They [the Turkish leaders] thought Turkey’s turn would come next . . . the common cause would be better served by Turkey remaining out of the war until her deficiencies had been remedied. They felt concerned lest the Russians should attack them if Turkey became involved in a war with Germany.48
It was now clear that in the uneasy months that followed the Phoney War, events were moving too swiftly for the British response to be anything but hastily reactive, and based on hope rather than fact. The part played by the BJs in bringing some hard information out of the chaos reigning in the eastern Mediterranean can only be guessed at, since none have been released. But Hinsley refers frequently during this period to ‘neutral diplomatic intercepts’, which suggests they were available to those in the FO seeking to formulate British foreign policy towards Turkey. However, secret intercepted neutral traffic can affect policy only when the receiving government has some scope to take initiatives and set priorities. When nothing, or too much, was happening, such traffic played little part in the policy making process. It was to be another two years therefore before BJs significantly aided Churchill and the FO.
Moreover it is difficult to exaggerate the intense fear aroused by Germany’s military successes in this period. Millions and millions of Europeans felt (and many were) individually threatened by Hitler. All our hours had come in the summer of 1940, and despite the Battle of Britain it was to be nearly two years before fear of Nazi aggression could finally be dispelled. Because of this the FO continued to target Turkey in the months that followed, and Turkey constituted a major part of the Southern Department’s workload. Diplomats there expected Germany to attack Turkey, while the Yugoslavs expected Germany would insist they join the Axis. The Turkish army had a million men called up and reservists amounting to another 1.5 million. Their purpose was clear: to keep all comers at arm’s length.49
On 1 March Churchill wrote to Eden: ‘The obvious German move is to overrun Bulgaria, further to intimidate Turkey by threat of air attacks . . . after which Turkey can be attacked or not, at their hostile convenience.’50 Churchill noted a growing pessimism in Turkey, which he must have derived principally from reading the Turkey-related BJs of the period.51
Hitler had been keeping a wary eye on Turkey through his own intercept reading, but had concluded that an invasion of the country, as a preliminary to an assault on Egypt, was possible but difficult and ultimately pointless. He correctly assessed the geographical and socio-economic factors discouraging an invasion of Turkey. But Churchill’s intercepts could give little indication of the way Hitler’s mind was working, and then only at second or third hand through the reports of Balkan and Japanese diplomats to each other or to their respective foreign ministries.
On 6 April 1941 Germany attacked Yugoslavia and Greece instead, and stirred up trouble in Iraq and Iran. Churchill wrote to Eden: ‘We have no power . . . to avert the fate of Greece unless Turkey and/or Yugoslavia come in, which seems most improbable.’ The loss of the Balkans would be ‘by no means a major catastrophe for us, provided Turkey remains honestly neutral’.52 Three days later Hitler gave Halder his views on Italy, Spain, France and Turkey, for on 10 March he noted: ‘Turkish attitude not clear: ?bribed by British.’53 Two days later I·nönü told Hitler: ‘[Turkey] cannot allow her sacred right to inviolability to be judged from the point of view of the victory of any foreign country.’54 The same day he refused likewise to commit Turkish friendship to Britain, while German aircraft were already arriving in Turkey’s neighbours’ airfields, in Syria and Iraq.55
The next day Churchill wrote rather disingenuously to Eden in Ankara, where he had been sent to sort out the confusion caused by the Germans’ invasions of Yugoslavia and Greece: ‘Turkey requires stimulus and guidance as events develop. No one but you can combine and concert the momentous policy which you have pressed upon us and which we have adopted.’56 On 18 March Eden met Saraçoğlu in Cyprus and Dalton noted that the Turks were complaining about non-delivery of the arms promised to them. On 23 March the Greek army capitulated, and Turkey broke off talks with the Yugoslavs, whose government had temporarily capitulated to the Germans.57 Not everything was going the Axis way, because on 26 March the Italian navy suffered a major defeat at Cape Matapan, thanks to Dilwyn Knox’s achievement in breaking a new Italian naval cipher at Bletchley Park.58
