War of Shadows
Page 47
14. HW 14/5, Denniston to “all,” May 23, 1940.
15. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, 1: 144–145.
16. Christopher Andrews, Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (London: Sceptre, 1986), 627–628.
17. Herivel, Herivelismus, 105.
18. FRUS, “Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Italy,” May 26, 1940, General and Europe, II: 710–711; CD, May 27, 1940.
19. Monelli, Mussolini, 187; Bosworth, Mussolini, 298.
20. Monelli, Mussolini, 186–187. Text of Mussolini’s speech: Bosworth, Mussolini, 299. My thanks to historian Ciro Paoletti for explaining the carefully created Fascist symbolism of the piazza.
21. CD, June 10, 1940.
22. WO 201/2119, “Personal to General Wavell from CIGS,” June 10, 1940; “To CIGS from General Wavell,” June 11, 1940.
ACT II. CHAPTER 1. THE KEYSTONE IN THE ARCH
1. Winston Churchill, “Their Finest Hour,” International Churchill Society, June 18, 1940, winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-the-finest-hour/their-finest-hour (accessed December 27, 2018).
2. The main source for this and following paragraphs on the Lampson-Farouk clash is MLD, June 12–30, 1940. Other sources are noted separately.
3. Arielli, Fascist Italy, 160.
4. Cf. CAB 65/7/56, June 11, 1940, War Cabinet conclusions, para. 7; CAB 65/7/57, June 12, 1940, para. 6; CAB 65/5/70, June 22, 1940, para. 9.
5. See Nir Arielli, “Beyond ‘Mare Nostrum.’ Ambitions and Limitations in Fascist Italy’s Middle Eastern Policy,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 37, no. 3 (2011): 397.
6. McBride, Farouk, 57.
7. FO 407/224, J1604/208/16, Lampson to Halifax, June 22, 1940.
8. McBride, Farouk, 100.
9. For general accounts of the origins of the Long Range Desert Group, see Bagnold, Sand, Wind, 123–128; Special Forces, 14–17.
10. On sandstorms, see Moorehead, African Trilogy, 7–8. In the first months, the name of the unit was the Long Range Desert Patrol; with expansion, it became the Long Range Desert Group, the name by which it was known thereafter.
11. WO 201/2119, Wavell to Gort, August 24, 1939; Wavell, “Notes on Strategical Situation in Middle East,” August 24, 1939; Wavell to Ironside, September 27, 1939; Wavell to Ironside, December 28, 1939; Wavell, “Note for CIGS,” June 6, 1940; WO 201/2218, Wavell to Pownall, September 3, 1939.
12. Ranfurly, To War, September 3, 1939, January 10, 1940, January 18, 1940, July 9, 1940.
13. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2: Their Finest Hour (London: Cassell, 1949), 125.
14. Moorehead, African Trilogy, 4–12; Bagnold, Sand, Wind, 126; Playfair et al., The Mediterranean, 1: 81–105, 185–191.
15. CAB 65/14/17, July 31, 1940, War Cabinet Conclusions: Confidential Annex.
16. Lord Alanbrooke, War Diaries, 1939–1945 (London: Phoenix, 2001), 93–98.
17. CAB 65/14/21, August 13, 1940, War Cabinet Conclusions: Confidential Annex.
18. The literature on Churchill’s extreme imperialism, even relative to his time, his class, and his political context, and on the contradiction between these views and his ardent defense of democracy is too vast to list here. For a brief overview, see Johann Hari, “Not His Finest Hour: The Dark Side of Winston Churchill,” Independent, October 27, 2010, www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/not-his-finest-hour-the-dark-side-of-winston-churchill-2118317.html (accessed June 16, 2020), and for comparison, Roland Quinault, “Churchill and Democracy,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 11 (2001): 201–220.
19. Churchill, Finest Hour, 379.
20. The main source for this and the following paragraphs on Roosevelt’s actions in May–September 1940 is Smith, FDR, chaps. 20–21. Other sources are noted separately.
