War of Shadows

by Gershom Gorenberg

  33. US NARA, RG 165, NM84/42, 390/37/31/5, Box 357, File 381, Memorandum for General Wedemeyer, September 26, 1942, quoting Maxwell cable of July 7, 1942.

  34. HBF B39 F5, Kunzler to Fellers, Travel Orders, July 20, 1942, citing orders in War Department Cable 72, July 14, 1942; US NARA, RG 165, 488 390/37/13/7, Box 4717, Strong to Marshall re Colonel Bonner F. Fellers, July 8, 1942. Fellers actually left Cairo on July 17. FDR Official Files, File 283, Kirk to Undersecretary of State, July 21, 1942.

  35. US NARA, RG 165, NM84/42, 390/37/31/5, Box 357, File 381, Memorandum for General Wedemeyer, September 26, 1942. Cf. HS 7/234, 4195, in which the SOE reports instructions from the British Security Coordination office in New York that “care should be taken in any discussion” with Compton and that “a general watch should be kept on the activities of this mission.”

  36. HBF B38 F12, Fellers to Marie Broach, August 13, 1942.

  37. FO 371/31573, Clayton and Maunsell to DMI and Snuffbox [MI5], July 6, 1942; WO 208/1561, Security Summary Middle East No. 30, March 23, 1942; No. 34, April 7, 1942; No. 64, July 23, 1942.

  38. WO 208/1561, Security Summary Middle East No. 61, July 13, 1942; FO 371/31573, Cable 1784, Lampson to Foreign Office, July 10, 1942; MLD, July 9, 1942; FO 371/63073, Foreign Office to UK representative to UN, August 13, 1947, quoting captured report from Ettel to Ribbentrop, July 24, 1942; Sadat, Identity, 32–33; Hirst and Beeson, Sadat, 62–63.

  39. FO 371/31573, Cable 1749, Lampson to Foreign Office, July 6, 1942; Cable 1793, Lampson to Foreign Office, July 11, 1942; Cable 1818, Lampson to Foreign Office, July 15, 1942; MLD, July 8, 1942, July 13, 1942.

  40. Brenner, Ium Haplishah, 105–106.

  41. Ranfurly, To War, July 4, 1942; Bauer, From Diplomacy, 183–184.

  42. Gelber, Matzadah, 68–69; Bauer, From Diplomacy, 190–191.

  43. Barr, Pendulum, 95, 116–117.

  44. HW 1/711, CX/MSS/1168/T8, CX/MSS/1168/T10, CX/MSS/1168/T11, CX/MSS/1168/T34, CX/MSS/1168/T52.

  45. HW 73/6 contains the immediate, extensive reports on the capture of Seebohm’s unit and later reports on its impact. See also HW 40/8, “Security of British and Allied Communications,” November 1, 1944–February 28, 1945. On the battle: Barr, Pendulum, 103–111.

  46. The account of Eppler and Sandstede’s final activities is based on extensive documents in KV 2/1467, KV 2/1468, and FO 141/852. The two KV (MI5) files were declassified only in 2004 and contain information that was missing in earlier accounts of the affair. By the nature of an investigation, the testimony of various figures is contradictory, and later interrogations contain information lacking in earlier ones. Spellings of names also vary. See especially FO 141/852, “Further Report on Sandy and Eppler,” with cover note, Jenkins to Tomlyn, August 5, 1942; KV 2/1467, “Report on Interrogation of Victor Hauer on 22 & 23 July, 1942”; “First Interrogation of Hassan Gafaar,” undated; “1st Consolidated Report on Activities of Eppler, Johann and Sandstede, Heinrich Gerd,” July 29, 1942; “Second Consolidated Report on the Activities of Eppler, Johann and Sandstede, Heinrich Gerd,” July 31, 1942; “Interrogation of Persons Connected with the ‘Eppler and Sandy’ Case,” July 26–31, 1942; KV 2/1468; “Weber, Waldemar; Aberle, Walter; Sandstede, Heinrich; Eppler, Johann,” January 5, 1943.

