In the 1970s, a British television network made a series called “The World at War,” possibly the most comprehensive television history ever made about World War II. But it contains not one word about Bletchley Park, the primary British codebreaking operation of World War II. The reason is very simple: In the 1970s, information about Bletchley Park was still top-secret, since releasing this information would have risked compromising current espionage efforts. Thus, the existence of Bletchley Park was still a closely guarded secret in the early 1970s. But, after enough time had gone by, it was no longer necessary to keep these things confidential. Thus, in the decades since “The World at War,” much of the information about the era’s espionage (including code-breaking) has been officially declassified. Thus, historians today have somewhat more information to work with, in talking about the state secrets of that time. For example, we now know things that were once top-secret, and we now know how some of that information changed hands – while other parts remained protected. This post will try to use some of the now-declassified information, along with more traditional information, to tell the stories of spies and code-crackers in both world wars – especially World War II. But, in order to achieve a true understanding of the Second World War, it may help to consider the prior events of the First World War. The “Great War,” as it is sometimes called, had some spy stories that are fascinating in their own right – rivaling any others in their human interest. These juicy stories may help to shed some light on the later espionage of the Second World War – the conflict that most continues to fascinate people today.
Rear of the rebuilt British “Bombe” computer, used at Bletchley Park in World War II England
Establishment of British Secret Service Bureau, with early spying on Germany
Back in 1909, the British established their Secret Service Bureau, a military intelligence group. Abbreviating “military intelligence” to “MI,” they founded groups from MI1 to MI19. But the most famous of these are MI5 and MI6, since these are the only portions to have lasted to this day. In 1910, this Secret Service Bureau was split into two main sections: one dealing with foreign intelligence, and another dealing with domestic counter-intelligence. Prior to the establishment of this bureau, rival departments and military services had engaged in their own espionage efforts, with little or no consultation between the different groups. The biggest innovation of the Secret Service Bureau may have been that it was more centralized, allowing the different groups to share information at times. One branch of this famous bureau was the Secret Intelligence Service, better known today as “MI6.” In the years leading up to the First World War, they gathered information about the German military, particularly German shipbuilding efforts. This information would become particularly important, when the “Great War” eventually broke out in 1914.
William Melville, who established the British Secret Service Bureau (as described above)
Some anecdotes about the spy efforts of both sides, including the infamous Mata Hari
On the infamous Western Front, the Allies enjoyed an advantage in this area. This was because local civilians in France and Belgium were sympathetic to the Allies. This allowed the occupied territories to organize spy networks, which then passed on some key information to the Allied armies. But the Germans had one major spy, which was a Dutch exotic dancer named Margaretha Geertruida Zelle. She is better known today as “Mata Hari.” Unfortunately for the Germans, Mata Hari was caught and executed by a British firing squad in 1917. The British “MI5” proved successful at disrupting the few German spy rings in Britain. The British had known for a long time that some of these people were spies, but waited until later to arrest them. I can only guess at their reasons why. But Jules C. Silber continued to pass microfilm to the Germans. And, as Wikipedia puts it, “The British economic blockade of Germany was made effective through the support of spy networks operating out of the neutral Netherlands. Agents on the ground determined points of weakness in the naval blockade and relayed this information to the Royal Navy. The blockade led to severe food deprivation in Germany [and] contributed greatly to the collapse of the Central Powers' war effort in 1918.” (Source: Their page on the “History of espionage,” section on “First World War”)
Mata Hari, a Dutch exotic dancer who spied for Germany, and was executed by Britain in 1917
British eavesdropping on German radio signals, with pioneering codebreaking efforts
As this same page also notes, “Two new methods for intelligence collection developed over the course of the war – aerial reconnaissance and photography; and the interception and decryption of radio signals.[footnote] The British rapidly built up great expertise in the newly emerging field of signals intelligence and codebreaking.” (Source: Section on “Codebreaking”) Cables in the English Channel were cut by the British, to disrupt German communications with its spies in England. Thus, cables belonging to other countries were used instead, and often included messages in code. Neither Britain nor Germany initially had any organized efforts to decode and interpret any intercepted messages. But the British intercepted some German navy codebooks, which aided them in their codebreaking efforts. It seems that these efforts were run from a place called “Room 40.” The German fleets had a bad habit of radioing the exact position of each ship every day, including submarines. This gave the British a fairly detailed picture of German naval movements. There were early efforts at radio direction-finding as well, which the Germans believed to be more successful than they were. Thus, they may have still played a strategic role, despite their not being that effective in and of themselves. “Room 40” played a role in the North Sea, with the battles of Dogger Bank and Jutland. But its most important contribution was to intercept the “Zimmermann Telegram,” a German attempt to get Mexico embroiled in a war with the United States. When the telegram was released to the American government, it caused the desired uproar in America, and thus got the United States involved in the war. (Mexico never entered the war – but that’s a story for another post.) The British were also spying on the Americans themselves as early as 1915.
