Customer Reviews

Hitler's Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In 1978, David Kahn attempted to write the first comprehensive history of German military intelligence in the Second World War. There results are mixed. The author is to be applauded for shedding considerable new light on this heretofore-neglected subject. However, this is an anecdote-driven study, not a comprehensive history. To be sure, Kahn covers virtually every aspect of intelligence collection and analysis in the Third Reich. In itself, the scope of this work is impressive and the reader quickly gains an appreciation for the amount of research required to produce this result.

Organizationally, the book is divided into three main sections. After a sixty-page prologue that outlines the origins of German military intelligence, the first section details all the various collection agencies in the next 300 pages. Everything from agents, to radio intercept units, Luftwaffe interrogators, aerial and tactical reconnaissance is covered, each in its own chapter. The second section, of 69 pages, covers the various organizations that analyzed intelligence in the Third Reich. The final section, 75 pages long, analyzes three case studies (Operations Barbarossa, Torch and Overlord) where German intelligence failed. A 20-page conclusion outlines Kahn's theories on why German intelligence failed in its mission. There are also many useful extras, including excellent photos, original documents and a 1943 intelligence organization chart.

While most sections are usually interesting to read, the anecdote-driven nature of this work is a severe detractor. The chapters bounce around chronologically, with Kahn typically providing an anecdote from the 1940 French campaign, then the Russian Front and then one from the Normandy campaign. This is a potentially misleading method for painting the portrait of an entire organization, by attempting to draw general conclusions from a few specific examples. Kahn consistently paints a picture of a fumbling, inept German intelligence effort, while ignoring similar Allied and Soviet intelligence failures in 1940-1942.

Kahn's conclusions are very contentious. While grudgingly admitting that Germany was able to score some tactical intelligence successes that aided the early blitzkriegs, he blames the failure of strategic intelligence on five factors. Somehow, Kahn sees "unjustified arrogance" as a peculiarly German trait that caused the Wehrmacht to slight intelligence. Kahn's pro-British bias is striking; did not British General Browning ignore repeated indications that German armor was deployed near Arnhem in 1944? Kahn makes a great deal of one episode in 1945 where a dejected Hitler sweeps aside aerial photos indicating the coming Soviet offensive against Berlin, but Browning did virtually the same thing when shown low-level photos of SS panzers near Arnhem. The British Army also had a long history of arrogance leading to disaster at places ranging from Yorktown, Isandhlwana, Gallipoli, the Somme to Arnhem. A second poorly argued factor is the supposed greater need for intelligence on the defense. Knowledge of the terrain, weather and enemy dispositions is equally important on the offense or defense. While Kahn is correct in asserting that Germany's sudden entry into aggressive war did not give the Abwehr sufficient time to establish spy networks in England, the rest of this argument is founded on half-digested readings of Clausewitz. A third argument, that Nazi anti-Semitism "deprived German intelligence of many brains" is downright silly. Kahn infers that German intelligence, particularly code-breaking, would have been enhanced if Jewish mathematicians had not been purged. This ignores the fact that Allied breakthroughs were made by non-Jews like Turing and exaggerates the impact of a minority to alter the character of a dictatorship. The Third Reich had plenty of gifted individuals, many of whom gave their all for the regime. It didn't matter.

Two final contributing factors are more pertinent. There is no doubt that the authority structure of the Fuehrer state inhibited the proper analysis of information as Kahn asserts. Hitler was a megalomaniac who increasingly rejected information that contradicted his view of "reality". However, the larger assertion that the culture of the German officer corps was endemically hostile to intelligence is weak. It is obvious that Kahn has never worked as an intelligence officer on a military staff, because he puts great stock in German regulations that state that the "intelligence officer works for the operations officer". One hears such attitudes in every army, including the US Army, and it is not due to intrinsic German factors. Furthermore, Kahn's assertion that Allied staffs were more efficient is laughable; the Allies based their staff methods on earlier German staff methods, but lacked the professionalism added by a General Staff cadre. Finally, the assertion that the General Staff officers assigned to intelligence were "second-rate" is oxymoronic, since these officers were the top 5% of the Wehrmacht.

Despite thorough research, it is obvious that Kahn does not really understand intelligence operations. Crucial concepts like the intelligence cycle of task-collect-analyze-disseminate are never really discussed, but every phase counts. While Kahn continuously pounds on the Germans for poor efforts in collection and analyzing, he ignores tasking and dissemination. Did the Germans ask the right questions? It appears not, since although their various collectors gathered huge amounts of data about the enemy, there seemed to be no specific priorities. Much of intelligence work is separating the volumes of chaff from the small amount of wheat but the Germans clearly failed in this crucial task. As for dissemination, Kahn does not address this issue, but it would be interesting to know how much the "I've got a secret club" prevented crucial information from reaching the troops in a timely manner.