Eden was not doing well in his approaches to the Turkish leadership, so on 27 March Churchill himself wrote to I·nönü: ‘Surely now is the time to make a common front from which Germany will hardly dare assail.’59 The same day, the Serbians having rebelled against the Axis, Churchill wrote to Eden in Turkey:
This is Turkey’s best chance of avoiding war . . . the Germans may . . . turn their whole striking force rapidly against Turkey in Thrace . . . There have been suggestions of this in various telegrams . . . The mass of Turkish troops gathered in Thrace would soon be driven back in confusion upon the Chatalja lines and the Bosphorous . . . The Turks’ greatest danger is to be taken on alone jammed up in Thrace.60
Turkish involvement seemed to be reaching crisis point. By the end of the month, GCCS provided evidence of Germany gearing up to attack Russia, Churchill had watched Germany overrunning Yugoslavia, invading Greece, and defeating both Greeks and British there, all in the hectic space of twenty-four days. None the less, he told Roosevelt that Britain would be content if Turkey remained neutral.61 But informed sources were by now confidently awaiting a German attack on Turkey.62 On 8 April Halder noted ‘The Balkan campaign begins.’ By 11 April Belgrade was a mass of ruins.63 Yugoslavia capitulated on 21 April. On 25 April Turkey signed a trade agreement with Germany. Four days later the COS thought Germany would continue through Greece, across the islands and invade Turkey. On 24 April Raschid Ali of Iraq appealed to Germany for help against advancing British forces.64 On 26 April Churchill thought the war may spread to Turkey and, on the last day of the month, with Rommel on its border pounding Tobruk, he concluded that ‘British failure to win Egypt will force a decision on Turkey.’
The pace of events in the Mediterranean was astounding, and Germany was still making the running. On 22 April a War Office appreciation noted that the Turkish army had been mobilised for many months, Turkey and Germany were talking trade, and many German businessmen were spending time in Turkey.65 It was thought probable that Germany would force transit of her troops on the Turkish government and would then occupy Syria and thus isolate Turkey.
It can be seen that the War Office, through General Headquarters, Middle East, had a distinctive view of Turkey’s potential to bolster the inchoate British military and diplomatic reactions to German aggression in the Mediterranean: on 30 April, the day the BEF finished its evacuation of mainland Greece, one option the chairborne soldiery considered was ‘based on a hostile Turkey’. They, like the rest of the world, were paralysed by the speed of German armour through mountainous Yugoslavia and Greece, and despite the equally poor state of the roads in Turkey they thought the Germans would achieve 20 miles a day there if they were to invade Anatolia (seen as more probable than Thrace).66
By May the Turkish government had agreed with von Papen’s offer to negotiate with the Germans. The same tough bargaining the Turks used against the British was now brought to play against the Germans.67 In Greece the British, close to collapse, asked the Turks to occupy the islands of Chios, Mytilene and Samos, a provocation against Greece as well as a protection against the Germans. The Turks understandably said no. Instead, the Germans occupied the first two on 5 May and had completed their grip on all the Aegean islands a week later. Churchill told Roosevelt about his growing pessimism over Turkey, and on 12 May the Turks announced they could not under current conditions commit themselves to friendship with Britain. On 4 May, with BJ reading before him, Churchill reminded Roosevelt that the attitude of Spain, Vichy, Turkey and the Middle East may be finally determined by the outcome of the struggle off Turkish coastal waters.68
The Turks had offered to mediate between the Allies and
Axis over Iraq, but Churchill wrote to Wavell: ‘There can be no question of accepting the Turkish offer of mediation.’69 This offer, if accepted, would have substantiated her neutrality claims, which was not at all what Churchill had in mind. On 8 May Luftwaffe aircraft landed at Mosul, in Iraq, and three Heinkel HeIIIs came in to land at Baghdad on 12 May, though one was shot down in error. They were joined by Italian formations on 17 May. This Axis effort, staged via Vichy and Syria, proved too late to sustain Raschid Ali.
