SPIES: SUCCESS AND FAILURE

Press, 7 April 1979, Page 17

SPIES: SUCCESS AND FAILURE

Hitler’s Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War 11. By David Kahn. Hodder and Stoughton, 671 pp. $23.05. Ultra Goes to War: 7he Secret Story. By Ronald Lewin. Hutchinson. 399 pp. $19.05. (Reviewed by Michael Pugh) ah- StOrians may well de cide that the Allies won the Second World war not because they possessed moral superiority over the Germans, but USe , their Political ideologies $ more effective intelligence organisations. of course good intelligence is no substitute for power A? Lewin constantly remarks in his ?<fu° un s th - e Bntlsh Ultra Secret, tt)e battle is the pay-off.” But ob\ .ously the value of intelligence, as v anous authors have lately shown, should not be underestimated* „JL Was simply that the British col i,d read high-level German signal j e nc °ded by Enigma machines. Allied intelligence out-performed the German on almost every count. The myth of the Nazi State, which still seems to attract the cretinous today, Projects a reputation for being efficient, ruthless, thorough, purposeful and smart. In reality, except in the professional army, it was inefficient, srovenly, and riddled with every kind of Corruption. David Kahn, author of a book on the American codebreakers, has written an exhaustive, at times exhausting, account of German intelligence. Were it not for some indescribably boring chunks of suffocating detail it would be a masterpiece. Kahn not only investigates intelligence at all levels, from prisoner interrogation to B-dienst cryptology, he makes extremely useful points about the German performance. He. stresses, for example, that intelligence in the German military machine commanded low status. It was always subordinate to the operational brstnches of the army. Yet the intelligence services closest to operations delivered the best results. In one or two areas, intelligence work for immediate tactical use reached high standards — notably Reichswehr field intelligence, air-photo reconnaissance and B-dienst cryptology. Experts like Colonel Rowehl, head of aerial reconnaissance, carved out careers of professional

distinction which could not be disregarded by superiors. The same cannot be said for strategic intelligence. The Nazis thought they had the war sewn up. They saw little point in long-term spying until thrown on the defensive in 1942. Numerous agencies involved in the work overlapped one another, their directors competing for power and influence. It resulted in a jerrybuilt apparatus which lacked coordination. Consequently “the jealous ministers, the arrogant party officials, ’ the proud warlords of the high commands all scrambled to bring their tidbits to the Fuhrer.” Of course organisational chaos served the Fuhrerprinzip admirably for it enabled Hitler to exert co~trol over a business of which he had no great expertise. And Hitler frequently only listened to information which pleased him. To some extent, Kahn neglects the style which the Nazis (and not solely Hitler) had created. Nazism offered a great deal of negativism and destruction, but little by way of positive content other than the vaguest of principles: ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer. Nazism really amounted to an impuslive style of political machination which provided ■no guidance as to how to run a state, let alone a war. So war developed in the same way that Nazi thugs

promoted their own interests — through a series of stabs in the back. Blindness to the requirements of total war is nowhere better illustrated than in the utter incompetence of German intelligence about the Soviet capacity to survive a blitzkrieg. In one of the case studies at the end of the book Kahn spells out how the Germans simply neglected to ask vital strategic questions about Russian manpower and industrial reserves.

In other studies, Kahn discusses the similar intelligence failings which attended the Allied invasions of North Africa and Normandy. These provide valuable insights from the German viewpoint of these strategic turningpoints in the war. Incidentally, Kahn shows that Hitler kept divisions in Norway and Denmark throughout the Normandy invasion not because he believed the Allies would try to land in Scandinavia, but because he regarded Norway as the Reich’s mineral el dorado.

It is a sound and weighty work, profusely illustrated with examples — though many of the details could have been spared and the occasional resort to James Bondish style sits oddly with the academic solidity. Ronald Lewin has also written an excellent book. A little ragged and repetitive at times, it nevertheless draws together all the Enigma-Ultra threads woven in the books bv Captain Winterbotham, R. V. Jones and Patrick Beesly. The best thing about Lewin’s work, is its comprehensive assessment of Ultra research to date. To some extent his distance from the events (he was not personally involved in the intelligence war) enables him to provide a useful perspective. He shows clearly in a section on the Battle for France that Ultra intelligence could not outweigh the lack of Anglo-French material resources. Valuable too, are Lewin’s use of Ultra signals which he read in the Public Record Office. The sooner more of the signals are made available to researchers the sooner we will be able to reconstruct more accurately the course of individual battles. It would be interesting to know, for example, exactly what signals were fed to Freyberg on Crete — and how they were presented to him. Would he have disposed his forces more suitable had he been told specifically about the source of Ultra Secret intelligence?