This book should be on every professional intelligence officer's shelf, but taken with a grain of salt. Broad generalizations about ethnic tendencies or factors intrinsic only to one army should be viewed critically.

Kahn's book can be read on two levels. On the first (the more shallow) it provides a few great stories about SPIES, which, as any student of war should be able to indicate, are just fun. Kahn capably points out such horrendously important information as at what stores German agents shopped at, and where German contacts lived in New York City. Which is an awful lot of fun, and that one can say that about an academic author writing a credible book deserves credit into and of itself.

Secondly, it is the probably the most well constructed book in English talking about German intelligence in the Second World War. Certainly, by this point, many books have been written and become popular illustrating the history of the OSS (the US spy agency) and MI-6 (the British one) but this is the first uber-credible account of German intelligence that I have ever stumbled upon (not that I've spent a great deal of my life looking....) Kahn capably illustrates the structural strengths and weaknesses of the system, and also does a thourough job of in dealing with the personalities that made them better (or worse) than they should have been. He does a good job of discounting the popular conception that only generals win battles: intellegence, in the case of this war, if used properly could have stopped Hitler from making several of his most egregious errors.

People who like this book might also like a book that focuses a tremendous amount of it's words on Admiral Canaris called "The Unseen War in Europe" although it's largely about how the US and the UK used intellegence to their benefit during the war.

Commanders in military history often get too much credit for their tactical decisions. Intelligence often gives one the boldness to act decisively on the battlefield. David Kahn's indepth study of German military intelligence provides useful insights to the complex business of collecting, analyzing and assessing information on the enemy. The "mosaic" work, a term Germans used to describe their bringing together all the pieces, illustrates the use of air reconnaissance, radio intercepts, prisoner of war, and ground patrols for assessments upon which German commanders made their decisions. This easy read is an exceptional and interesting book on the state-of-the-art for military intelligence during the Second World War.

This is a massive book. In its hardbound edition, there are 541 pages of text and another 130 pages of citations, translations, abbreviations, notes, bibliography and index. This book, published in 1978, stands worthily beside the author's earlier and better known book, "The Codebreakers."

The book's title, "Hitler's Spies", however, is a bit misleading. David Kahn has this to say about the book in his preface: "The study would encompass not just spies but all forms of information gathering.... It would base itself not on the writings of other authors on intelligence, but on primary sources. And it would not stop with the intelligence coups, but would complete the story by telling how the information was used--or not used by the generals." [Page ix, 1978 hardbound edition.]

A little later, he adds, "In a more general sense, what has emerged is a picture of Hitler's intelligence apparatus and its results. Or, in other words, the information-gathering mechanism of an entire nation. No one seems to have done this before (and now that I've finished, I know why.)" [Page xi.]

That is what the author tells us the book is. What the book emphatically is not, is a linear narrative of Hitler's spies or of Hitler's intelligence apparatus and its results or even of the information-gathering mechanism of an entire nation. No, what we find here is something that has the look and feel and heft of an encyclopedia on the German spies/apparatus/mechanism of the National Socialist era. The book consists of 27 chapters, each serving as a longish article on some specific sub-area of the general topic:
~ Chapter 5 The Military Attache
~ Chapter 8 The World from the Sky
~ Chapter 9 Questioning the Foe
~ Chapter 12 Hearing Diplomats Chatter
~ Chapter 15 The Admiral and His Abwehr
~ Chapter 24 The Greatest Mistake
~ Chapter 25 The Biggest Surprise

In the nature of things, some parts of this book plod on very like the governmental and military after-action reports with which I have some familiarity. Other parts offer interesting or amusing anecdotes, such as this one about eavesdropping on the supposedly scrambled trans-Atlantic telephone calls of some VERY high-ranking people:

"...Churchill and Roosevelt were not always are careful as they should have been. Churchill was practically addicted to the telephone, picking it up at all hours of the day and night to call Roosevelt, who in his turn surprised the Germans with his indiscretions. He, Churchill, and a few other high officials were not given warnings about insecurity that the lower officials were--an. indication to the Germans, when this was omitted, that an important person was coming on the line."[! Page 175.]

Even though history has progressed in its habitual way and new sources of information have become available, as a compendium, as a source book--if not as a narrative--"Hitler's Spies" remains invaluable to anyone with interest in or concerns about German intelligence during the Second World War.

Of course, the book shares some inevitable flaws with all encyclopedias: large as it is, it cannot possibly contain every detail on every subject; and wide-ranging though it may be, it cannot ride each and every hobby horse beloved by each and every possible reviewer. Forget about such quibbles, to my knowledge, at least, there is nothing available to the public that matches it.

Five stars.

