The sacrifice of the torpedo planes, though, was not in vain. While the Zeros were occupied with them down near sea level, thirty-seven American dive-bombers from Enterprise arrived far overhead. They had traced their way to Nagumo's fleet only because their commander, Clarence Wade Mc-Clusky, had cannily let himself be guided by a Japanese destroyer returning after a try at sinking a pesky U.S. submarine. When McClusky and his mates went into their screaming dives, the huge rising suns painted on the flight decks as aids to Japanese fliers gave the Americans perfect targets. McClusky's crew wrecked the Akagi and the Kaga. A second flight of dive-bombers, from Yorktown, arrived almost simultaneously and concentrated on Soryu.
In less than five minutes the opportunity that had been slipping away from the Americans was turned into a flaming victory. Three of the four carriers were reduced to blazing hulks and later sank. As historian Keegan put it, "Between 10:25 and 10:30, the whole course of the war in the Pacific had been reversed." George Marshall called it "the closest squeak and the greatest victory."
The battle was not quite over. The Yorktown, only partially restored from her Coral Sea mauling, was further crippled by a flight of Japanese dive-bombers from the remaining carrier and was finished off by a submarine, which also sank a destroyer. Bombers from Enterprise exacted quick revenge. Her planes caught up with the retreating occupation force and sank the fourth carrier. Also, one cruiser was sunk and a second badly damaged.
Yamamoto still had a vast superiority in sea power, but with the only other two carriers of his fleet protecting the Aleutian landings, he knew he was defeated. He called off the Midway operation and sneaked back to home waters.
The one part of Yamamoto's overly complex plan that succeeded was his diversionary raid against the Aleutians. Ironically, his small victory there came about because Theobald, the American commander, refused to believe what his cryptographic team told him. Their decrypts warned that while the Japanese would bomb the American base at Dutch Harbor, they would land troops to seize Attu and Kiska. Theobald would not be swayed from believing the invasion would be against Dutch Harbor, and he positioned his ships accordingly. When Yamamoto's attackers did exactly what the decoders had forecast, Theobald's task force was in the wrong place by a thousand miles. It failed to prevent the Attu and Kiska landings.
Otherwise, the great surge of Japanese expansion was over. After Midway, despite a few abortive efforts to mount new drives, the war machine of the Rising Sun was put on the defensive.
"Midway was essentially a victory of intelligence," Nimitz later wrote. George Marshall added that as a result of cryptanalysis, "we were able to concentrate our limited forces to meet their naval advance on Midway when otherwise we almost certainly would have been some 3,000 miles out of place."
At a postbattle staff conference at Pearl Harbor, Admiral Nimitz singled out Joe Rochefort: "This office deserves a major share of the credit for the victory at Midway."
One result of the battle nearly caused disaster for the codebreakers. Along with accounts in the American press exulting over the Midway victory was a sidebar story that caused U.S. cryptographic teams consternation and dismay. The story's headline was NAVY HAD WORD OF JAP PLAN TO STRIKE AT SEA. Appearing in three large dailies owned by Roosevelt-hating Colonel Robert McCormick, the story related that navy commanders knew in advance about Japanese plans, the strength of their forces and the fact that a move against "another base" was only a feint. The gaffe could have cost the Americans their entire intelligence advantage over the Japanese. Investigations found that a reporter aboard American ships in the Pacific had been allowed to see U.S. intelligence summaries and had, with remarkable insensitivity, filed his account, to which equally obtuse censors had given approval. Whether because of this break or as the result of their natural precautions about cryptographic security, the Japanese did make changes in their codes that Allied codebreakers had difficulty in overcoming.
Countering New Drives on Port Moresby
Douglas MacArthur adopted a complex attitude toward codebreakers. His powerful ego and adherence to old army values caused him to project the image that reliance on such undercover chicanery was beneath him. In making his decisions he needed no other source of advice than his own superior brain. His sycophantic staff, revering him as "The General," followed by practicing a studied "negligent indifference" toward signals intelligence. Yet he was too shrewd a commander, and they were too intent on seeing him win, not to make use of the advantages the codebreakers provided.
