Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  Smith, who had come personally to make the request for Strong, let his always hot temper get away from him. He shouted at Brooke, demanding to know how in hell OVERLORD could be a success if the British refused to give Ike their best talent. Brooke, his voice icy cold, said the answer was still no. Smith started for the door, grumbling that Brooke was “not being helpful.” Brooke called him back and “a bit of frank talk” ensued. That evening, Eisenhower apologized to Brooke for Smith and explained that Smith “fights for what he wants” but meant no disrespect.2

  Whatever Brooke’s feelings, Eisenhower still wanted Strong. He kept repeating the request, only to meet more rebuffs. Finally, in an unusual move that in itself was an indication of Ike’s estimate of Strong’s abilities, the supreme commander went over the head of the Chief of the Imperial General Staff to appeal directly to the Prime Minister. Churchill, who was anxious to give Eisenhower all the help he could for OVERLORD, got orders sent to Algiers directing Strong to come to London to take up his duties as SHAEF G-2.3

  As Ike’s chief intelligence officer, Strong was the man who briefed the supreme commander on the enemy order of battle, capability, and intentions. His sources were wide and varied. The information flowed backward from company to battalion to division to corps to army to army group and, finally, to Strong’s staff at SHAEF. Strong integrated it, digested it, summarized it, and then presented it to Eisenhower at a daily briefing.

  In his memoirs, Strong described his methods and the nature of his relationship with his boss. The memoirs are an excellent source not only for their main theme, Intelligence at the Top, but also as an insight into Eisenhower’s leadership techniques.

  Strong learned, first of all, that Ike did not want him to think of himself as chairman of a committee, which was the British practice, but rather to regard himself as the commanding officer at the head of the staff section dealing with intelligence. His judgments should obviously be based on information supplied to him by his subordinates, but they should be his judgments, not the consensus views of a committee. Strong records, “I remember on one occasion suggesting to Bedell Smith that I would like to obtain the committee’s view on a certain problem. His reply was prompt and to the point: ‘We’ve hired you for your knowledge and advice. If you are wrong too often we’ll fire you and hire someone else in your place.’ ”4

  Eisenhower had unshakable views on the subject of staff. He had written to Marshall, in February of 1943, “I am constantly on my guard to prevent any important military venture depending for its control and direction upon the ‘committee’ system of command.… I am sure my staff thinks I am getting tougher and more arbitrary day by day but, although I admit the impossibility of working without adequate staffs, they do seem to develop diseases that include obesity and elephantiasis. Apparently only a sharp knife, freely wielded, provides any cure.” He was also adamant on the subject of decision-making, which he insisted belonged solely to the commander. He frequently told this writer that in all his career he never asked for a staff to vote on a decision (he insisted just as strongly that he always wanted every staff member’s views, honestly expressed) and said that any leader who left his decisions up to a staff vote was not worthy of his job.5

  Another difference between the American and British staff system was in access to the commanding officer. Monty was something of an extreme example, but his habits made a dramatic illustration of the point. Monty lived in splendid isolation. He rarely met with aides, leaving such mundane matters to his chief of staff, Freddie de Guingand, who would report to him the results of subordinates’ labors. Monty would then study the reports alone, make his decision, and hand down the result. He considered himself superior to almost everyone, and let everyone know it; his curt manner, his pinched facial features, trim mustache, and ever-present beret all tended to put people off. Where Ike was warm and outgoing, Monty was cold and introverted.

  Ike was in constant contact with the heads of his staff sections, meeting with them formally and informally, chatting, discussing, mulling over, considering this or that item. Although Strong was already a general officer and one of the top-ranking ones in the British Army at that, he was surprised to discover that “I had the right of direct access to Eisenhower and his Chief of Staff, and I could approach them whenever I wished.” He was even more surprised—and pleased—to learn that “above all, under the American system I was a member of the ‘inner circle,’ where policy was decided and planning and other decisions taken. All my experience suggests that this status is vital to the efficient functioning of an Intelligence machine.”6

  Another difference between Ike and Monty was that Ike was a great believer in “the team.” Back at West Point, before World War I, Eisenhower had been a potential All-American halfback, but a knee injury had cut his career short. In his first decade in the Army, however, he frequently coached the football team on the post. Partly as a consequence of these experiences, he was a self-described “fanatic” on the importance of teamwork. As supreme commander, he would not allow any of his American officers, not even Bradley or Patton, to get away with anti-British cracks. At SHAEF he insisted that his staff be not only a “team,” but also a “family.”

