by Max Hastings
Baron Ōshima, pictured here with Nazi foreign minister Ribbentrop, Japan’s ambassador in Berlin, and through Purple decrypts the Allies’ best secret agent of the war. (National Archives & Records Administration, 111-SC-285496)
ONSLAUGHT IN THE ARDENNES: Hitler’s last throw in December 1944, which ranks as one of the Allies’ great intelligence failures of the war. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)
SPIES AND COUNTERSPIES: ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan in 1941 doing what he liked best, talking to reporters. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)
Donovan’s OSS station chief in Bern, Allen Dulles. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. (Photo by George Skadding/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)
A priest gives solace to a hapless German ‘line-crosser’ before he is shot by an American firing squad in November 1944. (CriticalPast)
Ilya Tolstoy (centre) and companions on their fantastic OSS mission to Tibet. (Photo by Capt. Brooke Dolan, from National Geographic Magazine, August 1946, Vol. XC, No. 2)
THE EASTERN FRONT: Alexander Demyanov, key figure in ‘Monastery’, the most astounding Russian deception operation of the war, photographed in 1943. (From Pavel Sudoplatov, Special Tasks)
Col. Reinhard Gehlen, at the extreme right of the photo, the German intelligence chief who became a dupe of the NKVD. (© Ullsteinbild/TopFoto)
The occupied peoples of Russia were equally liable to be shot by either side. Peasants lead out a supposed traitor for execution. (From David Mountfield, The Partisans)
Germans prepare to inflict Nazi justice on a peasant. (From David Mountfield, The Partisans)
BLETCHLEY’S FINEST HOUR: Colossus, the world’s first computer, created by Cambridge mathematician Max Newman and Post Office engineer Tommy Flowers. Their creation enabled GC&CS to read some top secret traffic of the German Lorenz teleprinter, which employed an entirely different encryption system from Enigma. (Bletchley Park Trust/Getty Images)
Max Newman. (By permission of the Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge)
Tommy Flowers. (Courtesy of Kenneth Flowers)
The German Lorenz teleprinter. (Courtesy of Steve Montana Photography)
The young mathematician Bill Tutte, who by sheer brainpower identified the characteristics of the Lorenz, and deserves to be almost as celebrated as Alan Turing. (Trinity College, Cambridge)
R.V. Jones, the great British scientific intelligence officer, with his family at a 1945 Buckingham Palace investiture. (From R.V. Jones, Most Secret War)
Acknowledgements
Because this is my first book explicitly about intelligence, my foremost debts are to historians with specialist knowledge, who have been kind enough to give me assistance at various stages. Professor Sir Michael Howard OM CH MC, the official historian of British wartime deception, read and commented upon my draft manuscript, as he has done so often and importantly for other books of mine in the past. I also received valuable guidance from my old friend Antony Beevor, who copied for me Albert Praun’s important German sigint report, a real labour of love for a fellow historian; Richard Aldrich, David Kahn, Alan Petty, Christopher Andrew, Chris Bellamy and two of the secret world’s archivists, who in keeping with tradition wish to remain anonymous. None, of course, bears the slightest responsibility for my judgements and errors. My obligation is immense to Ralph Erskine, a fount of information about every aspect of wartime cryptanalysis, which is both a maze and a minefield for the uninitiated. He corrected a host of mistakes in my original draft, some of them egregious, and provided me with many source references and pointers; my text is immeasurably improved by his attentions. William Spencer at the British National Archives and Tim Nenninger at the US National Archives were wonderfully helpful, as ever, as was my dear friend Rick Atkinson, a peerless historian of the US Army. Like almost every author in the land, I give daily thanks for the London Library and its peerless staff. I must reprise my gratitude to Dr Lyuba Vinogradovna for researching and translating a mass of Russian material, and to Susanne Schmidt for doing likewise with German documents, notably from the Freiburg Archive. My old friend and colleague Don Berry read the manuscript as an expert editor who brought a non-specialist’s eye to my text.
Virtually all the wartime generation of intelligence officers are now gone, but in decades gone by I was fortunate enough to interview many men and women who served with SOE, OSS and MI6, together with some of their Continental agents and informants. Those encounters were significant, I think, in helping me to understand the nature of the secret war, the extraordinary challenges faced by those who waged it, together with the sacrifices made by those who became its casualties.