21. “Address Delivered by President Roosevelt to the Congress, May 16, 1940,” Mount Holyoke College, www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/WorldWar2/fdr16.htm (accessed January 11, 2019); “Defense Measures of the United States 1940,” Mount Holyoke College, www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/WorldWar2/defense.htm.
22. On Roosevelt’s relations with Woodring, see “President Franklin D. Roosevelt Fires His Isolationist Secretary of War During WWII: June 19, 1940,” Shapell Manuscript Foundation, www.shapell.org/manuscript/fdr-fires-isolationist-secretary-of-war-woodring (accessed January 12, 2019).
23. “June 10, 1940: ‘Stab in the Back’ Speech,” Miller Center, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/june-10-1940-stab-back-speech (accessed December 24, 2018).
24. Life, June 24, 1940, 16–19. (The date of the magazine indicates the last day it was on newsstands. It appeared a week earlier.)
25. Life, May 27, 1940, 30.
26. Charles A. Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), 374–375, 380–382; Charles A. Lindbergh, “Our Relationship with Europe,” Charles Lindbergh: An American Aviator, August 4, 1940, www.charleslindbergh.com/americanfirst/speech3.asp (accessed December 25, 2018).
27. The biography of Bonner Fellers is based on numerous documents in the Bonner Frank Fellers Papers at the Hoover Institution Archives including, HBF B17 F1, Military Record and Report of Separation, November 30, 1946; B17 F5, Oral History Interview, 1967; B17 F6, Oral History Interview, 1973; B17 F13, Travel Documents, 1923–1938; B19 F19, Fellers to Clarke, May 7, 1940; B21 F6–8, Frazier Hunt Correspondence; 29/36, “We Are Headed for War” (notes for a lecture); B20 F31, Herbert Hoover Correspondence; B21 F4, Frederick Howe Correspondence; B30 F3, Travel Notes, 1922–1939; B38 F12, Military Career Correspondence, 1940–1941. Additional sources include the Bonner Fellers website, www.bonnerfellers.com (accessed March 25, 2015); Megan Rosenfeld, “Brig. Gen. Bonner Fellers, Ret., Dies,” Washington Post, October 10, 1973, B8.
28. Budiansky, Battle of Wits, 38.
29. On “scientific” racism, anti-Semitism, and fear of the “yellow peril” in the US Army in the first half of the twentieth century, especially in military intelligence and at the War College and West Point, see Joseph W. Bendersky, The “Jewish Threat”: Anti-Semitic Politics of the U.S. Army (New York: Basic Books, 2006).
30. Derek O’Connor, “Italy’s Consummate Showman: Italo Balbo,” Aviation History Magazine, March 8, 2017, www.historynet.com/italys-consummate-showman-italo-balbo.htm (accessed January 16, 2019); Maurice M. Roumani, The Jews of Libya: Coexistence, Persecution, Resettlement (Eastbourne, UK: Sussex, 2008), 21–26; Renzo De Felice, Jews in an Arab Land: Libya, 1835–1970 (Austin: University of Texas, 1985), 168–174; Irit Abramski-Bligh, ed., Pinkas Hakehillot; Luv; Tunisia (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 5757 [1997]), 94ff.; Saviona Mane, “Opening Italy’s ‘Closet of Shame,’” Haaretz, November 16, 2018, www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/.premium.MAGAZINE-opening-italy-s-closet-of-shame-1.6657425 (accessed November 16, 2018).
31. Moorehead, African Trilogy, 17.
32. CD, July 5, 1940, July 22, 1940, August 8, 1940.
33. CD, August 18–September 7, 1940; MacGregor Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, 1939–1941: Politics and Strategy in Fascist Italy’s Last War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), loc. 2712–2742.