The original Zimmermann Telegram, before it had been either decoded or translated
Spy efforts during the Russian communist revolution, and during the interwar period
But, in 1917, there was a communist revolution in Russia. Thus, the British spied on the communists during the wartime “Russian Revolution.” They feared that a civil war would disrupt the Russians’ participation in the Great War. And this, as it turned out, is exactly what happened. Thus, the British spied on the Red side, and helped people from the pro-Romanov “White” side to escape from Soviet prisons. There was even a failed attempt on the life of Vladimir Lenin himself. The Russian Revolution went on after the First World War had ended in Europe. Thus, so did the British efforts to spy on the communist side of this conflict. Much also happened in the interwar period as well. As Wikipedia puts it, “The intelligence gathering efforts of Nazi Germany (1933-1945) were largely ineffective. Berlin operated two espionage networks against the United States. Both suffered from careless recruiting, inadequate planning, and faulty execution. The FBI [founded in 1908, incidentally] captured bungling spies, while poorly-designed sabotage efforts all failed. Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitic prejudices about Jewish control of the U.S. interfered with objective evaluation of American capabilities. Hitler's propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels deceived top officials who repeated his propagandistic exaggerations.” (Source: Section on “Interwar … Nazi Germany”) As this same page also notes, “The Soviet GRU (military intelligence), originating in 1918, started operating throughout the world. Communist sympathisers and fellow-travellers in groups aligned with the Comintern (founded in 1919 and operating until 1943) were also widespread.” (Source: Section on “Interwar … Soviet Union”) Thus, the interwar period would also prove important for the upcoming Second World War.
Sidney Reilly, a Russian-born British spy, who was executed by the Soviets in 1925
Creation of British SOE and American OSS, and sabotage efforts in Nazi-occupied Europe
Back in 1923, the United States had acquired a stolen copy of an Imperial Japanese Navy codebook. This helped them in their efforts to spy on Japan. The Japanese changed their codes, but the Americans soon cracked them anyway. When the war began in Europe, the Germans tried to help their future allies by sending them Enigma machines. Basically, this was a sort of primitive computer. This was initially a challenge for the Americans to crack, until they realized that it was the same kind of coding system being encountered in Europe. Thus, they eventually cracked this code as well, although the messages were still often decoded too late to be of any use. When World War II had begun, Churchill had developed a plan to train spies and saboteurs. This culminated in the Special Operations Executive (or “SOE”), which eventually involved the United States. The British recommended that the United States establish a similar project of its own. This led to the creation of the Office of Strategic Services (or “OSS”), the predecessor of the modern “CIA.” Direct sabotage efforts were successful in the occupied countries, partially because most of the locals were again sympathetic to the Allied side. There were also partisan resistance groups, such as the French resistance. These also served a vital role during World War II. The Allies had engaged in efforts to organize these groups, and to supply them with food and clothing – as well as money and weapons. These were among the most successful fruits of the foreign sabotage efforts.
