by Alastair Denniston- Code-breaking From Room 40 to Berkeley Street
No more delights like these for us
But Denniston will never
Desert his solitary post.
He will go on for ever.
As evidence of the high regard which AGD was held by his Room 40 colleagues, they saw fit to present him and his wife with a silver salver.
The very existence of Room 40 was kept secret until 1925, when former American ambassador in London, Walter Page, published some letters in a magazine article, telling how these had been discovered through the Intelligence Division of the British Navy. Lord Balfour, Chancellor of Edinburgh University, revealed to Prime Minster Stanley Baldwin, at a university lunch, that the university’s Principal, Alfred Ewing, had been head of an organisation responsible for the vital decrypts. Two years later, at the request of Balfour and in response to general pressure, Ewing agreed to give a lecture in the university’s Assembly Hall to an audience of 1,500. Given the Admiralty’s misgivings, Ewing agreed not to publish the text. It was eventually published by the Royal Society of London.99 As for AGD, his work in signals intelligence had only just begun.
Chapter 3
Between the Wars
True to the words in the Room 40 ditty, AGD did indeed ‘go on’, and at the conclusion of hostilities, he was sent to Scapa Flow to interpret for Admiral Sir David Beatty, Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet, at the surrender of the German fleet. He would later document his time at Scapa Flow1 and the problems that he faced:
I was a landsman on board a battleship, and a lot of my time was taken up in trying to conform to the life therein, no easy matter if you remember that it is really a foreign land where the inhabitants have a distinctive mode of life, even a distinctive language and very distinctive habits which to learn in a few days is not an easy matter for a visitor to this foreign land. My impressions of this particular foreign land have nothing at all to do with the matter in hand, namely the surrender of the German Fleet and the end of the motive power which has driven the British Navy for the last twenty years and made it such a wonderful machine. First of all I should like to confess that for the last four years I considered myself, and the department in which I worked, a very important cog in the machine; now for the first time I ran across the ‘business end’ of the weapon and I realised most strongly what a little cog we were. Practically no one I met had any idea of the existence of such a cog, which was satisfactory to know, as we had tried to conceal our identity. I had to keep a straight face, and lie right well to many an old friend from Osborne days whom I met up there, who wanted to know what my job was. On the whole I fancy I gave myself and my department a highly sensational appearance, such as would rejoice the readers of William le Quex.2
On arriving at Rosyth, AGD went directly to HMS Queen Elizabeth, Beatty’s flagship, to find out what duties were assigned to him. He met an old friend by the name of Spickerwell, who was secretary to the admiral. He actually had no interpreting to do but instead was to act as an intermediary between Beatty, who was concentrating on general policy and his opposite number, the commander-in-chief of the German High Sea Fleet. This dialogue was conducted by means of wireless. AGD was not impressed with Beatty, whom he regarded as ‘a very wilful man, and has no mercy on a man or nation he despises’.
They set sail around 2.00 am on 21 November and when Queen Elizabeth approached the location of the German fleet, action stations was sounded. AGD reported to Beatty on the signalling bridge and the German ships were spotted at 9.30 am. Beatty informed the Admiralty that he had taken them over and told AGD that he would rather have been able to report that he had sunk them instead. The British fleet then escorted the German fleet into the Firth of Forth.
After completing his duties with Beatty, AGD was transferred to HMS Lion, the flagship of the Battle Cruiser Fleet, to escort the German battlecruisers to the Orkneys. Once in Scapa Flow, he boarded the German flagship, Seydlitz, to oversee the voyage. AGD felt sorry for the senior German officers:
They were keen efficient men, who had learnt their work, and made the German Navy their career, and this was the end of it. We knew that many of them had fought a gallant action at Jutland, in fact, the Commodore, a fine looking old norseman with now a very sad expression had been captain of the Seydlitz at Jutland where she had been very badly hit. Only fine seamanship in his part had got her home, and now he had to save his ship for this end.
