Sigint, Humint and the Focus of the NKVD
Journalist/historian Max Hastings has
written an encyclopedic history (640 pages in the print edition) of the secret
war being fought by all sides during World War II. It is too much for the
average reader, but that being said one comes away with the view that signals intelligence
(sigint) was far superior to human intelligence (humint) over the course of the
war with the notable exception of the role of the Soviet NKVD and its military
counterpart the GRU.
The heroes of the book are the quirky
academics, most notably Alan Turing, at Bletchley Park in breaking the German
enigma code and America’s unsung hero Joseph Rochefort who by the dint of
intense effort, broke the Japanese naval code. What Bletchley did was to enable
the British navy to locate German submarine traffic, a fete that was instrumental
to winning the Battle of the Atlantic. Similarly Rochefort code breaking
enabled America’s surprise attack at the Battle of Midway which changed the
course of the war in the Pacific. It also enabled to ambush Admiral Yamamoto in
flight over the South Pacific. Sigint also broke the Japanese diplomatic code
which enabled the Allies to listen in on the correspondence of the Japanese
ambassador to Berlin on his transcripts to Tokyo enabling the allies to
understand Hitler’s war strategy after 1943.
On the other hand the Soviet Union
relied very successfully on humint. They had Richard Sorge working in the
German embassy in Tokyo who supplied them with more than enough information to
warn them about the pending German invasion. It was no avail, because Stalin
refused to believe it. This highlights a fundamental problem with intelligence
gathering; it has to be believed and it is vulnerable false information. Stalin
also benefitted from his spies in Europe operating under the umbrella of “the
Red Orchestra” or the “Rote Kapelle”. His agents there also warned him of the
pending German invasion.
Unlike the other allied powers, Stalin
spied on his allies, the UK and the U.S. The notorious Cambridge Five located
in MI-5, MI-6 and the foreign office tipped him off on allied strategy. Thus at
every summit meeting he knew the Roosevelt/Churchill positions going in greatly
strengthening his hand. His spying on the U.S. penetrated the nuclear program
thereby giving him the greatest intelligence coup of World War II and perhaps
of all time. Stalin before anyone else understood that nuclear weapons were a
game changer. Hastings portrayal of his agents and agent handlers in the U.S.
is especially acute.
One of the key lessons that Hastings
draws is that intelligence has no meaning unless the users of the information
have forces on the ground to influence events. Thus knowing the position of
German submarines is of no value unless you have destroyers ready to take them
out.
Hastings also discusses the roles of
both German and Japanese intelligence. The Germans were good early in the war,
not so good later. And Admiral Canaris, the head of the Abwehr does not come
off as a great spymaster. Similarly, the same goes for Major General William
Donovan of the American OSS. However he does give credit for the research and
analysis section of the OSS in its understanding of the German economic
capabilities.
Hastings has written a long book and
this review does not give true justice to it. I recommend it for those
interested in the craft of intelligence and its role in World War II.
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