  47. FO 141/852, 983/8/429, August 12, 1942.

  48. The story is told, with variations, in war correspondent Leonard Mosley’s 1958 book The Cat and the Mice; Sansom’s 1965 memoir I Spied Spies; and Eppler’s memoir Operation Condor, published in English under the name “John Eppler” in 1977. For an overview of additional earlier versions, see H. O. Dovey, “Operation Condor,” Intelligence and National Security 4, no. 2 (1989): 357–373. Dovey had access to the Foreign Office file on the case, but the MI5 files were still classified. Examples of anachronisms include Sansom’s claim to have arrested Ezzet before Eppler, and his claim to have met and known Sadat before Eppler’s arrest, when investigation records show that Sadat’s surname emerged only later. British banknotes counterfeited by the Germans showed up in Egypt only later in the war. See KV 4/465, “Supplementary Report of Payment of German Agents by Bank of England Notes,” August 1, 1945. Attempts to identify the supposed Jewish Mata Hari have included identifying her with Ruth Aliav-Klüger of Hamossad Le’Aliya Bet, the Jewish Agency’s illegal immigration arm, but Aliav-Klüger was only stationed in Cairo from the very end of 1942. Contrary to the many accounts of the spies using Rebecca for their cipher key, Sandstede “admitted that the book they were to use to encode their messages was ‘The Unwarranted Death.’” Unless this was the title of an obscure edition of Rebecca, the use of that novel is a later invention that became a fixed part of memory of the case. See KV 2/1467, “First Consolidated Report,” July 29, 1942. A full list of discrepancies would be much longer.

  49. FO 141/852, 983/3/429, July 25–27, 1942; 983/5/429, Jenkins to Tomlyn, August 2, 1942; 983/6/429, Jenkins to Tomlyn, August 5, 1942.

  50. KV 2/1467, Jenkins to Sir David [Petrie], August 1, 1942, and attached reports on interrogation of Hauer, July 22–23 and 24, 1942.

  51. WO 208/1561, Security Summary Middle East No. 87, October 14, 1942; KV 2/1467, Jenkins to Sir David [Petrie], October 19, 1942.

  52. KV 2/1467, “3rd Report,” August 3, 1942; IWM, Document 4829, Maunsell memoir, 30–31.

  53. Mallmann and Cüppers, “Elimination of the Jewish National Home,” 3–27.

  54. WO 208/1561, Security Summary Middle East No. 63, July 20, 1942; No. 64, July 23, 1942; No. 65, July 27, 1942; No. 67, August 3, 1942, and attached “Appendix A: The ‘Fifth Column’ and the Middle East.”

  55. Albania went from Italian occupation to German occupation in 1943. All but one family of the country’s small Jewish community were hidden and saved, along with the several hundred Jewish refugees from elsewhere in Europe. See “Besa: A Code of Honor: Muslim Albanians Who Rescued Jews During the Holocaust,” Yad Vashem, www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/besa/index.asp (accessed December 20, 2019); Joseph Berger, “Casting Light on Little-Known Story of Albania Rescuing Jews from Nazis,” New York Times, November 18, 2013 (accessed December 20, 2019).

  56. Cüppers, Walther Rauff, 155.

  57. Liddell Hart, Rommel Papers, 257.

  58. CD, July 20–23, 1942.

  59. Barr, Pendulum, 154–168; Moorehead, African Trilogy, 402–403.

  60. CAB 121/284, Butler to Bracken, June 25, 1942; “Draft Telegram to Washington,” June 26, 1942; Radcliffe to Butler, June 27, 1942.

  61. Moorehead, African Trilogy, 410–411.

  62. FDR Official Files, File 283, Kirk to Undersecretary of State, July 21, 1942; Welles to Roosevelt, July 21, 1942.

  63. US NARA, RG 165, NM84/15, 390/30/15/3, Box 6, File 381, Roosevelt to Hopkins, Marshall, and King, “Instructions for London Conference,” July 16, 1942; Roosevelt to Hopkins, Marshall, and King, undated [July 22, 1942, or after]; Roosevelt to Hopkins, Marshall, and King, July 25, 1942; Alanbrooke, Diaries, July 17–20, 1942; Matloff and Snell, Strategic Planning, 266–297; Roberts, Masters, 230–259. The phrase “to drive in against the backdoor of Rommel’s armies” is from Roosevelt’s memo of July 16.