The rest of AGD’s stay at Scapa was, in his words, ‘dull beyond words’. On returning home, AGD would soon be asked to apply for a job which would shape the rest of his career.
***
In November 1918, along with his scheme for an amalgamated Secret Service, the DMI, William Thwaites, proposed to his naval counterpart, Admiral Hall, that their signals intelligence sections should be united into a single ‘School’. Calling the new unit a School would provide cover by stressing the organisation’s positive side, for example by studying ways to achieve secure communications.3 Thwaites had succeeded General Macdonagh, DMI at the War Office from 1916 to 1918, who had been promoted to adjutant-general. Colonel C.N. French, a senior figure in the Military Intelligence Directorate in London, had left the War Office as well and been replaced by an officer from GHQ, Malcolm Hay. Hay believed that Sir Henry Wilson4 was responsible for breaking up the staff of Military Intelligence at the War Office and that it was a great blunder. The reorganised Intelligence directorate was now composed almost entirely of officers from GHQ and Hay felt that:
Thwaites had no previous experience of Intelligence work, and no obvious qualifications for the position, or for the difficult task which it now involved of acting as military adviser at the Peace Conference. Sir George Macdonagh had acquired some useful knowledge about the political situation of Europe, his successor had none. The loss of Colonel Charles French was irreparable; he was perhaps the one man in the Directorate of Military Intelligence during the war who was indispensable.5
Hall agreed with Hay’s assessment and offered rooms in the Admiralty for the military side to merge ‘brain power’. French opposed a rapid amalgamation and argued that during the peace negotiations, the information produced by MI1(b) would be as, or perhaps more important than it had ever been during hostilities. Furthermore, the temperamental nature of the cryptographers meant that their move from Cork Street to the Admiralty could cause problems. Hay was unhappy with the proposed changes as well as the management of the Honours List:
The distribution of foreign decorations seems to have been successfully controlled at GHQ. An order was issued in 1915 that no officer would be allowed to wear any foreign decoration unless it had been personally presented to him for some specific service. A growing disgust with the traffic in medals was noticeable among soldiers during the latter period of the war. People in the War Office and at GHQ who stood, as the saying was, ‘nearest to the bag’, always seemed to secure the lion’s share of the spoil.6
On 10 December 1918, French proposed that a combined cryptographic unit be set up as part of a joint intelligence organisation.7 Hall was opposed to this but by mid-January 1919 he had been replaced by Commander Hugh Sinclair,8 who was more cooperative. A new unit would need to be responsible for the construction of British governmental codes and ciphers, work against foreign codes and ciphers and be able to secure a supply of raw material to replace the wartime censorship regime, which would expire with the Government’s emergency powers as soon as the peace treaty was ratified.
In January 1919, Lord Curzon (acting Foreign Secretary while Balfour was at the Paris Peace Conference), stated that the Foreign Office was ‘the proper place for the new school to be housed’. Sinclair disagreed and argued that it should be located in the Admiralty, as the Service Ministries had the required expertise and ‘all the arrangements as regards deciphering messages were already in existence in the Admiralty building’. He went on to say: ‘Without wishing to disparage the Foreign Office in the least, it is considered that the atmosphere of calm deliberation which characterizes that department is not
suited to an organisation such as the proposed Code and Cypher School, which, above all things, must be a “live” undertaking, especially in connection with the “breaking” of codes and cyphers.’
By 27 February the Admiralty, War Office, Air Ministry and Foreign Office were agreed that there should be a new ‘Code and Cypher Department’ comprising a code-making ‘Code and Cypher School’ of about twenty-five people with a budget of £5,000–£6,000 per year and a codebreaking ‘secret sub-section’ with a budget of £10,000 per year. The War Office drafted a clause for the new Official Secrets Bill which required cable companies to provide all telegrams to the new organisation. In March, the War Office proposed that the new organisation should be headed by Hay with twenty-six staff and a budget of £8,250–£13,400 per year.