The book opens with a botched Abwehr attempt to plant agents in America. Kahn's penetrating insights on intelligence (Chaper 2:Protozoa, Speech and History ) I found very interesting. Here the author expatiates on the scope, nature of the subject and its application in war.

As Kahn rightly says though intelligence has a long pedigree till World War 1 it made little impact.The onset of Industrial Revolution effected a profound change in social dynamics which catapulted it to the forefront .The creation of railways, telegraphs, newspapers, good maps furnished it with tools that helped to gain more knowledge of enemy country .

Exception to this thesis is the Battle of Metaurus 207 BC. Here the Romans were able to intercept a message indicating the arrival of a Carthaginian army in Italia to reinforce Hannibal.As a result Roman legions under Claudius Nero could defeat Hasdrubal's army before he was able to effect junction with his brother's forces.

Kahn groups intelligence into two categories: Physical and Verbal.The former includes photographs of enemy troop concentrations,fortifications; latter, stolen enemy plans ,intercepted orders. Verbal is definitely superior because former confirms enemy intentions while latter predicts them.

The German Intelligence during World War 11 notched up a number of operational successes.The most remarkable among them being the breaking of ciphers used by the US Military Attache in Cairo Col. Bonner Fellers. Tactical intelligence that poured from the decryption of codes helped Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's assault on British 8th Army which took Afrika Korps to the gates of Alexandria.The Cryptoanalytic branch of the German Navy B-Dienst penetrated British Admiralty's manual ciphers directing convoy traffic. This helped the U-boat Command to accurately plot the course the convoys would take which led to awesome shipping losses.

But on the whole Hitler's intelligence failed miserably. Consider the following examples.

1) It failed to provide accurate picture of strength of Red Army. The fact that STAVKA(Soviet General Staff) had immense reserves at its disposal across the river Dneiper; OKH(German Army High Command)knew nothing of this .One reason that Hitler's blitzkrieg failed in Soviet Russia was due to these strategic reserves which absorbed the shock of German attacks.

2)Foreign Armies East (Fremde Heere Ost) of Col. Reinhard Gehlen ,the intelligence branch of OKH ,failed in detecting scope and direction of Red Army's attack which encircled General Von Paulus 6th Army at Stalingrad.So too was the case with 'Operation Bagration', the assault on Army Group Centre which opened on June 22,1944. STAVKA masked direction of its thrusts through deceptions,ruses .

3)German intelligence failed to anticipate Allied landings in North Africa on Nov.8,1942(Operation Torch ).

4)It considered - thanks to Allied deception(BODY GUARD)- Normandy landings on June,6,1944 as feint. 5)Superior Allied camouflage measures prevented German counter- intelligence from knowing that their Army ,Navy ,Airforce codes were intercepted, decrypted and read.

Why did German intelligence fail? Virulent anti-semistism practised by the Nazis ,according to Kahn, led to collosal brain drain,scores of Jewish scientists migrated. Their presence perhaps during war could have made lot of difference particularly in the ensuing "battle of wits".

Traditional German arrogance bred by sense of superiority distorted their perception of reality, made them to underestimate adversaries which in the end proved fatal.Intelligence was considered a functional attribute of defence.Defence reacts , offense acts .German Reich under Hitler sought to impose its will on its neighbours.Hence the need for intelligence never arose.Besides some of the senior officers of the General Staff thought that it was difficult to know intentions, plans of the enemy.Only by vigorous actions by commanders in the field could that be ascertained.

Finally even if best intelligence, had it been proffered (CICERO affair),would not have made any difference. German leader's megalomania ,preconceptions stemming from his warped mind was bound to diminish its value.

Kahn's masterly study of German Intelligence in World War 11 must be rated as a great book on the subject. Though I have read another work on the same theme-Farago's Game of the Foxes-Kahn's book is definitely superior.Though verbose, it is erudite and analytical .

I laid my hands on this book quite inadvertently .One day visiting Trivandrum, I happened to browse the University Library . There I saw this book on the rack and started devouring it instantly.

This is an unrevised reprint of David Khan's 1978 study. It has stood the test of time very well although, inevitably, some material is a bit out of date, for example on ENIGMA. Still, the volume stands as a thorough analysis of the whole panoply of intelligence with which nazi Germany fought world war two. And no-one today would dispute the findings about why Germany performed so badly in the secret war. Hitler underestimated Russia, awaited the Sicily landings in the Balkans and fell for thinking that the Normandy landings were a feint. As Khan makes clear, the nazi high command underestimated intelligence, thinking that only tanks, armies and airplanes mattered to achieve a result. Hitler in particular was unjustifiably arrogant and failed to fund properly spying activities in foreign countries. It was not until mid 1942 that all mail transiting through Germany was opened as a matter of routine. Obviously, German intelligence did have its successes, say in penetrating Resistance movements in occupied Europe and in the early Atlantic U boat campaigns; Doenitz was one of the few nazi leaders to understand the importance of spying. But the hierarchical political structure of the Reich and the disdain of the officer class failed to capitalize on secret information which could have made the war's result more problematical.

