Fighting to Lose (50 page)
Authors: John Bryden
Voice radio came later, after the First World War, and by the 1930s had caught on in the same way as television did in the 1950s. Everyone listened to it, for news, music, and programs. It was new, and the Nazis were quick to recognize it as a way to control public opinion. Broadcast radio became a major means of maintaining public morale for all the countries in the Second World War.
Morse code, rather than voice, remained the preferred way to send sensitive messages. The individual letters, rapidly dit-dotted in sequence and usually taken down in groups of five, lent themselves to enciphering, either by jumbling the letters in the message itself or by replacing each letter by another according to a formula agreed upon by sender and receiver. It is the job of the cryptanalyst to figure out that formula from the encrypted text of the messages his wireless listening services have heard and taken down. During the First World War, the British had early and spectacular success against the Germans in this endeavour because code- and cipher-breaking on a large scale was still a novel idea. By the 1930s, however, most major nations were alert to the danger.
What complicates understanding wireless communications of the 1940s, however, is the terminology. The words
code
and
cipher
were often used incorrectly, and interchangeably. Some Japanese diplomatic messages were both encoded and enciphered, “code” being understood to mean using certain numbers or words to mean other words, and sometimes whole phrases, whereas a “cipher” jumbles the letters of a sentence or individually replaces them with other letters or symbols. Morse code, for example, where dots and dashes stand for individual letters, should be Morse cipher.
Also, the early wireless sets were heavy and cumbersome, requiring bulky glass vacuum tubes and other components rather than today’s tiny transistors. Batteries were also a problem, due to size, weight, and their short life, as were the required aerials, usually a single wire having to be stretched out some thirty feet or more. A practical, lightweight transmitter/receiver for a lone spy in enemy territory was developed by the British just before the Second World War, but it never came into general use.
Finally, something also needs to be said about the terminology of espionage.
In the English-speaking world, the Americans are the exception with their use of the word
agent
to refer to a person on the staff of a security or intelligence gathering agency — e.g. the
special agent
of the FBI. Everywhere else in the world,
agent
is used as a synonym for
spy
, and this book does, too, except with respect to the FBI. The principle types are:
| Spy/Agent: | A person used against a target country to secretly collect sensitive information. |
| | A spy who has been caught by the target country but instead of being imprisoned is forced (usually) to pretend to his original spymaster that he is still free in order to have him send in deceptive reports. The American term is “controlled agent.” |
| | A spy whose mission is to get inside the secret services of the target country. The British term is “mole.” |
| | A spy whose assignment is to get inside the enemy secret service by offering to be a double agent. |
Key to acronyms:
| CSE | Communications Security Establishment (Canada) |
| DHH | Directorate of History and Heritage, Canadian Forces (Ottawa) |
| FBI | Federal Bureau of Investigation (Washington, D.C.) |
| FDRL | Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library |
| LAC | Library and Archives Canada (Ottawa) |
| NARA | National Archives and Records Administration at College Park (Washington, D.C.) |
| NSA | National Security Agency (Washington, D.C.) |
| PRO | Public Record Office at Kew (London )* |
* The PRO is now known as The National Achives (TNA). However, because much of the research for this book was done before the name change, PRO is used instead of TNA throughout.
| PHH | The multi-volume printed record of the hearings of the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, 1946. It contains the transcripts and findings of the previous hearings and is available in major American reference libraries. |
The title of the printed record of the hearings is below:
Pearl Harbor Attack: Hearings Before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Pursuant to S. Con. Res. 27, A Concurrent Resolution Authorizing an Investigation of the Attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and Events and Circumstances Relating Thereto
. 79th Congress. Congress of the United States. (1946)
1. Ian Colvin,
Chief of Intelligence
(New York: Victor Gollancz, 1951), 218–19.
1. Cunningham to Ladd, Memorandum, 27 Jan. 1944, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 126, Doc. 65-37193-144. Strong was a long-time member of British intelligence, having formerly headed MI14 of the War Office, the military intelligence section responsible for Germany. (Not to be confused with General George V. Strong, G-2, in Washington.)
2. Minutes of meeting re CI [Counter-Intelligence]-War Room planning, Feb. 1945; Note on meeting with Lt.-Col. Robertson, 12–25 Jul. 1945: PRO, FO1020/1281.