In a memo to Lord Drogheda of the Foreign Office dated 28 March 1919, Churchill, now serving as Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Air, gave the Admiralty’s view of the proposed Code & Cypher School:
Private and confidential
March 28, 1919,
Dear Lord Drogheda,
I had a few minutes conversation with Lord Curzon yesterday on the subject of the new Cypher Department which it is proposed to establish, and concerning which a memorandum is now in his hands, containing the views of the Admiralty and the War Office.
Lord Curzon told me that he hoped to summon a conference at the Foreign Office one day next week to consider the matter, when I should have an opportunity of stating my opinions, and he asked me to send you in advance a memorandum of the points I wished to raise. I therefore send you herewith the following notes of matters which the Admiralty consider essential in any scheme that may be adopted.
We have in the Section of the Naval Intelligence Department which has dealt with enemy wireless during the war, a great deal of material, some of which is worked out and filed for reference or historical purposes and some of which will require further study. We also have a small remaining nucleus of the expert staff which has done this work during the war. If the Admiralty is to join the new Department, we regard it as essential that this material and staff should be kept together.
Wherever the new Department may be located in peace time, we should have to stipulate that on the outbreak of war the naval portion of its staff should immediately be mobilised and take up their work in the Admiralty. Our experience has proved that in war the deciphering staff must be in the closest possible proximity to the War Staff. We have had to work day and night all the year round, and as immediate action has often had to be taken in consequence of the information which we have supplied, no avoidable delay in transmitting the information to the Operations Division can be allowed.
We should only consent to pool our staff with that of the War Office on condition that Commander A. G. Denniston is placed in charge of the new Department.9 I do not say this on account of any jealousy of the War Office, or any reluctance to accept a War Office man, but because no one who has not been trained in the conditions under which we have to work could meet the requirements of the Admiralty in time of war. Our work has been done in the face of the enemy and always against time. The messages we have had to decipher were from ships at sea, engaged in actual operations, or from airships also operating. We have had to master a new key every morning before we could begin to read the messages, and sometimes we have had to grapple with two keys in one day!
This has of necessity developed a particular kind of aptitude for the work, which depends for its success more on a study of the psychology of the persons sending out the messages and a sort of instinctive ‘flair’ for the kind of things they are saying, than upon careful study and analysis for which there is no time.
In the War Office they have dealt with cables which are far more accurate than wireless, and have never had to work against time, and the aptitude they have developed is different from – I do not for a moment suggest it is inferior to that of which the conditions of our work have produced. Denniston is not only the best man we have had, but he is the only one we have left with special genius for this work. We shall not be able to retain him in a subordinate capacity, and no advantages of concentration and cooperation with the War Office would compensate us for the loss of his services. If the War Office people are not willing to accept this condition, we should prefer to retain our staff in the Admiralty, but should of course cooperate with them in every other way that is possible.
A conference was held at the Foreign Office on 28 April 1919 to consider the question of the proposed new Code & Cypher School. Present were The Right Hon. Earl Curzon of Kedleston, KG (Chairman), The First Lord of the Admiralty (Walter Long); The Secretary of State for War and Air (Winston Churchill); The DNI, Admiralty; The Deputy Director, Military Intelligence (DDMI), War Office; Captain W.M. James, Deputy Director, Naval Intelligence (DDNI); Captain R.L. Nicholson, Director of Signals Division; Major H.E. Franklin DSO, MC, Secretary; The Earl of Drogheda, Foreign Office. It noted that:
The Chairman summarized briefly the recommendations of the Inter-departmental conference which recently met to consider the matter, and said that the main question now before the meeting was the housing of the new department, with the establishment of which everyone in principle agreed. In his opinion the arguments in favour of housing the new department in the Admiralty in time of war were unanswerable, but we were providing for its establishment under peace conditions, and in time of peace he thought that the fact that the interest of the intercepted telegrams was practically entirely political indicated that the new department should be housed in the Foreign Office.