I never cease to thank my stars for the support of Michael Sissons and Peter Matson, my agents in London and New York respectively. My relationship with HarperCollins in Britain, and especially with Arabella Pike, Robert Lacey and Helen Ellis, has been unfailingly happy. It is a new delight to work with Jonathan Jao of HarperCollins in the US. My secretary Rachel Lawrence has endured my frailties and saved me from my follies for almost thirty years now. My wife Penny has served nearly as long a sentence in my company; I am fearful that she will soon demand parole, as a just reward for saintly behaviour.
Notes and Sources
It deserves renewed emphasis that scepticism is essential about all accounts related to intelligence in every nation, and thus to the memoirs of agents, official reports, published histories and even contemporary documents. Almost everyone who participated in the secret war lied, and sometimes it was their job to do so. This book represents an attempt to describe and explain what happened, but it would be absurd to pretend to vouch for its authenticity. The memoirs of Pavel Sudoplatov, for instance, make fascinating reading, and constitute almost the only available testimony about some Russian aspects of the wartime story. Parts of his narrative are undoubtedly true, but it is impossible to be sure which. The same applies to accounts given by many other former intelligence officers, Russian, German, British, American and Japanese alike. A mass of documentary material is available not only in the US National Archives in Maryland, but now also online: the post-war American TICOM studies of the radio intelligence struggle are especially relevant and useful.
A large body of material relating to British intelligence is accessible in the National Archives at Kew. This includes some MI6 papers, but the service’s own files have never been opened to any historian save its official chronicler, Keith Jeffery, a decade ago, and he was debarred from naming informants, even long-dead ones, in his published narrative. Because the available material suggests that MI6 – other than its subordinate branch, GC&CS – played a marginal role in wartime intelligence, defenders of the service make the point that only a limited proportion of its own contemporary archive has survived for scrutiny, by Keith Jeffery or anyone else. Thus, loyal secret servants argue, it is plausible that details of many good deeds performed by Broadway’s men have been lost. This is possible, but doubtful. My own scepticism about MI6’s performance is influenced by the number of informed contemporary witnesses who thought poorly of Stewart Menzies and his senior officers, not all of them as jaundiced as Hugh Trevor-Roper or Malcolm Muggeridge. The likes of Bill Bentinck, Alexander Cadogan and Nigel Clive had no axes to grind.
An estimated 13 per cent of SOE’s files survive, and have been available for some years to historians and students in the National Archives. Christopher Andrew’s authorised history of MI5 contains much fascinating information, and quotes some important internal documents. The Soviet intelligence archives have never been opened to researchers, but substantial quantities of material derived from them have been published in collections over the past two decades. We may assume that most of these papers are authentic, and they are certainly fascinating to historians. But there is an important caveat: Moscow has released documents on a highly selective basis, designed to show its wartime intelligence services in the best possible light. Thus, it is no more possible to achieve a rounded assessment of th
e GRU’s and NKVD’s activities from what modern Russia chooses to reveal than by studying a list of a racing tipster’s winners without reference to the also-rans. Moscow makes some ambitious claims for the achievements of its wartime codebreakers, but has thus far produced little documentary evidence to support them, beyond some decrypts of which the origins are unspecified; until it does so, it seems reasonable to attribute to nationalistic exuberance its professions to have matched Bletchley and Arlington Hall. Meanwhile a substantial body of Abwehr and German army staff intelligence assessments is held by the Military Archive in Freiburg, where – for instance – it is possible to read almost the entire output of ‘Agent Max’, composed by Moscow Centre for the delectation of Reinhard Gehlen.
In the notes below, the British National Archives are designated as UKNA; their US counterpart as USNA; Germany’s military archive is given as Freiburg.