Enigma machine, an early computer used for sending coded messages, and breaking the codes
Codebreaking efforts in the Pacific War, particularly between Japan and the United States
The Japanese had been using a code with its own name in the Japanese language. But, to the Americans, it was simply known as the PURPLE codes. But an American machine was able to replicate some of the settings of the aforementioned Japanese Enigma machines. This helped to speed things up a bit, and allow for more progress. But the Japanese Navy was using a completely different system, now known as JN-25. This would present its own problems for the Americans, although the Americans would eventually break this as well. At the time of Pearl Harbor, the United States had decoded the Japanese 14-part message before even the Japanese embassy in Washington had done so. This has been dramatized in the movie “Tora! Tora! Tora!” Throughout the war, German and Japanese cryptography was routinely read by the top Allied officials – including Dwight D. Eisenhower. But the Japanese believed that their PURPLE system was unbreakable. Thus, they made no efforts to revise or replace it – allowing the Americans to continue their eavesdropping activities throughout the war. By contrast, the United States had the famous Navajo Code Talkers. The Navajo Code was never broken, in part because the Japanese had little knowledge of this Native American language. I might also note that, back in the First World War, the United States had used the Choctaw Code Talkers in a similar way. They are obviously not as famous as the Navajo Code Talkers, but they still deserve to go down in history for their efforts. But back to the Second World War.
Navajo code talkers – On the Pacific island of Saipan, 1944
Lack of centralization in America, Bletchley Park in Britain, and counterespionage efforts
I should note that the Americans did not have a centralized intelligence service, of the kind that the British had earlier created. Thus, the United States Army and Navy both engaged in their own intelligence efforts, and even banned the OSS from operating in the Pacific theater. Franklin Roosevelt liked it this way, and got briefed by the Army and Navy on alternating days. In the interest of time, I will have to skip over many efforts of the British and American spy services. Suffice it to say that the British efforts included the aforementioned codebreaking project at Bletchley Park. Most famously, the “Ultra” project managed to crack both the Enigma and Lorenz codes used by Germany. But, again, this information was only declassified in the mid-1970s. Only more recent documentary films have been able to cover Bletchley Park at all. Within Bletchley Park itself, it was joked at the time that the Germans would have gotten their orders decoded more quickly, if they had telephoned Bletchley Park – rather than their own cryptographers. But, as far as counterintelligence went, “Counterespionage included the use of turned Double Cross agents to misinform Nazi Germany of impact points during the Blitz and internment of Japanese in the US against ‘Japan's wartime spy program’. Additional WWII espionage examples include Soviet spying on the US Manhattan project, the German Duquesne Spy Ring convicted in the US, and the Soviet Red Orchestra spying on Nazi Germany.” (Source: Section on “Counterintelligence”) The Soviet spying on the Manhattan project would become particularly important in the upcoming Cold War. When the Second World War ended in 1945, the former allies of the United States and the Soviet Union would increasingly be engaging in espionage on each other instead. More on the Cold-War-era spying in a different post.
A Mark 2 Colossus computer, as used by Bletchley Park in England (1943)
Conclusion: Espionage played an important strategic role in both world wars
Thus, espionage had played an important role in both the First and Second World Wars. Both sides had spied on each other, and both sides had tried to protect their information from being either intercepted or decoded. The computer technologies of this time would have lasting effects upon future codebreaking, and in other areas of industry and everyday life. Most of the glory tends to go to the Cold War spies, which were dramatized in franchises like the “James Bond” films. But the intelligence and counter-intelligence efforts of both world wars are no less juicy, and are filled with fascinating human dramas of their own. By their very nature, efforts of this kind tend to stay secret, and thus tend to operate in the background – or even “in the shadows,” as one might say. But we now know enough about these things to sense something of the human drama of the undertakings. Thus, we can now better appreciate the important role that they played in both of these world wars – arguably even affecting the timing of the wars’ successful conclusion.
The working rebuilt British “Bombe” computer at Bletchley Park
Footnote to this blog post:
Espionage efforts would continue for decades in the upcoming Cold War. For more on Cold War spying, see this next blog post, which gives my take on the more iconic spy efforts of this period.
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Espionage efforts would continue for decades in the upcoming Cold War. For more on Cold War spying, see this next blog post, which gives my take on the more iconic spy efforts of this period.
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