It was decided that Curzon, as acting Foreign Secretary, should receive all intercepted telegrams and be responsible for passing them on to the Prime Minister or other Cabinet Ministers concerned when they were of sufficient importance.10
A further meeting was held at the Admiralty on 8 May 1919 to further consider the formation of a Code & Cypher School. Present were the DNI, Commodore H.P. Sinclair CB, RN; the Earl of Drogheda, Foreign Office; Captain R.L. Nicholson DSO, RN, Director of Signals Division; Captain W.M. James, DDNI; Lieutenant Colonel W.E. Wynn OBE, Air Intelligence; Commander B. Buxton DSO, Admiralty; Mr. A.P. Waterfield, Treasury; Major M.V. Hay, Reserve of Officers; and Major H.E. Franklyn, DSO, MM. It agreed that the new unit would be staffed by a head (salary of £1,200), senior assistants (salary of £600–£800 plus war bonus), junior assistants (salary of £200–£500), translators (salary of £200–£300) and clerks (salary in accordance with ordinary gradings).
The question of who would head the new organisation was yet to be decided, with AGD being the Admiralty candidate and Hay that of the War Office. A meeting was held at the Admiralty on 5 August 1919 to resolve the issue.11 The meeting was chaired by Sinclair, with James, Drogheda, Major-General Bartholomew (DDMI), Colonel Dick (Assistant Director of Military Intelligence, ADMI) and Franklyn in attendance. Sinclair and Bartholomew had interviewed the two candidates. Hay had made it very clear that he would only serve as Head and while he would accept AGD as part of his team, he didn’t rate him or want him on it. AGD on the other hand, would work as head or for Hay ‘at all events for a time’. Bartholomew thought it was ‘intolerable’ that Hay ‘should attempt to dictate his terms of service in such a manner’. Franklyn noted of Hay and AGD that ‘when they were together they could not agree’ and was of the view that MI1(b) workers at Cork Street didn’t like AGD. James replied that everyone at the Admiralty ‘had the highest respect amounting to affection’ for AGD. Drogheda thought that Hay was probably cleverer but AGD was a better administrator.
After due consideration, it was agreed that AGD would head up the new organisation.12 While no official statement of the reason for this decision exists, AGD was probably regarded as a safer pair of hands who looked upon Hall as a father-figure and the Royal Navy as his home. He could be trusted to know his place in the hierarchy as a subordinate to DNI and provide leadership to the cryptanalysts. The words ‘Denniston will never deser
t his solitary post’ would prove to be prophetic. Hay, on the other hand, clearly had strong views and pressed for independence from DNI as long as he ‘produced the goods’. His notes13 show him to be a prickly individual who ‘for many years after the war refused even to speak to a General’. He refused the OBE offered to him on 12 December 1919.14 His attitude is perhaps best summed up after he departed quickly on 21 August 1919 by his one-sided view of WW1 codebreaking successes:
Before decoding the messages, [we] had to reconstruct the code books … All these difficulties were overcome. Cork Street was never defeated … Some publicity has been given to the fact that German Naval messages and German Diplomatic wireless messages between Berlin and Washington were intercepted by the Admiralty and read by a section of Naval intelligence housed in Room 40 O.B. All or nearly all of these German intercepts were in code. Various stories are current about the way copies of the German code books were obtained. I do not know which of these stories is the true one. But it is certain that these encoded messages were not read by reconstructing the code books without some outside assistance.
On 24 October 1919, R.R. Scott wrote to the Secretary, War Office; The Secretary, Air Ministry; The Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Office; The Under Secretary of State for India, India Office; The Secretary, Ministry of Munitions; The Secretary, Ministry of Food; The Secretary, Ministry of Transport; The Secretary, General Post Office; and the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, Colonial Office, making the following points:
That the War Cabinet has now given approval for the formation of a Government Code & Cypher School under the control of the Director of Naval Intelligence, and that it is proposed that it should commence its duties on the 1st November, 1919.
It has been decided to appoint Commander A.G. Denniston, O.B.E., R.N.V.R. as Head of the Government Code & Cypher School, which will be accommodated in Watergate House, Adelphi, W.C.I. The duties of the Code & Cypher School will be as follows:-