  His principal method for welding the staff together, Strong wrote, was to intermingle British and American officers at all levels. If the head of a section was British, his deputy was always American, and vice versa down the line. Furthermore, Ike made them eat together and share living quarters. As a result, he hoped, national prejudices and approaches to problems would disappear, to be replaced by Allied attitudes.7 In fact, for the most part, it did work out that way. For example, it was usually the British officers at SHAEF, led by the Deputy Supreme Commander himself, Air Marshal Arthur Tedder, who urged Ike to sack Monty.

  Another feature of Eisenhower’s leadership technique was to give authority to the man he was making responsible. In Strong’s case, Ike told him that if anyone on the intelligence staff was not making the grade or was creating difficulties, Strong was “fully empowered to sack him on the spot whatever his nationality. ‘Hire and fire’ was the slogan.” This stands in sharp contrast with Monty, who kept all the power in his own hands. Another of Ike’s techniques was frequent visits to front-line units. “The first time I saw Eisenhower,” Strong recalled, “he told me that it was my duty to get out of my office as much as possible in order to make contact with the commanders and their staffs in the field and gain their confidence.”8

  As everyone knows, Eisenhower could stand up to the British when he thought they were wrong. Throughout the war he had some real set-tos with Alan Brooke and Churchill. With regard to one of Churchill’s proposals, Ike recalled after the war that “I said ‘no’ to him in one hundred different ways in ten different languages”9—without changing Churchill’s mind, it should be added—and some of the most famous controversies of the war pitted Eisenhower against Churchill, Brooke, and Monty.

  But Eisenhower was by no means too proud to learn from the British. Ike frequently complained to Strong about the poor quality of American intelligence officers. He explained that few officers had received any training in intelligence, that intelligence had ranked just about at the bottom of all military specialties in the prestige ranking of the U. S. Army, and that consequently no officer of ability had gone into intelligence work. The result was that “the United States Intelligence machine in Washington and in the field was ineffective.” To remedy this shortcoming, Eisenhower had Strong create a training school for intelligence officers.

  In the school Strong tried to get the Americans to dismiss from their minds the romantic, Hollywood approach to intelligence. His theme was, “Intelligence is now a scientific matter revolving around such things as air photography, interrogation, examination of documents and radio listening. We no longer depend on agents and such cloak-and-dagger sources for our information. These modern methods have completely transformed Intelligence.”10

  Eisenhower demanded much of his sta
ff officers; he gave much in return. He was an absolute master at the handling of men, keenly sensitive to their needs and wants. Having been a staff officer for almost all the twenty-one years between the wars, Eisenhower had been there himself and knew how it felt. For example, when a rumor swept SHAEF that Tedder was going to be replaced as deputy, the staff assumed that the new deputy would insist on a new staff setup, both in personnel and organization. These speculations reached Eisenhower. He told Strong and the other heads of staff sections “that if Tedder were replaced it would make no difference to their positions.” He assured them that they had his confidence “and that it would be his wish for us to carry on as hitherto.”

  To Strong personally, Eisenhower said “that I should remain in charge of Allied Intelligence at Supreme Headquarters, no matter what other changes might be made.”11 To have such complete backing from the boss does wonders for a man’s morale and, as Eisenhower knew, makes a man work twice as hard as before.

  STRONG’S INSISTENCE on a scientific, objective basis for intelligence was obviously wise, and obviously impossible. No matter how much data is collected, in the end intelligence requires a penetration of the enemy’s mind and spirit. In the fall of 1944 that meant judging correctly the state of German defenses, not just in terms of numbers of tanks, artillery, aircraft, etc., but also—indeed, more important—judging the German will to resist. On this level everyone involved, from the supreme commander through his chief intelligence officer down to the lowest second lieutenant serving on a divisional G-2 staff in the field, was wrong.

