Churchill's Secret War

by Denniston, Robin

  . . . encompass 14 sections: the first department consists of 3 German and 1 Italian section; the second department – French, Spanish, (C% Scandinavian) Arabian, Turkish, Russian and English sections; the remaining sections – Counter-Intelligence, photographic and officer [sic].

  The American cryptographer Howard Gardner devoted himself to decrypting Venona on a daily basis, to show his masters that the Soviet Union had major reservations about their western Allies, and about the shape of the postwar world. Given these preoccupations it seems unlikely that, even had he been given the opportunity, he would have devoted much care and attention to what was arriving from Allen Dulles in Berne.31

  Dulles later noted a connection with Cicero himself which led him to suspect a leak in British diplomatic security. He supplied a British diplomat in Berne with a Kolbe document which, he later suspected, brought about the Dashwood visitation to the embassy at Ankara, and a cessation of Basna’s activities at the ambassadorial residence. From these two sources derived the American scepticism of the integrity and competence of the British secret intelligence services and foreign service, which was to last throughout the Cold War.

  Given the traditional American caution with regard to European and especially Balkan affairs, and Roosevelt’s own preference for open diplomacy, it is probable that diplomatic decrypts did not figure so crucially on the agenda of top American foreign policy makers as they did of the British. None the less, the answer to the question, what did the Americans make of their share of the Kolbe/Cicero material, apart from the memories of Allen Dulles and Kermit Roosevelt, must remain unanswered. But the half that went to London provoked an unlooked for bonus for the diplomatic cryptographers there.

  London Assessments

  This section reveals for the first time how important the chance arrival of some Cicero material was to the British diplomatic cryptographers in Berkeley Street, London. This office had been working on the German diplomatic cipher nicknamed ‘Floradora’. This work had gone on since 1919. A partial breakthrough occurred in February 1942, helped by the American cryptographer Maj Solomon Kullback at Arlington.32 The chief diplomatic cryptographer in London, Alastair Denniston, had coincidentally received the daily keys for Floradora from the British consul in Lourenco Marques. Although Floradora was diagnosed as unbreakable before the war, at least three factors led to its solution in early 1944. These were:

  The basic book fell into our hands. [This must be the Lourenco Marques bonanza.] The second – close co-operation with USA. The third was SS work by an able ally who obtained first hand information and one page of figures from a German cipher officer.33

  By early 1944 some Floradora messages were being currently read, but a breakthrough occurred with the arrival of the Kolbe/Cicero material in Berkeley Street.34 The London-bound portion of this came from Dulles in Berne, supposedly to the head of MI6, Gen Sir Stewart Menzies, but in fact straight to the offices of MI6 where, in the absence of the departmental head, Felix Cowgill, it came directly under the scrutiny of the then head of the Iberian section of MI6 and a Soviet spy, Kim Philby. A rarely cited passage in his controversial memoir My Silent War35 details the moves he made to enhance his position within the secret service after spotting the value of the Kolbe/Cicero material. He went behind the back not only of his bosses, Felix Cowgill and Claude Dansey, but of the chief himself, ‘C’, to Denniston, who, he records, was extremely excited by what he was shown, and asked for more, which was duly forthcoming. He then confirmed to Philby that the telegrams ‘exactly matched intercepted telegrams already deciphered, and others, proving of the utmost value to his cryptographers in their breakdown of the German diplomatic code.’36

  HW1/2743 of 26 April 1944 contains a reference to these German diplomatic intercepts (including Cicero/Kolbe). A departmental note from Denniston to Menzies refers here to:

  . . . [a] special series called gunpowder . . . These contain what purport to be the close substance of German cipher telegrams relating to various countries, as obtained through a channel which has not yet been fully and finally tested. In a number of cases, however, it has been possible to exercise a definite check, and in these cases it has been found to be authentic.