Introduction
All aspects of Paun MS p.15 Friedman online archive, see Bibliography for access details
His transportation expenses’ Kahn, David Hitler’s Spies Hodder & Stoughton 1978 p.198
‘There has never been’ Jones, Dr R.V. Most Secret War Heinemann 1978 p.7
Chapter 1 – Before the Deluge
‘The Abwehr somehow’ Jones, Dr R.V. Reflections on Intelligence London 1984 pp.69–70
‘[MI6] values information’ Stewart Hampshire in Trevor-Roper, Hugh The Wartime Journals ed. Richard Davenport-Hines I.B. Tauris 2012 p.149 Apr 1943
‘Under our system’ Liddell, Guy The Guy Liddell Diaries ed. Nigel West two vols Routledge 2005 vol. I p.86
‘Practically every officer’ Usborne, Richard Clubland Heroes Constable 1953 p.1
‘Foreign intelligence services envied’ Sisman, Adam Hugh Trevor-Roper Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2010 p.90
‘The Air Ministry complained’ Jeffery, Keith MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service Bloomsbury 2010 p.287
‘On 25 July, a British delegation …’ This account is based upon that given in Ralph Erskine’s ‘The Poles Reveal their Secrets: Alastair Denniston’s Account of the July 1939 Meeting at Pyry’ Cryptologia 22.11.2006
‘We were daily inundated’ Cadogan, Alexander The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan 1938–45 ed. David Dilks Cassell 1971 p.158
‘Instead, however, Sinclair’s’ UKNA FO1093/127
‘I accepted the brutality’ Sudoplatov, Pavel Special Tasks Little, Brown 1994 p.62
‘at an ironmonger’s shop’ Foote, Alexander A Handbook for Spies Museum Press 1949 p.22
‘I think that from that time’ ibid. p.38
Chapter 2 – The Storm Breaks
‘instead of starting’ Jones Intelligence p.274
‘casual sources should not’ ibid. p.275
‘The Venlo incident’ UKNA FO1093/200-202
‘I think they [the German’ Cadogan p. 226
‘Although in the following’ Moravec, František Master of Spies Bodley Head 1975 p.52
‘the permanent under-secretary ordered’ Cadogan p.231 10.11.39
‘the real nigger in the woodpile’ Liddell vol. I p.51
‘we had a continuous stream’ Strong, Kenneth Intelligence at the Top Giniger 1968 p.55
‘Reg Jones cited’ Jones Intelligence p.216
‘can to some extent be’ Liddell vol. I p.32
‘Perfect intelligence in war’ Bill Williams in USNA RG457 Entry 9002 SRH 037
‘A German aeroplane came down’ Liddell p.57
‘complete plan of German invasion’ Cadogan p.245 13.1.40
‘So often I have’ Strong p.61
‘but he’s rather mercurial’ Cadogan p.248
‘Col. Handeeming’ Praun MS p.53; Friedman online archive, see Bibliography for access details
‘brilliant in every respect’ Behrendt, Hans-Otto Rommel’s Intelligence in the Desert Campaign Kimber 1980 p.59
‘carrying important lists’ ibid. p.219
‘Guidelines for the interrogation’ Freiburg Archive R606055 1/2 & 2/2
‘The officers (and most of the men)’ Lockhart, Bruce Diaries p.47 16.1.40
‘Like all South Africans’ Freiburg archive RW4/320-84 June 1941
‘MI6’s Major Monty Chidson’ Jeffery p.386
‘MI5 spurned torture’ Liddell p.98
‘Naval Intelligence Division interrogators’ McLachlan, Donald Room 39: Naval Intelligence in Action 1939–45 Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1968 p.176
‘the War Office’s director’ Strong p.69
‘our “intelligence” gives nothing’ Cadogan p.318
‘Little or no reliance’ Aldrich, Richard Intelligence and the War Against Japan Cambridge 2000 p.37 6.1.41
‘In other circumstances’ Sukulov-Gourevitch, Anatoli Un Certain Monsieur Kent Grasset 1995 p.117
‘was composed almost entirely’ ibid. p.129
‘Writers of thrillers’ Muggeridge, Malcolm The Infernal Grove Collins 1973 p.117
‘following the interrogations’ Strong p.94
‘I am forever discovering’ Trevor-Roper Journals p.33
‘mind of a mounted spectator’ Sisman p.107