  They were wrong because they were too cocky, too overconfident, too likely to commit the oldest military sin—underestimating the enemy. The Japanese and Germans had done it at various times in the 1940–42 period. It had hit Montgomery hard, causing him to believe that he could break right through the German defenses and march on into Berlin in a single, narrow thrust across the north German plain. SHAEF planners, and Eisenhower, suffered too, although their hallucination was different—they thought that the Allied armies could advance abreast right up to and beyond the prepared defensive positions in the West Wall.

  It was inevitable that Ike and his commanders should feel optimistic. The three weeks from August 15 to September 5 were among the most dramatic of the war, with great successes following one another in rapid succession, beginning with the destruction of the German armies in France and the liberation of that country. Rumania surrendered unconditionally to the Soviets, then declared war on Germany. Finland signed a truce with the Russians. Bulgaria tried to surrender. The Germans pulled out of Greece. The Allies landed in the South of France and drove to Lyons and beyond, while simultaneously attacking in Italy. The Russian offensive carried the Red Army to Yugoslavia, destroying twelve German divisions, inflicting 700,000 casualties. Both in the East and the West the Germans seemed to have crumbled. No wonder then that memories of November 1918 crowded in on everyone’s mind.

  IT WAS IN THESE CIRCUMSTANCES that Monty offered a bold plan to end the war. Code name MARKET-GARDEN, it involved three paratrooper divisions, the U. S. 82d and 101st and the British 1st, along with the British Second Army. It was designed to leap the Rhine River before the Germans could organize their defenses. The paratroopers would drop in a carpet out ahead of the Second Army, seize and hold bridges, and wait for the ground troops to come up to them. The British 1st Airborne would be farthest away, at Arnhem.

  The plan involved a high degree of risk and only commanders who were convinced that the enemy was routed could have agreed to it. “Had the pious teetotaling Montgomery wobbled into SHAEF with a hangover,” Bradley recalled after the war, “I could not have been more astonished than I was by the daring adventure he proposed. For in contrast to the conservative tactics Montgomery originally chose, the Arnhem attack was to be made over a 60-mile carpet of airborne troops. Monty’s plan for Arnhem was one of the most imaginative of the war.”12

  At this moment, Eisenhower was bedridden, the result of twisting his knee during an emergency landing in a small plane on the beach after a reconnaissance mission. He was in Granville, where his second-story bedroom window held a magnificent view of Mont St. Michel. There, looking out at the supreme accomplishment of medieval architecture, Ike, Bradley, Smith, and Strong discussed Monty’s proposal.

  Bradley was opposed, in part because MARKET-GARDEN would cost him his First Army (lent to Monty to protect the Second Army’s right flank), and partly because it would take supplies from Patton, whose Third Army was just starting across the Moselle River. But Smith said SHAEF could deliver a thousand additional tons of supply per day to MARKET-GARDEN, and Strong added that he believed the Germans had not yet recovered from their rout in France, so here was a chance to get across the Rhine at a relatively small cost. Eisenhower decided to approve Monty’s plan.

  Years later, in 1966, General Eisenhower read some annotation on MARKET-GARDEN in his official papers, then being prepared for publication. In a handwritten note, he commented, “I not only approved MARKET-GARDEN, I insisted upon it. What we needed was a bridgehead over the Rhine. If that could be accomplished I was quite willing to wait on all other operations. What this action proved was that the idea of ‘one full-blooded thrust’ to Berlin was silly.”13

  What Eisenhower, Bradley, Smith, Strong, and Monty did not realize was that Field Marshal Walter Model, Rommel’s and Kluge’s successor at the head of Army Group B and probably the best general in the Wehrmacht at this time, had established his headquarters in the Arnhem area. He had with him the 2d ss Panzer Corps, containing the 9th and 10th ss Panzer Divisions, veterans of both the Eastern and Western fronts. They had come to Holland from France to refit and regroup, not because they expected an attack there. Purely by chance, then, Monty’s leading unit, the British 1st Airborne Division, would be dropping in the midst of two of the best divisions in the German army, commanded by a tough, experienced, and determined general.