On 20 May Germany had moved significantly closer against Turkey by the invasion of Crete. Churchill read an Enigma intercept providing a complete picture of exactly where the Germans intended to land there and wished to send the intercepts raw to Gen Freyberg, C-in-C British Forces Crete, but was overruled.70 ‘Had the Germans learnt that Britain was decrypting the Enigma messages, the single most important British advantage of the war would have been irretrievably lost.’71 On 18 May Ribbentrop offered ‘frontier rectification in return for transit facilities’ to Turkey. The next day Churchill learned that the Iraqi situation was not secure and that a big German movement into Syria was impending.72 Churchill told Roosevelt that the fate of Turkey hung in the balance, and Turkey told the British on 21 May that she was not ready to resist Germany. On 24 May Vichy asked for transit facilities for reinforcement of her garrisons through Turkey to Syria.73 In Berlin on 25 May Oshima predicted a German advance towards India via Turkey and the Middle East.74 On 30 May Crete fell and Germany acquired much British war matériel.
Despite this, by 31 May Baghdad had surrendered to the British and GCCS was intercepting messages confirming the certainty of Operation ‘Barbarossa’. This period of German ascendancy in the Mediterranean concentrated minds at the FO on the possibility of a German victory which left Turkey’s role in the war a minor affair. During the subsequent two months’ events in eastern and south-eastern Europe swept Churchill’s plans for Turkey aside.
Although the DIR/C series for this period has not yet been released, Hinsley refers regularly to ‘Axis diplomatic sigint’. As early as the summer of 1940, the PM had required ‘authentic documents . . . in their original form’ to come to him through Maj Morton.75 Since many of these authentic documents were diplomatic decrypts, and many of these referred to or emanated from Turkey, it is reasonable to assume that Turkey was still a high priority for him, despite the many other calls on his nervous energy. The evidence of his involvement in BJs is provided in Hinsley. The FO tracked Hitler’s ambitions in the Balkans in detail through this period in case he decided to switch his combined forces back to invading Britain.76 But by June he was about to launch ‘Barbarossa’ instead.
By 1 June Crete had been cleared of British forces. The Luftwaffe was to be withdrawn from Iraq and the British and Free French advanced into Syria on 8 June. On 4 June Halder noted that Turkey was weaker because of British decline and a week later that the conclusion of a German pact with Turkey was likely. On 6 June von Papen was reported by a US source in Bucharest as hinting that the Italian-owned but formerly Ottoman Dodecanese could become Turkey’s after a German victory, and the Germans and Turks agreed to German matériel passing through Turkey towards Iraq and Syria, but not troops.77
The climax of German supremacy in the region arrived on 18 June when the Turco-German treaty of friendship was signed.78 The Turkish press was made to work hard to create an auspicious atmosphere for the treaty. The press gave the treaty a warm welcome and underlined that ‘Turco-German friendship was not a new thing’. But on 21 June Turkey refused passage of French troops across the country.79
This section has tried to present the bifurcated British reaction to German successes in south-eastern Europe from June 1941 till March 1942. Secret information available to the British was crucial at this time, and led directly (according to Hinsley’s account) to the striking British victory over the Italians at Cape Matapan. Unfortunately the actual messages for the earlier period have not yet been released, and consequently reliance is confidently placed on Hinsley’s account of these months of the war in the Mediterranean.80
Churchill’s Secret Intelligence
Churchill was already receiving the intercepts he needed to mastermind the British war effort in the eastern Mediterranean, and ‘to play the Turkey hand’: by 24 June 1941 the first DIR/C came on stream and is available to the historian.81 In London the service ministries were now receiving Enigma but only summaries of BJs, while the FO studied BJs but had no access to Enigma/Ultra until later in 1943.82 Churchill of course had both, but would not allow anyone else, including those on his private staff, John Colville for instance, to see them. Since there was overlap in content and a complementary aspect to the two different sources of information, it can be seen that Churchill was putting himself in an unrivalled position as Britain’s warlord: a position he did not intend to share with anyone. It was an impressive example of the need-to-know principle. He made most effective use of his personal resource from mid-1941 to mid-1944. After D-Day his role in war planning was diminished, but BJs remained vital reading to him and others planning whether and how to drop atomic bombs on Japan and thereby finish the war. In this early period, however, his frequent annotations, instructions to ‘C’ and others on cipher security, concern for the battles being waged on the Eastern and North African fronts and at sea, all show that his use of intercepts was a crucial factor in his conduct of the war, and his attitude to the neutrals.