‘In the world of neurotic’ ibid. p.88
‘irreverent thoughts’ ibid. p.89
‘a team of a brilliance’ ibid. p.96
‘With the finest feel’ Kahn Spies p.228
‘The writer Cyril Connolly’ Langhorne, Richard ed. Diplomacy and Intelligence During the Second World War: Essays in Honour of F.H. Hinsley Cambridge 1985 Andrew essay p.31
‘He returned safely to Europe’ UKNAWO208/5542 SIR 1595, 1598
‘we soon became aware that’ Sisman p.119
‘on 28 March 1941 he told Szymanska’ Jeffery pp.381–2
‘this cannot be’ Kahn Spies p.187
‘Himmler in 1944 declared’ ibid. p.270
‘Leaders in a democratic system’ Handel, Michael ed. Strategic and Operational Deception in the Second World War Frank Cass 1987 p.119
‘The Y Service was the best’ Behrendt p.49
‘this incomparable source’ ibid. p.167
‘a mirror image of [MI6]’ Sisman p.117
Chapter 3 – Miracles Take a Little Longer: Bletchley
‘Stewart Menzies, knowing’ Jeffery p.332
‘whether or not Cryptanalysis’ ibid. p.335
‘Within a week I was’ Annan, Noel Our Age Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1990 p.223
‘It is the lawyer’ McLachlan p.343
‘It must be made’ UKNA WO208/3575
‘A neutral traveller’ UKNA WO169/18
‘It is piteous to find ourselves’ Jeffery p.401
‘My impression is’ Howarth, Patrick Intelligence Chief Extraordinary Bodley Head 1986 p.144
‘We no longer depend’ Strong p.98
‘The achievements of German’ Praun MS p.129
‘gave German commanders’ ibid. p.3
‘If he is to stay’ Hodges, Andrew Alan Turing: The Enigma of Intelligence Allen & Unwin 1983 p.26
‘I liked his sly’ Annan p.237
‘Do you have religious’ Hinsley, F.H. & Stripp, Alan Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park OUP 1993 Hugh Denham p.264
‘You’ve travelled a bit’ quoted Andrew essay in Langhorne p.31
‘On a snowy’ Lucas, F.L. in Enigma: The Battle for the Code Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1980 p.36
‘By Jove’ Jones, R.V. Intelligence and National Security 9 1994 p.2
‘It’s amazing how’ Budiansky, Stephen Battle of Wits Penguin 2000 p.114
‘almost total inability’ Budiansky p.159
‘The ideal cryptanalyst’ ibid. p.135
‘patience, accuracy, stamina’ Christopher Morris in Hinsley & Stripp p.243
‘When a new word’ Skillen, Hugh Enigma and its Achilles Heel Pinner 1992 p.48
‘I was about to return’ Baring, Sarah The Road to Station X Wilton 65 2000 p.93
‘William Millward recalled’ Millward in Hinsley & Stripp p.28
‘If not satisf
ied’ Calvocoressi, Peter Top Secret Ultra Cassell 1980
‘DOC NOTE, I DISSENT’ Jack Good in Hinsley & Stripp p.160
‘entirely dependent on Herivel’ Welchman, Gordon The Hut Six Story McGraw-Hill 1982 p.101
‘some Eastern goddess’ Winterbotham, F.W. The Ultra Secret Futura 1975 p.33
‘Built by the British Tabulating Machine’ Welchman p.140
‘It was like a lot of knitting’ McKay, Sinclair The Secret Life of Bletchley Park Aurum 2010 p.106
‘probable date of ending preparations’ UKNA HW1/3
‘the greatest disappointment’ Stuart Milner-Barry in Hinsley & Stripp p.98
‘CAS [Chief of Air Staff] How many hours’ ibid.
‘Many of the cryptanalysts’ Annan p.236
‘Cryptanalysts have to be handled’ UKNA HW14/13
‘It is a serious charge’ Ralph Erskine to the author 27.4.15
‘Despite the high tension’ Thomas in Hinsley & Stripp p.45
‘Its files record details’ UKNA HW14/43 15.7.42
‘There was much snapping’ UKNA HW14/11 Jan 1941
‘Although an excellent linguist’ UKNA HW14/13
‘Wren Kenwick is inaccurate’ McKay p.151
‘nineteen year-old mathematician’ Smith, Michael and Erskine, Ralph eds Action This Day p.104
‘It was acknowledged that’ Grey, Christopher Intelligence and National Security 28 no. 6 Dec 2013 pp.705–807
‘I had left as one of’ Bennett essay in Hinsley & Stripp p.38
‘devoted to the task’ Taunt, Derek in Action This Day p.82