  If the assumptions made here are right the ‘definite check’ is the comparison of Philby’s documents with those P.W. Filby and Denniston were working on a few hundred yards away. The ‘close substance’ or close paraphrase using the same key words ‘with many words identical with the actual message’ could be applied to the raw material which still eluded the cryptographers. It is noteworthy that HW1/2743 was given a particularly restricted distribution – in effect to ‘C’ (and so to Churchill) only, not even the FO, now revealed to Berkeley Street to be insecure, through Philby’s Cicero material. Indeed the FO had no part in any of this: Dedip was dealing direct with the PM, using Menzies as a sorting office.37

  It is unfortunate that the technical report supplied by Denniston at Philby’s request validating the material is not to be found in any files yet released, but even without it, it is legitimate to conclude that the Cicero material, which was processed by Basna for Moyzisch, assessed by Kaltenbrunner and Ribbentrop for Hitler after translation and enciphering from the German diplomatic cipher, then brought to Dulles in Berne where it was re-enciphered in the American diplomatic cipher before being sent to Arlington and Berkeley Street, provided the coup de grace enabling Berkeley Street at long last to read the German diplomatic cipher, Floradora. This may have been one of the causes of the breaking of Floradora by the British. While at the time that cryptographic achievement was the subject of much jubilation, the actual messages proved of limited use to Churchill now that the war had moved into preparations for D-Day.

  Thus in retrospect it can be seen that though Hugessen’s insecurity may have ranked as the FO’s greatest lapse before the defection of Burgess and Maclean and though the material his valet sold to Berlin was highly regarded there, the drama made no difference to the course of the war, as Kolbe hoped and Dulles claimed. The constantly re-ciphered FO telegrams, it is now clear led to the breaking of Floradora which was acknowledged as a great cryptographic success,38 but since the outcome of the war was no longer in doubt, and D-Day was only four months off, the achievement made absolutely no difference whatever to the military or the diplomatic front. Nor indeed, as has become apparent during this chapter, did the Cicero and/or the Kolbe material.

  This conclusion, similar to those reached in respect of the Adana Conference, the Dodecanese affair and the achievement of Turkish neutrality in 1942–43, together with questions of the second front and the possibility of a separate peace – between Italy and Britain, and between Russia and Germany – will be reviewed in Chapter 9. If the German diplomatic messages, broken in 1944, had been of real significance to Churchill’s conduct of the war, they would have appeared in HW1 between 2743 and 3785, where the series ends. In fact they are few and far between.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Conclusions

  There was no integration of the material except in [Churchill’s] head.

  Andrew Hodges

  This book has set out to answer the question how Churchill, the FO and the British COS used their intercept information to formulate and implement policy in regard to Turkey from 1942 to 1944. It has been shown that behind this question lies the unknown territory of counterfactual history – principally, what would have happened had Churchill not become prime minister and minister of defence in May 1940 and/or had not been a lifelong student of intercepted messages from foreign governments. But subsidiary questions also arise: did the FO produce sufficient, well-informed advice on Turkey for the Secretary of State and the minister of defence following the French collapse of 1940? If not, why not? Did the entrenched attitudes of FO officials of the interwar period unduly influence the advice their counterparts in 1941 offered the government in formulating policy towards Turkey? What were the relations between the FO and the ambassador and his staff at Ankara? What sor
t of information was (and more crucially was not) given by these officials to guide Whitehall with a true view of Turkish capabilities and intentions? Did ambassadorial insecurity in Ankara seriously affect the course of the war? Was the FO’s use of Dedip sufficiently sensitive and subtle given the volume of crucial information it was receiving from GCCS in Berkeley Street from 1942 onwards? Who in the FO was making real use of this valuable source, and why did it not lead to more positive proposals in regard to Turkey?

  In attempting to answer these questions, the investigation has focused particularly on the work of the diplomatic and commercial sections of GCCS at Bletchley Park until February 1942 and thereafter at Berkeley Street and Park Lane in London. The BJs these offices produced for Churchill and the FO came as the climax of a 25-year-long task of reading the diplomatic telegrams of all the major powers. The developing relationship between GCCS and its client ministries, as well as with its prime user, Churchill, proved an inseparable part of the answer to the question about the value set upon its product, and the use made of it, by all concerned with it.

