British Intelligence In The Second World War Volume 5 Strategic Deception

Volume 5 of the Official History of Intelligence in the Second World War, Strategic Deception, brings the series to an end. Strategic deception depends for its success on the availability of good security and good intelligence. The first three volumes of the series described the intelligence channels that gave the Allies their incomparable insight into enemy capabilities and intentions.

Volume 5 of the Official History of Intelligence in the Second World War, Strategic Deception, brings the series to an end. It complements Volume 4 which describes the activities of Nazi agents who had been persuaded to work for the Allies by considering how their work for the Allied side was turned to direct military advantage. Strategic deception depends for its success on the availability of good security and good intelligence. The first three volumes of the series described the intelligence channels that gave the Allies their incomparable insight into enemy capabilities and intentions. The fourth described the high level of security achieved within the United Kingdom. Volume 5 explains how this combination of intelligence and security made it possible to deceive the enemy about the strategic intentions of the Allies, and make them greatly overestimate the resources at their disposal. The authoritative story of such classic deception operations as Operation Mincemeat, which preceded the invasion of Sicily; of the non-existent U.S. Army group that pinned down an entire German Army in the Pas de Calais until Montgomery's forces had achieved a secure foothold in Normandy; and the amazing spoof played on the German intelligence authorities by the great double agent GARBO is at last told from official records.

The field of British intelligence has always been shrouded in mystery, existing in the imagination as a shadowy world of secret agents. The highly acclaimed British Intelligence in the Second World War, originally published in five volumes, provided the first reliable and comprehensive account of intelligence at work.

“A” Force explores an area of World War II deception history that has often been neglected. While older studies have focused on the D-day deception campaign and Britain’s infamous double-agents, this work explores the origins of Britain’s deception activities to reveal how the British became such masterful deceivers. This is the first work to focus exclusively on "A" Force and the origins of British deception, examining how and why the British first employed deception in World War II. More specifically, it traces the development of the "A" Force organization—the first British organization to practice both tactical and strategic deception in the field. Formed in Cairo in 1941, "A" Force was headed by an unconventional British colonel named Dudley Wrangel Clarke. Because there was no precedent for Clarke's "A" Force, it truly functioned on a trial-and-error basis. The learning curve was steep, but Clarke was up for the challenge. By the Battle of El Alamein, British deception had reached maturity. Moreover, it was there that the “deceptionists” established the deception blueprint later used by the London planners to plan and execute Operation Bodyguard, the campaign to conceal Allied intentions for the D-day landing at Normandy. In contrast to earlier deception histories that have tended to focus on Britain’s later efforts emphasizing Operation Bodyguard, this work clearly shows that this strategy was forged much earlier in the deserts of Africa under the leadership of Dudley Clarke, not in London. Moreover, it was born not out of opportunity, but out of sheer desperation, when in June 1940 the British found themselves completely unprepared for war.

First Published in 1987. New information obtained from the declassification of Ultra intercepts and other Second World War documents as well as from recent scholarly research has credited Allied deception operations with an even more important contribution to winning the war than was previously supposed. Yet deception is only one factor in the achievement of victory; it cannot guarantee success. It must be fully understood and exploited by the highest levels of command. Most histories of deception operations during the Second World War have focused on those that were successful. Instances in which deception operations failed to achieve their objectives are discussed by John Campbell, who describes an early attempt to convince the Germans that the Allies intended to invade at Pas de Calais in the summer of 1943, and by Katherine Herbig, who gives the first detailed description of US deception operations in the Pacific. Klaus-Jurgen Moiier questions the actual effectiveness of deception operations against the Germans. He argues that many successes attributed to the Allies' use of deception were in fact achieved by independent considerations on the German side. Professor Moiier builds a particularly strong case in challenging the success of Operation Fortitude North, in which the Allies tried to divert German troops to Norway before invading Normandy. Although very little is known of Soviet deception operations on the Eastern Front, it must be remembered that they were conducted on a much larger scale than those of either the British in Europe or the Americans in the Pacific. Colonel David Glantz's account of Soviet deception and covert activities offers a version of the historiography of the war between the USSR and Germany which may explain some of the monumental German failures. Tom Cubbage not only contributes a synthesis of the primary and secondary sources available on the deception operations preceding Overlord, but also reviews the so-called Hesketh Report - Fortitude: A History of Strategic Decep­tion in North Western Europe April 1943 to May 1945, Colonel Roger Hesketh's official report on Allied deception operations against the Germans in north-west Europe which was declassified in 1976, yet remains unpublished. It indicates that Professor Muller's suspicions that the Allies over-estimated the impact of Forti­tude are unfounded. Edited and with a comprehensive introduction by Michael Handel, these important and original studies put the entire deception effort during the Second World War into a more balanced and accurate perspective.

The first three volumes of the series dealt with the influence of intelligence on strategy and operations. Volume 4 analyzes the contribution made by intelligence to the work of the authorities responsible for countering the threats of subversion, sabotage and intelligence gathering by the enemy in the United Kingdom and British territories overseas, and neutral countries. It describes the evolution of the security intelligence agencies between the wars and the security situation in September 1939. This volume reviews the arguments about security policy regarding enemy aliens, Fascists and Communists in the winter of 1939-1940 and during the Fifth Column panic in the summer of 1940. It describes how the security system, still at that time inadequately organized and poorly informed, was developed into an efficient machine and how, with invaluable help from signals intelligence and other sources and by the skillful use of double agents, the operation of the enemy intelligence services were effectively countered. In conclusion, it notes the consistent subservience of the Communist Party to the interests of the USSR and the likely threat to British security.