  64. Matloff and Snell, Strategic Planning, 297.

  65. Matloff and Snell, Strategic Planning, 283; Atkinson, Army at Dawn, 26.

  66. Van Creveld, Supplying War, 196–199; van Creveld, “Rommel’s Supply Problem,” 71–72.

  67. Winston Churchill, “The End of the Beginning,” The Churchill Society, November 10, 1942, www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/EndoBegn.html (accessed December 25, 2019).

  68. Auchinleck “expressed the opinion that, had we not had the ‘U’ [Ultra] service, Rommel would certainly have got through to Cairo.” Lee A. Gladwin, “Alan Turing, Enigma, and the Breaking of German Machine Ciphers in World War II,” Prologue: The Journal of the National Archives 29, no. 1 (1997): 214, citing US NARA, RG 457, Box 1424, File NR 4686, Brig. Williams and Grp. Capt. Humphreys, “Reports Concerning Ultra,” 7.

  69.
US NARA, RG 59, 119.25/1398–99, Cable 3405, Harrison to Shaw, July 24, 1942; Cable 802, Hull to Kirk, July 25, 1942; Wilson to Adams, “Alleged Deciphering by Axis Agents of Telegram Sent to Washington from Cairo,” July 25, 1942; Cable 1322, Kirk to Hull, July 27, 1942. I am grateful to Brian Sullivan for sharing these papers.

  70. The extant logbooks of cables between Bletchley Park and the War and Navy Departments end on July 9, 1942 (HW 8/132) and resume on November 17, 1942 (HW 8/133).

  ACT V. CHAPTER 2. UNKNOWN SOLDIERS

  1. Alanbrooke, Diaries, August 3–9, 1942; Jonathan Fennell, “‘Steel My Soldiers’ Hearts’: El Alamein Reappraised,” Journal of Military and Strategic Studies 14, no. 1 (2011): 1–31, https://jmss.org/article/view/58014 (accessed December 26, 2019); Barr, Pendulum, 192–213; Warner, Auchinleck, 202–220; Ronald Lewin, Rommel as Military Commander (Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword, 1990), 169–170; “Monty’s Caravans: A Field Marshall’s Home from Home,” Imperial War Museums, www.iwm.org.uk/history/montys-caravans-a-field-marshals-home-from-home (accessed December 30, 2019); Brighton, Patton, Montgomery, Rommel, 6.

  2. Fennell, “Steel My Soldiers’ Hearts,” 22. On Auchinleck’s reserved character, see Warner, Auchinleck.

  3. Jackson, Solving, chaps. 6, 21; F. H. Hinsley, “Introduction: The Influence of Ultra in the Second World War,” in Hinsley and Stripp, Codebreakers, 4–6; Bennett, “The Duty Officer,” 37; Calvocoressi, Top Secret, 78–79; Erskine, “Breaking Air Force and Army Enigma,” 70–71.

  4. Hinsley, “Influence of Ultra,” 3–5; Barr, Pendulum, 211, 219.

  5. Rommel’s health: HW 5/126, CX/MSS/1339/T12. Pilots’ intestinal problems: HW 5/127, CX/MSS/1248/T4. Both HW 5/126 and 5/127 contain messages too numerous to list regarding the fuel crisis.

  6. Gladwin, “Alan Turing, Enigma,” 214; Barr, Pendulum, 223–252.

  7. Liddell Hart, Rommel Papers, 283.

  8. Barr, Pendulum, 255–267, 296–298, 307ff.; Fraser, Knight’s Cross, 382–383; Liddell Hart, Rommel Papers, 319.

  9. Atkinson, Army at Dawn, 59–159.

  10. Fraser, Knight’s Cross, 387–396; Barr, Pendulum, 408; Roumani, Jews of Libya, 34–35; Simon, “Yehudei Luv,” 68; “The British Enter Benghazi,” World War II Today, ww2today.com/20th-november-1942-the-british-enter-benghazi (accessed January 2, 2020).