On 27 June GCCS broke the German Abwehr Russian Front code. The very next day Churchill was upset at not having been shown a document from Hut 3, despite two copies going to Maj Morton, and protested directly to ‘C’ who offered to ‘submit all naval material to you in future . . . if you so direct.’ The PM replied, ‘Yes, if not pure routine.’ The document was in fact an account of the German admiral commanding U-boats [Adm Doenitz]. Churchill’s appetite for authentic detail was insatiable. Two days later he asked Hut 3 via ‘C’ to say whenever possible tonnage and whether northbound or southbound ‘of ships in the Mediterranean’. On 26 June Hugessen reported that the Turks in general and Saraçoğlu in particular were ‘in a very touchy frame of mind’ and Churchill, who was making his pitch towards Russia, despite Turkish sensibilities, was discreetly told by the FO to moderate his newly pro-Soviet speeches. But in Ankara Menemencioğlu told Hugessen Turkey did not want another treaty with Britain when ‘the whole world was bound by treaties to maintain peace with Turkey’.
On 2 July a Soviet–Japanese neutrality pact was signed. The next day Halder noted: ‘Germans will advance through Anatolia to Syria, concentrating her forces in Bulgaria . . . there will be political pressure on Turkey to grant German transit facilities.’83 On 6 July Oliver Harvey noted in his diary: ‘Our slowness is having a devastating effect on Turkey, on USA and on all our friends.’
By 11 July the American State Department protested to Turkey over her supplying chrome to Germany and so wanted to cut off US supplies to Turkey. The FO, with its own agenda, took a different line. Britain would sell on Lease-Lend to Turkey, to save dwindling gold reserves. George Clutton noted that the ‘USA incensed by Turco-German Pact’.84 Technicians and experts were reluctant to be seconded to Turkey in case the country was invaded – and their firms were reluctant to release them. The FO made much play of the close ties between the two countries: ‘we more or less run their air force’. Eden briefed Halifax on Turkey.
On 15 July a report to Ankara by the Turkish ambassador in Moscow on the attitude of Turkey to the German-Russian conflict, was intercepted by the Germans and shown to Hitler.85 Six other Turkish intercepts were passed by Hitler to Goebbels. A German descent on Turkey appeared imminent.86 Few doubted he could do it, but Hitler himself began to doubt if it was worth doing when he could get so far without such a dangerous extension of his supply lines.
On 24 July, in London, Harvey noted in his diary ‘an encouraging telegram from Ankara’. Turkey wanted to talk to Britain and was anti-German. Though Eden had always backed the Turki
sh front, nothing came of the Turkish approach. The next day von Papen reported the Turkish-speaking Azerbaijanis were stirring, and Hitler learnt from an intercept that the five-week-old Turco-German treaty meant nothing to Turkey.87
Stalin was only slowly waking up to the fact that his countrymen had the fight of their lives on their hands. On 28 July he told I·nönü he had no territorial interest in revising Montreux, and put Turkey aside for the time being. On 2 August, an Italian diplomatic decrypt showed that the Italians were suspecting that Germany had been talking to the Persians about the territorial expansion of Persia in the event of a Soviet collapse.88 On 6 August Eden complained to the Persian government about thousands of German spies – ‘tourists’ – in Persia. Presumably they came via Turkey, which had become the international espionage centre of the world. Six days later the Italian diplomatic service, decrypted at Bletchley Park, quoted Raschid Ali as believing that the Persian government was ‘substantially favourable’ to the Axis and would throw off the mask as soon as German troops appeared in the Caucasus.89 The possibility of a German attack on Turkey had also been reported in September 1941 by A-54, a well-placed Czech agent working for the Abwehr in Vienna.90
In Berlin Ribbentrop did not share his master’s determination to keep Turkey. He set up a committee to exploit panturanism, while guaranteeing Turkish territorial integrity. Meanwhile his underlings were carrying out a number of subversive activities throughout the Middle East.91 If Turkey made light of her recent treaty with Germany she also remained suspicious of both Russia and Britain.92 On 22 August an Italian diplomatic decrypt reported that Germany was continuing to transport arms and ammunition to Iran via Turkey. The next day Hugessen in Ankara reported that Turkey was considering building a lorry route through Anatolia to help the process.93 Churchill told Stalin on 29 August: ‘We are trying . . . to provide for Turkey so as to bring her in on our side.’
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