar demobilization decimated many wartime intelligence programs, including medical intelligence. The US intelligence community recognized the utility of medical intelligence as part of the overall strategic scientific and technical intelligence program and sought ways to rebuild the program. During the post-World War II debates over the unification of the military services and the responsibilities of the nascent CIA, the ‘Hawley Board’ was one of several committees which studied the problems facing the medical intelligence program. Although there was broad consensus on the need for better coordination of medical intelligence, the intelligence community ultimately failed to adopt the recommendations of the Hawley Board. The principal reasons behind the failure of the Hawley plan were the re-emergence of prewar interservice rivalries, the dominant role of the Army medical intelligence program, and the lack of a joint military–CIA vision of a centralized medical intelligence service.     

The infrastructure of communications intelligence: the Allied D/F network and the battle of the Atlantic

The best Allied source of intelligence on German activities during World War II in the Atlantic was the radio transmissions made by German U-boats. To exploit this intelligence the Allies established a network of directing finding stations around the rim of the Atlantic. When fully established the Allied direction finding network played an important role in providing the intelligence required to defeat the U-boats.     

‘Every Hungarian of any value to intelligence’: Tibor Eckhardt,John Grombach,and the Pond

Abstract

Tibor Eckhardt, a Hungarian émigré, was a key player in American intelligence operations regarding Hungary during World War II and the early Cold War. He worked closely with a secretive American intelligence organization headed by John Grombach, an American intelligence officer who was a vehement opponent of the CIA. Though Eckhardt and Grombach shared concerns about the CIA, they were also forced to cooperate with it. Eckhardt’s endeavors and those of the many Hungarians whose intelligence work he coordinated were ultimately futile. Hence, they were representative of the efforts of freedom-loving Hungarians to liberate their country during the Cold War.     

Signals intelligence in India

In May 1945, as France celebrated the end of the Second World War in Europe, its foremost overseas dependency, Algeria, erupted into rebellion. Revisiting the roles and responses of the colonial security forces to what came to be known as the Sétif uprising, this article suggests two things. One is that the intensity of repressive violence pursued becomes more explicable once we consider the part played by political intelligence gathering in the operation of French colonial government in Algeria. The other is that the decision to use the political intelligence amassed before, during, and after the rebellion to coerce the Algerian population at the rebellion's epicentre signified a fundamental shift in the nature of the French colonial state in Algeria. Intelligence-led security policing, much of it later adopted by police agencies in metropolitan France at the height of the Algerian War, became more repressive, less selective, and highly violent.     

From the horse's mouth: Luftwaffe POWs as sources for air ministry intelligence during the battle of Britain

British military intelligence as derived from the interrogation of prisoners‐of‐war (POWs) during the Second World War has been under‐valued by historians, whose attention has focused primarily on signals intelligence. While Sigint, in particular Ultra, was of undoubted value, Britain's armed services nevertheless attached much credence to POW‐derived intelligence, and by the war's end an abundance of information had been gleaned from the half a million plus Axis prisoners by then held in Britain. This article will examine the work of the Air Ministry Intelligence section known as AI1(K), which was responsible for POW interrogation, during the Battle of Britain, and attempt to illustrate both the wealth and value of such intelligence at a time when Ultra was still in its infancy.     

The Past Is a…Native Land?

Did the events of September 11, 2001 “change the world,” signifying the birth of an incommensurable brave new world of heightened uncertainty and insecurity? No. That headline-grabbing claim lacks historical perspective. Rather, the Cold War has exerted a profound impact on how America wages the War on Terror simply because the intelligence, bureaucratic, and military-industrial institutions that have shaped U.S. strategy since 9/11 took their present shape during the Cold War. Indeed, dramatic differences between the circumstances of the Cold War era and the dangers confronting the twenty-first century prevail, among them the shift from “conventional” to digital warfare, and from ominous nation-states to “rogue” states and sects. But the respective challenges and constraints shared by the two periods also possess notable similarities. Both the obvious discontinuities and the more subtle continuities with the recent past require judicious assessment from us today. Just as American leaders before World War II needed to “unlearn” the lessons of isolationalism in the 1930s in order to fight World War II, so too do American policymakers today need to unlearn the lessons of conventional warfare—including “intelligence” warfare–in order to combat rogue states and terrorist cells in the twenty-first century.     

British intelligence and the middle east, 1900–1918: how much do we know?

Primary sources available in British and Israeli archives (first and foremost – the Public Record Office) allow serious study of the British intelligence apparatus in the Middle East and its contribution to the military operations and diplomatic-political process there, prior to and during the First World War. Yet, existing knowledge focuses on military intelligence, as documentation on the Secret Service and the Security Service (both in the form of EMSIB) as well as on army and naval signal intelligence operations in the region is barely available – destroyed or still classified. Examination of hitherto unexplored foreign depositories may serve as an indirect approach to overcome this paucity of material, owing to the close wartime cooperation between British, French, Russian and Italian intelligence on the Ottoman Empire.     

Radio-Intercepts,Reconnaissance and Raids: French Operational Intelligence and Communications in 1940

Mentioned in memoirs by a few former military intelligence officers, operational intelligence has had little attention in academic writing on the Second World War before Ultra's decisive contributions began in 1941–2. Especially neglected has been the fighting provoked by the German offensive in 1940 that cleaved through France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg and drove Britain off the Continent. This article tackles this gap, analysing the military intelligence/military operations interface on the French side. It assesses the contributions and shortcomings of radio-intercept intelligence, along with intelligence-gathering by air and ground reconnaissance (demonstrating that German air superiority imposed a ‘battle blindness’ on Allied commanders wanting intelligence on approach marches and formation switches more than a dozen kilometres into the German rear). It reveals that frontline infantry raiding – redolent of intelligence-gathering techniques familiar to veterans of 1914–18 trench warfare – was again widely employed. This proved a highly effective recourse, particularly during the positional battles on the Somme, Aisne and Oise in June 1940, filling intelligence gaps left by more technologically sophisticated but more fragile sources. The factors that kept formations fighting so as to inflict significant delays and heavy losses on the German assaults were robust communications networks (to convey operational intelligence fast enough to permit counter-manoeuvres based on it), and the preservation of French chains of command and control. When these key nodes collapsed, preventing the hard-won operational intelligence being deployed to coordinate French military resistance, the latter declined into a series of disjointed, directionless and unavailing acts of courage that could not exploit the several instances during the campaign when the Germans, too, were afflicted by battle fatigue, re-supply bottlenecks and morale wobbles.