  11. Weinberg, World at Arms, chap. 8; Atkinson, Army at Dawn, 163–167.

  12. Robert Satloff, Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust’s Long Reach into Arab Lands (New York: Public Affairs, 2006), passim, iBook; Mallmann and Cüppers, Nazi Palestine, 167–184; Cüppers, Walther Rauff, 157–178; Michel Abitbol, The Jews of North Africa During the Second World War, trans. Catherine Tihanyi Zentelis (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1989), 116–140.

  13. Fraser, Knight’s Cross, 410–413; Weinberg, World at Arms, chap. 8; Mallmann and Cüppers, Nazi Palestine, 183–184.

  14. Kozaczuk, Enigma: How the German Machine Cipher Was Broken, 136–208; Kozaczuk and Straszak, Enigma: How the Poles Broke the Nazi Code, 46.

  15. Porat and Naor, Ha’itonut, 45–47, 56–57; “The Riegner Telegram,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-riegner-telegram (accessed January 7, 2020); “Wise Gets Confirmation,” New York Times, November 25, 1942, 10. Even with official confirmation, news of the genocide continued to appear on the inside pages of almost all US newspapers. Walter Laqueur, “The Riegner Cable, and the Knowing Failure of the West to Act During the Shoah,” Tablet, August 15, 2015, www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/192421/riegner-cable-shoah (accessed January 7, 2020).

  16. Yisrael Ben-Dor, “Shloshah Degalim Ve’oyev Ehad,” Maarakhot 463 (January 2015), 56–61.

  17. Billy Wilder, Five Graves to Cairo, 1943; “Five Graves to Cairo: Filming and Production,” IMDB, www.imdb.com/title/tt0035884/locations (accessed January 7, 2020).

  18. Bosworth, Mussolini, 321–331; Monelli, Mussolini, 208–237; Fraser, Knight’s Cross, 437–451; Weinberg, World at Arms, chap. 11; “Count Galeazzo Ciano Executed,” World War II Graves, ww2gravestone.com/count-galeazzo-ciano-executed (accessed January 8, 2020); “Italy,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/italy (accessed January 8, 2020).

  19. Bierman, Secret Life, 193–232.

  20. Ranfurly, To War, entries from November 16, 1942, to May 13, 1944. Ranfurly does not mention the rumors about the nature of Eisenhower’s relationship with Kay Summersby, which remained a subject of controversy long after their deaths.

  21. Brigadier John Tiltman, 43–45; Michael Smith, “Bletchley Park, Double Cross and D-Day,” in Smith and Erskine, Action This Day, 280–281; Maurice Miles, “Japanese Military Codes,” in Hinsley and Stripp, Codebreakers, 283–284. On Rommel’s plans, cf. Fraser, Knight’s Cross, 460–468.

  22. Fraser, Knight’s Cross, 457–554. On the debate on Rommel’s role in the failed plot, see Reuth, Rommel, 165–222; Beckett, Rommel, chap. 6.

  23. New York Times, June 6, 1944. The front page has a three-deck lead headline on the landings in France, beneath which is a one-column headline in much smaller type devoted to the fighting in Italy and a similar headline for Roosevelt’s radio address.

  24. HW 40/75, CXG 4, from Quirinal Rome, July 29, 1944, referencing cable from 92,700, July 22, 1944.

  25. HW 40/75, “Penetration of Diplomatic Presences by SIM/CS,” September 7, 1944, based on cable CX 32619, August 14, 1944; C/7599, September 18, 1944. One of these refers to the second agent as 32,000; the other refers to the same agent as 32,700.

  26. US NARA, RG 226, Entry 108B, Box 306, “Penetration of Diplomatic Premises by SIM CS Prior to the Armistice,” August 14, 1944; Entry 171A, Box 59, “Report on the Penetration Activities of the ‘P’ Squad of the Italian Military Intelligence Service, Counter Espionage Section.” An American cover note is dated January 31, 1945, but the report itself is undated and may have been written before the August 14, 1944, report. The reports indicate that the P Squad had little success penetrating the German and Spanish embassies but succeeded against the Japanese embassy.