After their escape from Corregidor in late March 1942, MacArthur set up his cryptographic team, together with an Australian unit and a British contingent from Singapore, as the nondescriptly named Central Bureau in Brisbane. His real attitude toward signals intelligence, as Edward J. Drea has pointed out in his book MacArthur's Ultra, was indicated by the fact that one of his first appeals to the War Department was for cryptanalytic support. In his study MacArthur as Military Commander, Gavin Long commented about The General, "The prescience with which he may at times seem to have been endowed was generally the outcome of the cracking of Japanese codes."
Intelligence informed him that the Imperial forces had decided on two new campaigns against Port Moresby. An overland drive would be made across the Papuan southeastern sector of New Guinea. In addition, decodes revealed that the Japanese would try to take the port in a new seaborne invasion.
The overland campaign was launched first. On July 22 the Japanese began unloading at Buna, on the northern coast of New Guinea, the army division that had been turned back in the Coral Sea battles. The troops faced a formidable obstacle: the Owen Stanley Range, thirteen thousand feet high and almost constantly immersed in rain clouds. The sole passage was by the Kokoda Trail, hewed through the jungle and up and over the mountains, so narrow that in places only men walking in single file could traverse it. The hot, humid climate and incessant pounding rain turned the trail into a seventy-eight-mile-long horror of ankle-deep muck and slippery roots, the scene of what Morison called "the nastiest fighting in the world."
The troops sent in by the Japanese were crack infantry, trained in jungle warfare, their supplies carried on the backs of New Guinea natives. Driving the Australian defenders steadily before them, they came within sight of Port Moresby. There the determined Aussies, aided by rushed-in American GIs, dug in and stopped the advance. The battle dragged on for days, then weeks, while Allied planes smashed Japanese attempts to replenish their troops. In the end, the starving, disease-ridden remnants of the Japanese force retreated back to Buna.
Yamamoto's new sea campaign against Port Moresby concentrated first on taking the anchorage at Milne Bay, on the southeastern tip of New Guinea. The Australians had a small garrison there and had constructed an airfield. Yamamoto wanted the airfield to provide air cover for his landings at Port Moresby.
Allied decodes informed MacArthur of this new threat. He quickly reinforced the troops at Milne Bay and had his new air commander, Major General George C. Kenney, organize his meager forces into as strong a defense as he could manage. The aggressive Kenney directed preemptive air strikes against Japanese airdromes at Rabaul and Buna, greatly reducing the number of planes they could send to protect the landing at Milne Bay.
Lacking the equivalent of the Allies' codebreaking, the Japanese expected only a minimal defense of the port. On August 24, 1942, they sent in a landing force composed of overage recalled reservists. When this group was shot to pieces and radioed for help, a special Naval Landing Force went in. They fared no better. After another week of bitter fighting, the Japanese gave up. The Melbourne cryptanalysts deciphered the Imperial Navy's order for the evacuation of Milne Bay.
Yamamoto's grand design of using Port Moresby as a base against Australia was frustrated. In contrast, MacArthur brought a new spirit to the Australian people. On his arrival he had found a nation cowering in fear of conquest. Some among Australian military leaders had been convinced they must be ready to surrender the continent's less
populated areas in the hope of holding the more populous parts. MacArthur rejected their pessimism, signaling his aggressive attitude by announcing that he meant to make his base of operations not in the relative safety of Melbourne or Brisbane but at Port Moresby. "We'll defend Australia in New Guinea," he proclaimed.
In view of MacArthur's successes at Milne Bay and Port Moresby, which supplemented the victory in the Coral Sea, the Aussies took heart that The General might well deliver on his promise.