ACT II. CHAPTER 2. WAR OF SHADOWS
1. Main sources for this account: Budiansky, Battle of Wits, 29–32, 81–88, 159–170; Ronald Clark, The Man Who Broke Purple (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011), passim, iBook; Theodore M. Hannah, “Frank B. Rowlett, A Personal Profile.” Cryptologic Spectrum, Spring 1981, 5–20; Friedman, “Brief History”; William Friedman, “Preliminary Historical Report,” October 14, 1940, www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/friedman-documents/reports-research/FOLDER_211/41760789079992.pdf (accessed January 30, 2019).
2. Budiansky, Battle of Wits, 32.
3. NSA OH-17-82, Solomon Kullback, August 26, 1982, NSA, www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/oral-history-interviews/nsa-oh-17-82-kullback.pdf (accessed September 5, 2019), recounts the episo
de of tossing the cards without specifying which code was developed. Kullback does note that the Military Intelligence Code, used by attachés, was the only one of the codes they developed that went into use. The number of code groups, fifty thousand, matches the description of this code in HW 40/91, May 11, 1945, “Japanese MA Berlin Reports on Different Types of American Cipher,” translation of Cable 318, January 22, 1942, Japanese Military Attaché Berlin to Tokyo.
4. NSA NSA-OH-1976-(1-10), Frank Rowlettt, NSA, www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/oral_history_interviews/nsa_OH_1976_1-10_rowlett.pdf (accessed December 20, 2015).
5. On Grotjan, see Ann Whitcher Gentzke, “An American Hero,” At Buffalo, spring 2018, www.buffalo.edu/atbuffalo/article-page-spring-2018.host.html/content/shared/www/atbuffalo/articles/Spring-2018/features/an-american-hero.detail.html (accessed February 7, 2019); “Genevieve Grotjan Feinstein,” NSA, www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-heritage/historical-figures-publications/women/Article/1621585/genevieve-grotjan-feinstein (accessed January 2, 2019).
6. On Hitler’s goals in the pact with Japan, see Weinberg, World at Arms, chap. 3.
7. The main sources on the Polish codebreakers after the fall of France are Wladyslaw Kozaczuk, Enigma: How the German Machine Cipher Was Broken, and How It Was Read by the Allies in World War Two, ed. and trans. Christopher Kasparek (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1984), 108–121; Wladyslaw Kozaczuk and Jerzy Straszak, Enigma: How the Poles Broke the Nazi Code (New York: Hippocrene, 2004), 36–41; Tebinka, “Account of the Former Chief,” 214.
8. Greenberg, Welchman, 47–49; Welchman, Hut Six, 101, 119–121; McKay, Secret Life, 96–98, 107–109.
9. Decrypted Enigma messages from August 4 to October 10, 1940, are overwhelmingly German air force material. HW 5/4, HW 5/5. Later sources, especially those based on memory, give a wide range of views on the significance of Enigma intelligence in the British victory in the Battle of Britain. Welchman (Hut Six, 120) and others (e.g., Calvocoressi, Top Secret, 72) state that Bletchley Park deciphered almost immediately Hitler’s September 17, 1940, decision to postpone Operation Sea Lion, the planned invasion of Britain, a postponement that became permanent. However, no message to that effect appears in HW 5/5 in the second half of September. In fact, messages after September 17, 1940, continue to report invasion preparations. On September 26 (CX/JC/355), a daily report includes a note that it is now certain that Sea Lion “is a code-name for a sea-borne operation” but does not definitely state that it is the invasion of Britain. On the other hand, the decrypted Enigma messages do provide a steady stream of information on German air force operations and on the directional radio beams used to guide German bombers to their targets—information that was certainly of high value for the RAF.
10. For an account of the difficulty in breaking naval Enigma and of the German security measures, see Kahn, Seizing, chap. 9 and appendix.
11. ADM 223/463, Fleming to DNI, September 12, 1940, via “Operation Ruthless, October 1940,” Alan Turing: The Enigma, www.turing.org.uk/sources/ruthless.html (accessed August 21, 2018); Mavis Batey, From Bletchley with Love (Milton Keynes, UK: Bletchley Park Trust, 2008), 4–7.