  If these are some of the questions posed by the arrival of DIR/C at the PRO, a new range of counterfactual possibilities arise: what use, if any, was made not only by the FO of Dedip in 1941–44 in regard to Turkey but by the COS in 1943–44 regarding the feasibility of a second front in the Balkans launched from Turkish soil? Much is already known about how ‘Boniface’ was crucially employed by GHQ ME throughout the various Mediterranean campaigns of 1942–44, but a key operation in the Aegean in October 1943 has not hitherto received the attention it merits, and this is something this book has sought to rectify. In so doing the tactical importance of Boniface has been shown not to have been a decisive outcome of the Dodecanese assault, which was repelled by the Germans through superior skill. This is another example of the truism that battles, never mind wars, can never be won by superior intelligence alone. But had the Combined Chiefs of Staff really grasped the implications of what their intelligence advisers were telling them of the state of the German war effort would more attention have been given to the South of France landings and the Balkan Front, and less to ‘Overlord’?

  Such is the nature of historical speculation created by the appearance of Boniface and Dedip. It is clearly beyond the scope of this book which has concentrated on Churchill and on Turkey. This concentration has led to an analysis of Turkish diplomatic messages read by Churchill, and that in turn has led to the question what difference, if any, did this reading of those messages actually alter the course of the war?

  It has been said by sigint historians that the history of the Second World War must be rewritten – and perhaps has been rewritten – in the light of Enigma and Ultra. Against this received wisdom, my book takes a revisionist standpoint: despite Enigma/Ultra and Dedip, there is almost nothing to add to or subtract from the official historians’ account of the war, published in the early 1950s. These stand up well to renewed scrutiny, for their treatment of Turco-British relations without the benefit of Ultra.1 They describe what happened giving due weight to the priorities and the surprises of war in the eastern Mediterranean, to the demands of other theatres, in the Mediterranean and beyond, to the concerns of Churchill, Hitler, I·nönü; to the balance of advantages to both sides in having Turkey in or out of the war.

  What might have happened had the War Cabinet not known what it did from sigint is little more than a frustrating counterfactual exercise. But we now know what Churchill and the generals, the admirals and air marshals knew of enemy intentions and potential. We may conjecture that had they not had vital secret information from the airwaves they might have assessed these intentions differently, and prepared counter-offensives differently – and these alternative plans might have been less effective for being constructed on less authentic intelligence. But the facts are that they did read and react to Enigma and Dedip, thus (among many other things) delaying Operation ‘Overlord’ until there was every chance of final victory – and this requires no rewriting of history, just some acknowledgement of the value of sigint to war planners on the Allied side – acknowledgement all concerned gave freely at the conclusion of hostilities.2

  This book has shown how from diplomatic decrypts Churchill acquired valuable insight into why a conference on Turkish soil might be feasible in January 1943, and why later that year a successful offensive to retake the Dodecanese would have disproportionately large political implications for the whole Mediterranean sphere. These insights were based on secret knowledge acquired from intercepts of what neutrals, Turkey in particular, were thinking about the progress of the war, and how that thought could be usefully exploited. Diplomatic intercepts or reports – clandestinely obtained by Cable & Wireless in the case of messages originated in Ankara – did not provide instant tactical information but a broader context which was equally timely though not nearly so sensational. Churchill must have made direct use of it when the record is studied, but what did other readers make of it, and what might they have done differently had any of them something of Churchill’s understanding of this source?