It has been over 30 years since this book was published and it has to be said that this is the definitive book on Hitler's intelligence services but that it also provides lessons for all intelligence services.As such,I think that this book is not only a good read for historians,spy and military buffs but also for politicians ,military leaders and spy chiefs on the role,limitations and strengths of intelligence services during war.The author shows how Hitler's mentality sabotaged the work of the Intelligence services.In other words,this book is a guide on what not to do in the management of a spy service.
Mr KAhn does a good job in detailing the successes of Hitler's apparat.Here we learn that there was a codebreaking service (b-dienst),that actually broke british codes for some time,that there was a similar code breaking operation against an American that helped Rommel in his North Africa .We are also given various examples of the skill of the Nazi intelligence services:its communication intelligence departments performed a great job especially on the eastern front;it had excellent analysts (especially the military economists) and it possessed excellent interragtors and tactical intelligence patrols.They even ran a spy in the British embassy in Istanbul.
As impressive as these successes were ,they were overshadowed by the list of failures.The nazis were duped by the British XX committee in the Western Front and by a Soviet agent on the Eastern front.The book details how this agent Max fed the Nazis information about a conference where Stalin discussed plans for the winter of 1942 leaving out crucial details such as the planned Stalingrad offensive.This contributed to the disaster that unfolded for the sixth army in a similar manner that the british fooled the nazis into thinking that the Normandy operation was a feint that accidentally turned into a success.We also learn of the 3 major nazi mistakes in intelligence:the failure to estimate Soviet strength correctly,the failure to guess where the North Africa landings would take place and the failure to guess the true intention of the Normandy landing.
Kahn lists 5 reasons for the Nazi failure :arrogance,authoritarianism ,aggression ,anti-semitism and the struggle between the spooks and the military staffs.Whilst I agree with these statements I find that he should have expanded the first two to state politically correct thinking and rivalry amongst different agencies.My reasoning ?If you look at a lot of the Intelligence failures over the years:the failure by Stalin to accept that Hitler was going to invade the USSR in spite of massive evidence to the contrary,the failure by the israelis to see the Yom kippur war coming ,the 9-11 failure ,the failures in the iraq war,you will see that a lot of the failure resulted from the fact that leaders failed to see reality because of their thinking which was mostly based on some idiotic ideology and that rivalries and duplication of effort also played a role.This should be a lesson for all politicians .Leave intelligence gathering and analysis in the hands of professional spooks and trust their judgements rather than influence them

This book could also have been subtitled "The Encyclopedia of German WWII Intelligence." The author not only knows the subject but can actually write entertaining sentences. While this may be a problem for some, I actually like it. I did not want an academic volume. I wanted to know a history of German intelligence.

The book, much to my surprise, even covered the German army recon tactics. It is a good read. I also thought the line drawings were a nice addition although they seemed somewhat an after thought. Never the less a nice general introduction to a wide ranging subject. If you were expecting more detail, especially of cypher, than you probably won't like it as much.

The author has written two seminal works: Hitlers Spies and The Codebreakers. Both are among the most informative and best written books on intelligence produced to date. Hitler's Spies goes through the convaluted Nazi intelligence community organization by organization. At the end the reader is very well informed on the mission and structure of German WWII intelligence. There is a tremendous amount of information in this book and the author's skillful writing style makes it all seem easy to understand. A masterpiece.

This book gives a detailed look into how German intelligence agencies largely failed in WW2. Much information is given, but some significant information seems to be missing or sketchy at best. The author attributes the German failures to the historical legacy of being an agressive continental power that placed less importance on intelligence for offensive operations than for defence, and on national arrogance. Another factor was Hitler's multiplication of agencies so as to divide and rule his underlings.

But, it seems to me that the author's concentration on these specific factors caused him to ignore some significant incidents and factors. For example, he does not mention that Canaris warned Franco that Germany was bound to lose the war, and that Germany could not supply coastal artillery to Spain. This caused Franco to scotch any moves against Gibraltar. Kahn mentions the result, but not the role of Canaris, why?

The author's treatment of Heydrich also seems to be off-key. He does not address the thesis that Heydrich's assasination was more of a British project than a Czech project motivated more by (1) Heydrich's success rather than his unpopularity, and (2) the prospect of Heydrich's move to Paris causing the complete destruction of the French resistance.

Because of the information in the book that might be hard to find elsewhere - 4 stars. Because of the obvious blind spots, and relentless agenda pushing - no fifth star.