12. ADM 223/463, Frank Birch to Admiralty, October 20, 1940, via “Operation Ruthless.”
13. HW 8/24, Nigel de Grey to Vivian, April 13, 1942.
14. CD, August 3, 1940.
15. Carlo De Risio, Servizi segreti. Gli «uomini ombra» italiani nella seconda guerra mondiale e i (troppi) misteri insoluti della R. marina nel 1940–43 (Rome: Napoleone, 2014), 22n1; “The Story of the Palace Hotel,” Royal Group, www.royalgroup.it/ambasciatoripalace/en/hotel (accessed November 1, 2017).
16. HW 40/75, From Quirinal Rome, July 29, 1944; SCI/370/3, “Penetration of Diplomatic Premises by SIM/CS,” August 14, 1944; DS/5(B)/1391, August 12, 1945; USNARA, RG 226, Entry 108B, Box 306, “Penetration of Diplomatic Premises by SIM CS Prior to the Armistice,” August 14, 1944, 3; David Alvarez, Spies in the Vatican: Espionage and Intrigue from Napoleon to the Holocaust (Lawrence: University of Nebraska, 2002), 215–219; David Alvarez, interview, July 7, 2017, and personal correspondence, July 6, 2017.
17. KV 2/88, “Final Report on Obstlt. Fritz Adolf Ritter,” January 16, 1946; Nikolaus Ritter, Code Name: Dr. Rantzau, trans. Katherine R. Wallace (Lexington: University of Kentucky, 2019), 105–113; Gross, Rolke, and Zboray, Salam, 32–35; Kelly, Lost Oasis, 160ff.
ACT II. CHAPTER 3. SANDSTORM
1. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, loc. 2674–2741.
2. Moorehead, African Trilogy, 12–20. On “Hellfire Pass,” cf. MLD, September 17, 1940.
3. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, 2742–2755; Moorehead, African Trilogy, 50–53.
4. CAB 65/9/23, War Cabinet conclusions, September 30, 1940.
5. CD, September 27, 1940, September 30, 1940, October 2, 1940, October 12, 1940.
6. US NARA, RG165, Entry 65, M1194, Reel 77, Frames 2083ff. War Department Correspondence Index, Col. Bonner Fellers, entries for October 5 and October 12, 1940; HBF B39 F5, Secretary of State Cordell Hull to Fellers, September 27, 1940; War Department special orders for Fellers, October 10, 1940.
7. HBF B39 F8, Fellers via Cairo Legation to Department of State, December 30, 1940, requesting “code books and all regulations including those for finance for Military Attaché.” Until early April 1941, Fellers was still sending his telegrams via the legation to the State Department for forwarding to the War Department, meaning that they would have been encoded in diplomatic rather than military codes.
8. US NARA, RG165, Entry 65, M1194, Reel 77, Frames 2083ff. War Department Correspondence Index, Col. Bonner Fellers, entry for November 5, 1940; HBF B18 F11, U.S military attaché Budapest to Mrs. Bonner Fellers, October 29, 1940; FFP, Military Attaché Cairo Report 1810, April 14, 1941, 7.
9. CAB 65/15/15, War Cabinet conclusions, confidential annex, October 9, 1940.
10. HBF B39 F8, Fellers to War Department via State Department, Cable 1799, November 4, 1940.
11. HBF B40 F13, Military Attaché Report 1, November 20, 1940.
12. Mohi El Din, Memories, 13–15.
13. Anwar al-Sadat published two memoirs, twenty years apart. They are not consistent, and both contain obvious confusion in chronology. According to both, though, he originally made his connection to Masri through Hassan al-Banna, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Anwar al-Sadat, Revolt on the Nile (New York: John Day, 1957), 25, 33, 38ff., www.anwarsadat.org/project_img/book/4881.pdf (accessed June 19, 2014); Sadat, Identity, 24–31.