  27. I am grateful to the staff of the US embassy in Rome in 2017 for historical material on the buildings and for a tour of the grounds.

  28. De Risio, Servizi segreti, 22n1. In “Report on the Penetration Activities,” former NCOs of the P Squad were able to recall the names of two contacts within the US embassy: Mario Bosi, a footman, and Paesano, a messenger for Fiske. Paesano may be a nickname or codename. In the full Italian transcript of a 1970 BBC interview, the wartime head of SIM, Cesare Amè, stated that four Italian employees of the embassy collaborated with the P Squad. He named one of them by the surname Gherardi. NCML, David Kahn Collection, DK 69/19. Kahn (Codebreakers, 472) gives the full name as Loris Gherardi.

  29. These were the official names of the codes. See “The Compromise of the Communications of General Barnwell R. Legge, US Military Attache to Switzerland,” Christos Military and Intelligence Corner, https://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-compromise-of-communications-of.html (accessed September 17, 2015). NSA OH-17-82, Kullback, 65, refers to the higher-level code stolen in Rome as “MI-10,” meaning version 10 of the Military Intelligence Code. Frank Rowlett likewise later referred to the theft of “military intelligence code No. 10.” See NCML, NSA OH-01-74, Oral History Interview with Mr. Frank B. Rowlett, 21. HW 40/91, ULTRA/POP/JMA/508, translated May 11, 1945, text of message from January 22, 1942, refers to the theft of the US “intelligence” and “secret” codes; “secret” here is a translation of “confidential.” David Kahn, in Codebreakers, 472, and in “The Black Code,” Quarterly Journal of Military History 18, no. 1 (2005), 37, says that the Military Intelligence Code was commonly known as the “Black Code” after the color of the binding. Other writers have used the same name. While a source for this may exist, I have not seen it. The State Department did have a Brown Code and a Grey Co
de, named for their bindings, but the Military Intelligence Code was a War Department system. The US military attaché in Rome until 1941, Norman Fiske, wrote to Kahn, “I have never heard of a ‘black’” code. (David Kahn Collection, Kahn-Fiske correspondence, Fiske to Kahn, May 24, 1964.) I have therefore refrained from using the term “Black Code.”

  30. “Report on the Penetration Activities,” 7. The report gives the timing of the operation only as “prior to the entry of the United States into the war.” Amè (Guerra segreta, 96), in his 1954 memoir, gives the timing as “in the days immediately preceding” the US entry into the war. Various accounts have given more specific dates, some based on questionable reasoning. I have not seen a basis for a date in a contemporary document. As discussed below, therefore, the exact date remains unknown.

  31. Martin S. Alexander, “Safes and Houses: William C. Bullitt, Embassy Security and the Shortcomings of the US Foreign Service Before the Second World War,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 2, no. 2 (1991): 194–203.

  32. US NARA, RG 457, Entry 9032, Box 1384, File NR 4400, “Report of Special Committee to Investigate Security of State Department Communications,” June 26, 1941. I am grateful to Christos Triantafyllopoulos for sharing this file.

  33. US NARA, RG 457, Entry 9032, Box 1384, File NR 4400, “Summary Report of Committee Appointed to Resurvey Cryptographic Systems Employed by the Department of State,” January 14, 1944. The committee began its work before the end of 1943.

  34. CD, October 31, 1941.

  35. HW 40/219, “Draft: The Italian ‘Y’ Service Organisation.” I am grateful to Brian Sullivan for sharing this document and to Ciro Paoletti for a personal guided tour of SIM sites in Rome.

  36. NCML, David Kahn Collection, Kahn-Fiske correspondence, Fiske to Kahn, May 24, 1964.

  37. Cavallero, Diario, 297, entry for December 22, 1941; USSME, “FRONTE CIRENAICO: Rilievi sulle operazione britanniche ed elementi informative tratti da un rapporto di un osservatore Americano,” December 23, 1941, N-3/520/B; HBF B39 F8, Cable 406, December 18, 1941.