Books

Bletchley's victory

Max Hastings

British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume III, Part 1 Edited by F. H. Hinsley (HMSO £19.95}

The belief that intelligence depends chiefly upon the work of the spy, better still the superspy, is a cherished popular myth even among readerships that show a decent disbelief in James Bond. There has been a huge market in recent years for been that suggest that such essentially peripheral wartime intelligence personalities as Sir William Stephenson and Donovan of tne OSS played decisive roles. When those with first-hand knowledge of intelligence seek to discredit the mythmakers, authors and Publishers dismiss their denials as mere Machinations of the official security machine. The public reluctantly accepts that warfare in the 20th century is a matter of mass movements and vast, inhuman in- dustrial competitions. But in intelligence at least, there is a great yearning to believe that the individual can still move moun- that one man's or woman's inspira- tion ingenuity, courage can yet wield a decisive influence upon struggles between nations.

i A large prt of the problem in deter ag the historical caltruth is that so little e, vidence is available to scholars, far less to 'ay readers. Even for the authors of the monumental official history of British war- ha intelligence, the records to which they access are fragmentary, and probably often actively

misleading, without the

oPofssibilit Y of personal references to officers the intelligence services to set the papers context, and to fill the gaps. But every the of the Second World War cherishes lene Work of Professor Hinsley and his col- 0,,arles, because their books provide the access that any of us are ever likely to .'t to the archives of intelligence, and to 'riderstanding its influence upon the Allied warlords and the battlefield.

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f3rn the outse, the official historians an nott only sensationalism, but , by narrative by Prospect of providing a lively human na) declining to name a single me' even those of senior officers of SIS such as Sir Stewart Menzies and Sir Claude d,,arlseY, whose identities have been well- elwn for years. Hinsley and his colleagues wi!;are that they are much less concerned 0 `n describing how intelligence was gathered let. than with cataloguing what in- hith'ence was made available to the Allied no°, command and how it was used — or Yeas the case might be. et already, in their three published

volumes, they have demonstrated con- clusively how overwhelming was the impor- tance of information gainedfrom deciphered German wireless traffic 'Ultra' — and intercepted German voice communication — the fruits of the Y Ser- vice — and how limited was the importance of SIS's agents on the ground. Again and again in their latest work as in their earlier ones, they show how cherished historical belief in the reports of very brave British and Allied agents in enemy territory was at best exaggerated, for the information that these provided had already reached London via Ultra.

At intervals even in the second half of the 20th century, critical contributions to in- telligence have been made by individuals with extraordinary access to high govern- ment sources: Elie Cohen, who spied for Israel from Damascus for so long, and Kim Philby, who served the Russians so well from inside SIS, are classic examples. But the British and Americans in World War II appear to have had no secret source in the ranks of the Axis of remotely comparable importance. Some useful material was leak- ed by agents in contact with Admiral Canaris. But no agent achieved a real in- sight into the innermost counsels of Ger- many, Japan, or even Italy until it was too late to matter. Instead, Allied intelligence was compelled to build a painstaking jigsaw from neutral sources with access to the enemy, from agents in occupied nations, from prisoner interrogation and listening services, and above all from Ultra. The scale of Bletchley Park's achievement was staggering. Yet the evidence emphasises yet again the truth of Churchill's observation to Portal in 1941, when the airman tried to convince him that bombers alone might

always on the move at once'. defeat Germany, that in war 'all things are

The new volume covers the period of the Italian campaign, the war at sea, the bomber offensive, and the struggle to an- ticipate the German V-weapon threat from mid-1943 to June 1944, the eve of Overlord. For those who regard Ultra as the universal key to intelligence data, it is intriguing to learn that after the British penetrated the non-morse teleprinter link between the Ger- man high command in Italy and OKH in May 1943, this provided much more impor- tant intelligence than Ultra for months that followed. Agents were seldom able to operate in the forward areas of the German army, and could not do so in Sicily, which caused important gaps in Allied knowledge before the invasion. Wireless decrypts revealed nothing about such matters as beach gradients; and thus a succession of

very brave men of the Combined Opera- tions pilotage parties had to do much of the reconaissance the hard way: in the space of a few weeks' work, 11 officers out of 14 and four other ranks out of 17 were lost.

Hinsley confirms that Ultra did warn the Allies of the impending German evacuation of Sicily. But they failed to act before the bulk of the enemy forces had escaped in- tact: intelligence of any kind is worthless unless matched by action on the battlefield. Throughout the summer and autumn of 1943, Ultra provided a .detailed picture of German thinking and intentions about what lines they would hold in Italy, and how their formations would deploy. in the autumn of 1943, Alexander was fearful that the Germans might heavily reinforce the Italian front with troops from Russia, and perhaps launch a dangerous counter- offensive. But London was perfectly ac- quainted by Ultra with Hitler's determina- tion to do nothing of the sort, and indeed with the stream of orders for German units to move from Italy to the East. SIS agents in Fumicino were credited by the Royal Navy with providing news of the arrival of human torpedoes in the port in time to thwart their attack on the fleet off Anzio. But the same, indeed even more detailed in- formation, had already been provided by decrypts. The flow of Ultra intelligence was sometimes fragmented, sometimes delayed. But throughout the campaign it enabled the Allies to know precisely what German forces were deployed against them, and with what strategic intentions. This did not, however, provide them with any instant panacea for the defeat of the incredibly tenacious German soldier in defence.