14. Ranfurly, To War, entries for the length of 1940. On Pollock’s ambiguous relation to military command, see the internal history of the SOE, published as W. J. M. Mackenzie, The Secret History of SOE: The Special Operations Executive, 1940–1945 (London: St. Ermin’s, 2000), 172.
15. On Italian financial support for the Arab Revolt, see Nir Arielli, “Italian Involvement in the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936–1939,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 35, no. 2 (2008): 187–204. On the air raids and local reactions, see Nir Arielli, “‘Haifa Is Still Burning’: Italian, German and French Air Raids on Palestine During the Second World War,” Middle Eastern Studies 46, no. 3 (2010): 331–347. Ranfurly’s description of the raids on Haifa fits those that Arielli dates as July 15 and 24, 1940, though her published diary gives later dates. The reason for the discrepancy is unclear.
16. Morris, Righteous Victims, 150–160.
17. Yoav Gelber, Matzadah: Hahaganah Al Eretz Yisrael Bemilhemet Ha’olam Hashniyah (Massada: The Defence of Palestine During World War II) (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1990), 14ff.; Uri Brenner, Nokhah Ium Haplishah Hagermanit Le’eretz Yisrael Beshanim 1940–1942 (Ramat Efal: Yad Tabenkin, 1981), 22ff.; Yehuda Bauer, From Diplomacy to Resistance: A History of Jewish Palestine, 1939–1945 (New York: Atheneum, 1973), 79–92.
18. KV 2/2085, “Palestine. The Mufti’s Propaganda at Nabi Musa,” May 10, 1940; “Palestine. Miscellaneous Arab Information,” March 15, 1940.
19. Mustafa Abbasi, “Pa
lestinim Nilhamim Benatzim: Sippuram Shel Hamitnadvim Hapalestinim Bemilhemet Ha’olam Hashniyah,” Katedra 171 (Nissan 5779 [April–May 2019]): 125–147. Predictably, the history of Palestinian Arab and Jewish enlistment in the British army is subject to intense historical disputes. Ronald W. Davis, “Jewish Military Recruitment in Palestine, 1940–1943,” Journal of Palestine Studies 8, no. 2 (1979): 55–76; Raphael G. Bouchnik-Chen, “Palestinian Arab Volunteers in the British Army in WWII: A Reality Check,” BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,367, December 9, 2019, https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/palestinian-arabs-british-army (accessed January 7, 2020).
20. WO 201/2014, Personal for CIGS from General Auchinleck, Situation Review, June 19, 1942.
21. Uri Avnery, interview, May 15, 2015; Abbasi, “Palestinim Nilhamim Benatzim,” 134.
22. As John Ferris writes, “Only a traitor used radio, only a fool did not; this dilemma haunted all commanders of the Second World War.” John Ferris, “The British Army, Signals and Security in the Desert Campaign, 1940–42,” Intelligence and National Security 5, no. 2 (1990): 256.
23. Churchill, Finest Hour, 480.
24. Moorehead, African Trilogy, 59–61.
25. HBF B39 F8, Fellers to War Department via State Department, Cable 346, December 12, 1940, 12 p.m.; Cable 349, 8 p.m.
26. CD, December 10–13, 1940.
27. Moorehead, African Trilogy, 62–66, 73–74.
28. Special Forces, 36–43; Bagnold, Sand, Wind, 131–134; Kelly, Lost Oasis, 149–154; MECA GB155–0185, Longrigg papers, Report on Occupied Enemy Territory Administration, Cyrenaica, for the Period October 14, 1941, to January 31, 1942, Appendix B.
29. Moorehead, African Trilogy, 79–88. MECA GB155–0185, Longrigg papers, Occupied Enemy Territory Administration, April 3, 1941, 2, notes that Tobruk was “completely depopulated.”
30. HBF B39 F8, Fellers to War Department via State Department, Cable 1807, December 30, 1940; Cable 1809, January 25, 1941.
31. HBF B39 F8, Fellers to War Department via State Department, Cable 1815, February 8, 1941.