11
USSR: Intelligence Guides the Major Victories
Histories of World War II generally leave the impression that military intelligence had little to do with the Soviet Union's defeat of Nazi Germany. The reasons given are instead the inexhaustible resources of Soviet manpower, the grit of the Russian people, the vastness of Soviet territory and the miseries of the Russian winter. Yet disclosures released to the public only in recent years have shown that in the Soviet Union, as elsewhere on the Allied side, secret knowledge of German intentions, plans and orders of battle informed the Soviet responses and, at crucial moments^ made the difference. While much of this information came from agents and spies, codebreakers also played their part.
The Soviets themselves became increasingly adept at conducting what they called razvedka, the gathering of intelligence from such varied sources as scouting parties, aerial reconnaissance, prisoner interrogation, reports from agents and partisans, electronic direction finding and the like.
In addition, their military intelligence benefited from two powerful political and ideological forces. One was hatred of Hitler and Nazism. The other was love of Marx and Communism. Together, these strong undercurrents kept a flood of diverse secret information flowing into Moscow to supplement their own razvedka operations.
The foremost source of intelligence reports delivered to the Moscow Central Bureau, which directed agents and volunteer informants, was a trio of transmitting groups in Switzerland that the Germans called Die Rote Drei, "the Red Three." While fierce debate still rages as to where the Red Three obtained their information, there is no argument that they supplied Moscow's bureau with staggering amounts of advantageous information drawn from within the highest circles of German society. The Red Three were prolific, their reports were most often accurate and their revelations pierced to the heart of the Nazis' military decisions.
Who were the individuals who made up this transmitting triumvirate? Heading up the first Switzerland-based group was a Hungarian, Sandor Rado, anagrammatically code-named Dora. A fervent Communist married to a fervent Communist, he was a paid Soviet agent. In Geneva he set up pro-USSR news agencies and then a successful mapmaking business that provided good cover for his covert operations. One of the uses he made of his cartographic skills was to prepare for his Russian masters a map showing the locations of all the munitions and armaments factories in Germany and Italy.
Rado combined forces with Otto Punter, a Swiss Communist who had organized a network of informants in Italy and Germany. His code name was Pakbo, an acronym of the principal places where he met with his confederates.
For a while Rado and Punter delivered their findings via courier, but in 1939, when the war came and Switzerland closed its borders, another devoted Communist, Ruth Kuczynski, a German woman code-named Sonia, arrived in Geneva. She had orders from Moscow to change Rado's modus operandi from couriers to radio. She subsequently recruited the owners of a radio repair shop to supply transmitters and leam Morse code.
Their teacher was an Englishman, Alexander Foote, a member of Sonia's group of agents. The second leg of the Red Three was formed when Foote was equipped with a newly built transmitter and moved to Lausanne to begin sending from there.
Unknown to Rado, another small network of Communist informants was also based in Geneva. Its head was a Polish Jew, Rachel Dubendorfer, code-named Sissy. She worked as a secretary in the International Labor Office of the League of Nations. In May 1941 Rado was ordered to meet with her and absorb this third leg of the clandestine groups serving the Soviets.
Into this web ventured the individual who became the most important informant of all. This was Rudolf Roessler, a German ruled not by Communist sympathies but by a strong Catholic faith and a consuming hatred of Hitler and the Nazis. The information he delivered to Moscow was of such importance that the Russians showered him with praise, medals and money.
What were the sources of the information transmitted by the Red Three? Rado and Punter depended on networks of agents and informants, as did Sonia. Sissy used her job in the International Labor Office to winnow out economic insights that were useful to the Soviets.
As for Roessler, he died in 1958 without ever revealing where his information came from or how he received it. His secrecy has left the door open for guesses, theories, myths and, in some cases, complete fabrication.
This much seems inarguable: during his life in Berlin, Roessler belonged to and was highly active in the Herren Klub, an exclusive circle of prominent Germans. The group included German officers who formed a conspiracy to dispose of Hitler and oust the Nazis, a cabal that became known as Die Schwarze Kapelle, "the Black Orchestra," picking up on the German secret service's shorthand for the clandestine organizations that kept the airwaves humming with the tunes of their illegal transmissions.