  In the absence of any actual BJs in the FO files, and relying on the distribution lists in HW1, a definitive answer is impossible. The other readers were the Service Ministries, those in charge of political intelligence, the MEW, MI5, and so on. Possibly up to fifty people high in government would read them every day. They would also know who else read them and why. Those who derived some of the evident pleasure Churchill got from them would have found themselves remarkably, and indeed unnecessarily, well-informed about neutral hopes and fears in general, and Turkish neutrality in particular. To readers for whom Turkey was important – mainly at the Foreign Office – the BJs would have built up a consistent picture of how Turkish foreign policy was being conducted, which would have led them to doubt Churchill’s hopes before and after Adana. Had they not been so well apprised of Turkish intentions they might have shared his enthusiasm for a Balkan initiative. But any intelligent student of the progress of the war would have known that Allied forces were at full stretch elsewhere, and man for man, officer for officer, the Anglo-Saxons were no match for the Germans until after D-Day. So Churchill’s persuasive and sometimes hectoring conviction that he could personally get Turkey in on the Allied side in 1943 might still have fallen on deaf ears (as they did on the deaf Turkish leaders), in the Foreign Office, among the chairborne soldiery and in the rest of the Allied camp.

  On the basis of the files available this book has attempted to establish that the Southern Department of the FO was instinctively opposed to Churchill’s Turkish initiative. For over two decades it had been responsible for developing British friendship and trade with Turkey; it defended its right to look after Turkey partly because its restricted wartime role left little else on the agenda. The War Cabinet adopted the Eden line, and took the same view as the Southern Department, while after 1942 the COS had their minds on the western Mediterranean and never looked favourably on any Balkan initiative. The position of the Foreign Office at a time of total war was uncomfortable to say the least. All able-bodied men and women were being called up, or had already been; and working in a reserved occupation required justification to family, friends and neighbours. Several of the FO officials chiefly concerned with Turkish affairs had in fact served with distinction in the First World War 16 years before, as of course had Churchill and Eden. But a younger generation, George Clutton and Knox Helm outstanding among them, were too young to have borne arms. They would be distinguished from their older colleagues in one significant respect: they were not Old Etonians, or indeed former pupils of any of the leading public schools, and this despite the fact that none other than Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen opposed the merger of the diplomatic and commercial sections on the grounds that diplomats had ‘to fraternize with the governing class in no matter what country’.3 Such a merger would automatically have widened the social backgrounds of applicants. But the presence of such as Clutton and Helm in key positions in 194
1 testifies to the changes in recruitment procedures which the FO had already put in place, despite Hugessen’s doubts.

  This book, it can thus be seen, has been about how Churchill, without much help from the FO, tried to bring Turkey into the war on the Allied side, first by sending emissaries, secondly by threats and promises, next by a personal visitation, and finally by starting up a personal war with Hitler in the Dodecanese in the autumn of 1943.

  Before reaching any conclusions it is worth stressing the limits on Churchill’s own powers, since in the early years of the war it was not Churchill but Hitler who made the running, just as in the latter years it was Stalin, not Hitler or Churchill. A book like this is, perforce, microcosmic. But standing in its shade are gigantic figures – Stalin, Roosevelt, Hitler, as well as Churchill – who actually created the situation in which Britain found herself in 1940, and again in 1943. Researching British diplomatic intercepts during 1943 powerfully reminds the scholar of the close connections between BJs and the great politicos of the world at war; one such reader was an obscure Turk of Albanian origin, Eleysa Basna, who while photographing BJs and other FO secret communications in Ankara, commented on the ‘strange kind of nightly colloquy I had with the great ones of the world whose names turned up in the documents: Roosevelt, Hopkins, Churchill, Eden, Stalin, Molotov’.4 This association over the airwaves of warlords, cipher clerks, bureaucrats and spies brings an unusual dimension to the study of diplomatic documents and prompts questions of the ‘what if?’ variety. The question posed throughout this book is, what if Churchill’s daily reading and hourly attention had not been focused on those issues and battles presented to him in the DIR/C files which followed him everywhere? How would those issues and battles have been handled and fought differently, and how would other issues and battles, not so presented, have been handled and fought differently?