3. Ayer to FBI Director, 4 Nov. 1944, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 177, 65-54077(1); Hoover to Ayer, 2 Jun. 1945, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 126, f.37193(11).
4. FBI Director to Ayer, 6 Dec. 1944, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 126, f.37193(11).
5. This number comes from “Bibliography of the GIS,” 17 Dec. 1945, PRO, KV3/8. Franz Seubert, in 1941 head of Referat 2 of IH West at Abwehr headquarters in Berlin, told American interrogators the number of informers and spies kept on file by the Abwehr’s Zentralkartei der V-Leute ran into the “thousands”: Cimperman to Director, 29 Jan. 1944, with attached interrogation, NARA, RG65, (230/86/11/07), Box 35, File 100-274818.
6. For the sequence and details of the establishment of these interrogation centres, including the forward interrogation unit at Diest in Belgium, see R.W.G. Stephens,
Camp 020: MI5 and the Nazi Spies
(London: Public Record Office, 2000), 71, 82, 113.
7. Minutes of meeting of CI-War Room, Feb. 1945, PRO, FO1020/1281.
8. For an exhaustive description and assessment of the SD and RSHA, see the sixty-one page U.S. Army interrogation of Dr. Wilhelm Höttl, 9 Jul. 1945, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 61, 65-47826-252-34. Höttl was a senior officer in the RSHA, working first in Amt III and then Amt VI.
9. The 1947 kidnapping by the Soviets of Col. Bernhardi and the attempted kidnapping of Wilhelm Kuebart, both formerly of
Fremde Heere Ost
, is described in CIC Special Agent Charles Hayes to HQ, 970th CIC Det., 7 May 1947, NARA, RG319, Box 472, IRR000391.
10. Richard Gehlen,
The Gehlen Memoirs
(London: Collins, 1972), passim.
11. According to his son-in-law, Col. Manfred Blume, Hamburg IL chief Nikolaus Ritter was deliberately evasive during his Camp 020 interrogation for fear of being tried as a war criminal: Benjamin Fischer, “The Enigma of Major Nikolaus Ritter,”
Centre for the Study of Intelligence Bulletin
11 (Summer 2000): 8–11.
12. John Court Curry,
The Security Service: Its Problems and Organizational Adjustments, 1908–1945
(London: Public Record Office, 1946), 51–52. He saw it as a positive change. It wasn’t.
See also, Thomson’s fascinating memoir: Basil Thomson,
My Experience at Scotland Yard
(New York: Doubleday, 1923), 7. He questioned Mata Hari, the most famous of all female spies. Having noted mentally that “time had a little dimmed her charms” because she appeared to be about forty, he let her go like a gentleman: “Madam … if you will take the advice of one nearly twice your age, give up what you are doing.” She did not, and was later shot by the French.
13. Curry,
Security Service
, 228–33. R.W.G. Stephens’s “A Digest of Ham” was published as
Camp 020: MI5 and the Nazi Spies
with an introduction by Oliver Hoare in 2000 by the Public Record Office (London). Hereafter it is cited as: Stephens,
Camp 020
.
14. Stephens,
Camp 020
, 117.
15. For instance, Mary Roberts Rinehart,
The Bat
(New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1926).
16. Oreste Pinto,
The Spycatcher Omnibus
(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1964), 52.
17. On the need to get confessions, see Stephens,
Camp 020
, 109; and Curry,
Security Service
, 229.
18. Stephens,
Camp 020
, 7. For details on the abuse of prisoners and use of torture at Bad Nenndorf, see article by Ian Cobain,
Guardian,
17 Dec. 2005.
19. Liddell Diary, 16–22 Feb. 1944, PRO, KV4/193.
20. Stephens,
Camp 020
, passim. See also, Curry,
Security Service
, 228–32.
21. Stephens,
Camp 020
, 281–83. Before the war, Mayer had been a refrigerator salesman.
22. Rudolph to Berlin, 5 Apr. 1942, Canaris W/T intercepts, 26, PRO, KV3/3. Given that the texts of intercepts were withheld from Camp 020 during the war, the interrogators at CSDIC(WEA) may not have known of this message when they questioned Rudolph.
23. Final report on Friedrich Rudolph, 26 Mar. 1946, CSDIC(WEA), NARA, RG65, IWG Box 189, 57039. See also, PRO, KV2/266.