Roessler's antipathy toward the Nazis derived partly from having the successful and profitable theater business he had developed taken over by one of Hitler's henchmen. Roessler emigrated from Berlin to Lucerne, Switzerland, and established himself there as a publisher, primarily of anti-Fascist literature and of books banned by the Nazis. He began supplying the Soviets with bits of information that seemed to come from sources high up in German society, especially in the military. At first he followed a roundabout route, delivering his reports to an agent in Swiss intelligence who passed them on to the Soviets. Needing a proofreader for his business, Roessler hired Christian Schneider, not knowing that he was one of Sissy's band of informants. When Roessler and Schneider found they were two of a kind, they developed a new procedure. Roessler secured the information while Schneider acted as the go-between, carrying it to Sissy for wireless transmission to Moscow. It was agreed that Schneider would never reveal to his confederates in Switzerland that his material came from Roessler. All that Sissy, Rado and the others knew was that Schneider, who had been a minor informant, suddenly began delivering reports of great value and amazing timeliness. Even when Roessler's Moscow directors tried to order him to name his sources, he never responded. The Roessler-Schneider duo was given the code name Lucy because of their Lucerne location.
As to the identity of Roessler's sources, claims have been advanced for as varied a cast as top Nazi generals and even Hitler's close confidant, Martin Bormann. The CIA produced a paper advancing its theory. What matters is that Roessler's information was of decisive importance. Alexander Foote has written of it: "In fact, in the end Moscow very largely fought the war on 'Lucy's' messages—as indeed any high command would who had access to genuine information emanating in a steady flow from the high command of their enemies."
A Host of Other Informants
Lucy, Dora and others of the Red Three were far from the only sources dispatching secret information to the Soviets. One highly idealistic but only marginally effective source centered on two other members of the Herren Klub, Arvid Hamack and Harro Schulze-Boysen.
Hamack was a senior civil servant in the Reich Ministry of Economics. As told in Shareen Brysac's recent book Resisting Hitler, in his youth he studied at the University of Wisconsin, where he met Mildred Fish. When they married, she came to live with him in Germany and served as one of his anti-Nazi conspirators. While Hamack was pro-Marxist in his sympathies, he chose his dangerous course as much to alert Britain and the U.S. to the evils of Nazism as to help the Soviets.
Schulze-Boysen was a Luftwaffe lieutenant in the Reich Ministry of Aviation. A rebellious youth, he joined a revolutionary society and became editor of its newssheet, Gegn
er (Opponent). When the Nazis came to power, he made the journal more and more an anti-Nazi organ. He was seized by the secret police, thrown into an early concentration camp and tortured. His mother, from a high-placed family, got him released. He sought revenge by going underground and gathering around him a group of fellow dissidents. His job at the Aviation Ministry enabled him to obtain military information of value to the Soviets. He and his wife, Libertas, joined the Hamacks as conspirators in Die Rote Kapelle, "the Red Orchestra."
Until Germany went to war against the Soviets, the Harnack-Schulze-Boysen group turned their information over to Soviet runner-agents in Berlin. When the war began, they had to shift to the use of radio. Here they ran into troubles. The first transmitter the Russians delivered to them was defective; the second their inexperienced operator wrecked by connecting it to direct rather than alternating current. After early successes as informants, Hamack and Schulze-Boysen were largely reduced to aiding the cause by spreading anti-Nazi propaganda within Germany and trying to stir German factory workers to revolt.
A more effective section of the Red Orchestra was the network of informants led by Leopold Trepper, the code name for Leiba Domb, a Polish Jew who became a dedicated Communist. Trepper had served the Soviets in Palestine and France before being appointed resident director of the Russian secret service in Western Europe. Settling in Brussels, he took over a small nucleus of agents, developed his cover as a businessman marketing a line of raincoats and, as the Grand Chef, or "Big Chief," began building an espionage web. Moscow sent agents skilled in radio and code work to back him up. After the Germans overran Belgium in 1940, Trepper made Paris the center of his network. The successful raincoat business gave him the wealth to develop many useful friendships, including those with German officers. He kept a broad flow of information directed toward Moscow.
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