At sea, 1943-44 marked the period when the Allies achieved mastery over the U-boat by a brilliant conjunction of long-range air- craft, reinforced escorts, and wireless in- telligence. They began to achieve extraor- dinary successes against U-boat supply sub- marines and boats moving to and from refuelling rendezvouses revealed by Ultra. By the end of August 1943, only 40 opera- tional U-boats were at sea against 71 in July. Ultra revealed every stage of Donitz's technical upgrading of his fleet, and Ger- man changes of tactical practice. In- credibly, even when his losses began to soar, the Grand Admiral never seriously considered the possibility that his wireless secrets had been laid open. Ultra also played a key role in the hunting down of the Scharnhorst and operations against the Tir- pitz. It is sad for any romantic researcher, who has seen so many war films in which an SIS agent tapped out his vital news of the Tirpitz's movements from a shadowy house in Altenfjord, now to learn that each agent report reached London behind more detail- ed data from intercepted German fleet signals.

The book's two major chapters on the relationship between intelligence and the Allied bomber offensive set the final seal of confirmation upon the truth hitherto con- jectured: that the attempt to batter Ger- many into submission from the air was bas- ed upon pathetic ignorance of the German economy, about which 'no documentary and first-hand evidence was obtained before the Allied armies began to advance into north-western Europe'. The Air Ministry was guided from the start by a huge misconception: it believed that in September 1939, Hitler's industries were fully mobilised, and thus that any damage done to them thereafter represented a net loss to production. In reality, of course, at the beginning of the war the German economy was scarcely even in second gear. In the face of bombing, it proved capable of incredible exertions, on a scale the airmen did not guess at.

As the war progressed, the Ministry of Economic Warfare indeed began to suspect that the Ruhr was achieving far more, and its productivity suffering a great deal less, than the bomber barons believed. But the airmen, obsessed with the doctrine of strategic air power, had by now invested their service's prestige too heavily to turn back. The intelligence department at Bomber Command headquarters operated solely as a propaganda instrument for Sir Arthur Harris, who declined to tolerate any hint of evidence that his campaign was not progressing as he wished. In February 1944, he complained bitterly to the Air Staff about a report of their own that was being circulated, suggesting that the German civilian population had become 'apathetic' about being bombed, at a moment when he insisted that they were on the verge of na- tional collapse. As early as 17 December 1943, his own intelligence staff issued a report claiming that 'the administrative machine of the Nazis, their military and in- dustrial organisation and above all their morale, have by these attacks suffered a deadly wound from which they cannot recover'. This, of course, was in the midst of the disastrous 'Battle of Berlin', and a few days before Harris wrote to Portal pro- mising to bring about the defeat of Ger- many by 1 April 1944, if he was able to achieve a further 20,000 Lancaster sorties to Berlin, a target he came close to achieving.

The history of bomber offensive demonstrates the tragic consequences of allowing senior officers to distort in- telligence in pursuit of sectional ambitions. Once intelligence becomes a tool for bolstering private hopes, its military value declines absolutely, as the Germans discovered at such cost in North-West Europe in the spring and summer of 1944. Truthful assessment and freedom of thought are obvious essentials in successful intelligence, yet astonishingly elusive ones.

The final section of the book chronicles the long and immensely complex struggle to discover the truth about the German V-weapon programme, and thus to find the means to defeat it. There is nothing of im- portant new historical substance here, but a great deal of essential setting of the record. The 'Crossbow' counter-offensive indeed depended, like few intelligence operations of the war, upon human endeavour. Few details of their plans were committed by the Germans to the airwaves, and thus revealed through Ultra. Inch by inch and month by month, information had to be painfully gathered and collated by agents among forced labourers, observers in Occupied Europe, men who at immense risk worked their way to within eyesight of the flying bombs and rockets, which that baleful med- dler Lord Cherwell, who was wrong on almost every major scientific intelligence issue of the war, at first declined to believe were technically feasible. The Crossbow saga took intelligence work back into the realms of personal struggle. It is a sad by- product of the authors' practice of impos-

ing anonymity that they thus do not PO tribute by name to the contributions of Dr. R. V. Jones to solving so many of the rid- dles. Professor Hinsley and his colleagues, have spared the ghosts of the old chiefs of SIS some notable embarrassments by saying nothing of individuals, for Bletchley park and the detested amateurs of SOE emerge with much richer laurels than the Profes; sional secret service from the history 0' British wartime intelligence. But the historians have also denied some brave and good men their just share of credit for fine things achieved and attempted.