  The operation that ensued, after Ike insisted on MARKET-GARDEN, showed SHAEF intelligence operating efficiently, but it also showed the distinct limitations of the impact of the intelligence community on decision-making. Lewin’s scathing judgment is that MARKET-GARDEN was “a failure of intelligence, whose roots are to be found in the prevailing attitude of complacency. Nobody wanted to know.”14 But that is far from the whole truth. Some intelligence officers, including Strong, did realize that there was a panzer corps in the Arnhem area and tried to warn the generals, but their warnings were ignored.

  MARKET-GARDEN indicated that the Allies had come to rely too heavily on ULTRA, even though by September of 1944 ULTRA was producing little for the land forces. The one useful message ULTRA picked up showed that Model’s Army Group B headquarters was four kilometers west of Arnhem, but when this information was sent out from Bletchley Park on the fifteenth, two days before the attack began, it was given a low priority rating, for the obvious reason that no one at BP realized a major operation was scheduled for the Arnhem area. The word did not arrive at higher headquarters until too late.15

  But if Strong’s sources at BP were letting him down, he had others in the field who were not. The Dutch Resistance was not as numerous, well-armed, or active as the French Resistance, but it could nevertheless provide valuable information. On September 11 elements of the Dutch Resistance got word to the intelligence officer at British Second Army headquarters about “battered panzer divisions believed to be in Holland to refit.” This was an item too vague to be of any immediate or practical use. Strong did not include it in his daily briefing of Ike, nor did he put it into the weekly intelligence summary. But he did file it in the back of his mind.16

  The information was also passed down the line, exactly as the SHAEF G-2 organization was supposed to operate, and it came to the desk of Major Brian Urquhart, the intelligence officer at 1st Airborne Corps (which consisted of the U. S. 82d and 101st Airborne and the British 1st Airborne). Urquhart was the officer most immediately concerned, for his job was to tell his s
uperiors what they could expect to find in and around Arnhem. Although the reported German divisions were unidentified, their strength unknown, and although they might well be merely passing through Holland, the spot on earth that Urquhart was most concerned with might well have two enemy armored divisions on it. Urquhart, as he later recalled, “was really very shook up.”17

  Thus, unlike Strong (who had many more responsibilities than just MARKET-GARDEN), Urquhart did not file the report in his mind but rather followed it up. First Airborne Corps headquarters was in England, and Urquhart knew that there was a Spitfire fighter squadron equipped with special cameras for reconnaissance stationed nearby, in Oxfordshire. On the afternoon of September 12, he requested a sweep of the Arnhem area. The resulting photographs indicated the presence of tanks, although in what numbers (most were well camouflaged), and whether serviceable or not, could not be told.18

  This information came to Strong, along with persistent reports from the Dutch Resistance. At SHAEF G-2, officers had been working for some time past in an attempt to locate the 9th and 10th ss Panzer Divisions. SHAEF G-2 kept track of all German units, and these particular divisions had been “lost” since the beginning of September. Putting all his information together, Strong came to the right conclusion—there was German armor in the MARKET-GARDEN area. Strong took his conclusion to Smith, saying that he did not know the fighting capability of either unit, but that he did not doubt the location of the 9th and 10th ss Panzer Divisions. He guessed that they were in Arnhem “to be refitted with tanks.”

  What happened next was told by Smith to the American military historian S. L. A. Marshall immediately after the war, who later retold it to Cornelius Ryan for use in his best-selling book, A Bridge Too Far. Strong also told the story in his memoirs.

  Smith was deeply concerned, indeed “alarmed over the possibility of failure,” in his own words. He took Strong with him to Ike’s bedroom, where he told Ike that the British 1st Airborne Corps “could not hold out against two armored divisions.” Smith told S. L. A. Marshall that “my feeling was that if we could not drop the equivalent of another division in the area, then we should shift one of the American airborne divisions, which were to form the ‘carpet’ further north, to reinforce the British.”19