|
Bletchley Park and D-Day The Untold
Story of How the Battle for Normandy Was Won
David
Kenyon
New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2019 . Hardcover. xxx+295 p. ISBN 978-0300243574. $28/£20
Reviewed by Mary Kathryn Barbier Mississippi State University
For decades, popular culture has shaped the general public’s
understanding of intelligence history. Movies such as Alfred Hitchcock’s
‘Secret Agent’ (1936), ‘Sabotage’ (1936), and ‘Notorious’ (1946); Dr. No (1962)
and other James Bond movies; or Cold War spy films like ‘The Good Shepherd’
(2006), Brad Pitt’s ‘Spy Game’ (2001), Pierce Brosnan’s ‘The Tailor of Panama’
(2001), and Angelina Jolie’s ‘Salt’ (2010), portrayed the exciting world of
spies and perhaps colored perceptions about what intelligence history is. Equally,
spy novels, to some extent, can shape the way historians write about those
involved in the collection of intelligence, particularly since authors like Ian
Fleming, John LeCarré, and Graham Greene, who worked with British Intelligence
during World War II, brought a unique perspective to their books. Popular culture has, therefore, suggested that intelligence
history is sexy, exciting, and suspenseful, and some, but not all, of it is.
Some scholars of intelligence history write about the men and women, who were
on the front lines as spies or double agents. A few books immediately come to
mind: Robyn Walker’s The Women Who Spied for Britain (2014); Robert
Whymant’s Stalin’s Spy : Richard Sorge and the Tokyo Espionage Ring
(1996); Sophie De Schaepdrijver’s Gabrielle Petit : The Death and Life
of a Female Spy in the First World War (2015); and Ben Macintyre’s The
Spy and the Traitor : The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War
(2018). While the books about these and other spies and double / triple agents
are interesting and exciting, they only present part of the story. Not all spies had ‘James Bond’ type experiences, nor did they
necessarily have ‘cool’ gadgets to make their jobs easier. Furthermore, the
collection of intelligence is more than a story about the exciting lives of
those tasked with acquiring it. Some historians
focus on the less sexy topic of information transmission – communiqués sent by
trusted agents in the field or the intercepted messages of enemy agents.
Captured encrypted messages presented challenges to those trying to glean important
information from them. Consequently, a key component of communication is
codebreaking, which is currently a hot topic for historians and enthusiasts.
Books about codebreaking frequently focus on the people involved in deciphering;
however, the story about those engaged in codebreaking during World War II is a
complicated one. Because attention is more on the actors and less on technology
– for example, in books like Leo Mark’s Between Silk and Cyanide : A
Codebreaker’s War, 1941-1945 (1977); David Kahn’s Seizing the Enigma :
The Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1939-1943 (2012); or Lisa
Mundy’s Code Girls : The Untold Story of the American Women Code
Breakers of World War II (2017) – these books appeal to a broad audience,
but the reality is much more complicated. In addition to codebreaking, someone
has to understand the value of the intelligence and disseminate it to the
people who can use it to achieve a desired end – in the case of World War II,
victory on the battlefield. In his most recent book, Bletchley Park and D-Day :
The Untold Story of How the Battle for Normandy Was Won, David Kenyon
enhances an understanding about how intelligence, particularly that transmitted
by wireless, was acquired, how it was read, and the impact that it had on the
Allies’ invasion of, and campaign in, Normandy. As Bletchley Park’s research
historian, Kenyon is uniquely placed to dig deeply into the history of the
Government Code & Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park and its role
in providing actionable intelligence to the planners and implementers of the
Allies’ military and political strategic plans to emerge from World War II
victorious. While acknowledging that other authors, including some who worked
at Bletchley Park, have written books about the GC&CS and the work done
there, Kenyon explains what he adds to the work of his predecessors, such as
Ralph Bennett and Harry Hinsley, and what makes his monograph different from
theirs and those of other scholars. He argues that he does not just focus on
the mundane details and minutiae, but on the important contribution that
Bletchley Park made to the Normandy invasion and subsequent campaign. Kenyon argues that to understand the importance of Bletchley
Park, historians have to examine more than the work of Alan Turing or of
the first computers. They have to explore the outcomes. Did the intelligence
that Bletchley provided to Allied military commanders contribute to success on
the battlefield in Normandy? In order to answer that question, however, one has
to understand the process from the interception of communiqués, to
codebreaking, to analysis of the information, to dissemination in time to make
a difference. Consequently, Kenyon meticulously explains the expansion of the
facilities at Bletchley, the development of the technologies – the Bombe and
Colossus – that facilitated codebreaking efforts, the growth of GS&CS, and
the cryptological process of encoding and decoding. Then he focuses on the huts
– 3, 6, and 8 – whose work most directly affected the Normandy invasion. Hut 3
was the Army and Air Force Enigma Reporting Section. Tasked with decryption,
the members of Huts 6 focused on army and air force messages while those in 8
housed concentrated on naval communications. From its inception, the network at
Bletchley continued to evolve throughout the war. By the eve of the Normandy
invasion, it had become a sophisticated, efficient organization with
assembly-line outputs. As Kenyon notes, Bletchley Park did more than decrypt
intercepted wireless messages. Traffic analysis (T/A) played ‘a huge part in
painting the intelligence picture of the German forces prior to the invasion’ [68].
Relying on multiple sources, not just Enigma messages, Bletchley consistently
constructed German orders of battle in the months before the invasion. By
analyzing Japanese diplomatic communiqués as well as German and Italian
military messages, the GC&CS provided insight into the Germans’ defensive
preparations, their assessment of Allied troop strength and invasion
preparations, and their projected ability to move additional forces into Normandy
once the invasion began. Because the amount of enemy wireless traffic
increased, the staff at Bletchley continued to work flat out to deliver
up-to-date information to commanders in the field although they did not always receive
intelligence about enemy operations before they commenced. When possible,
Allied air forces used Bletchley’s information to interdict German panzer
divisions to delay their arrival and ability to counterattack. While they continued to provide information
about German orders for the movement of panzer divisions to Normandy as the
campaign unfolded, Kenyon argues that ‘Bletchley Park played its biggest part
in OVERLORD before any troops landed on the beaches and landing grounds, as a
tool for Allied planners and politicians’ [246-247]. While the amount of incoming traffic flowing was potentially
overwhelming, the teams at Bletchley made decisions about which messages
warranted decoding and what information to include in the daily intelligence
summaries earmarked for dissemination to Prime Minister Churchill and military
leaders, both British and American. Doing so facilitated the creation of a
clear picture of German intentions, planning, and thinking. Abwehr (the German
military intelligence service), on the other hand, did not analyze or
synthesize the intelligence before passing it up the chain. As Kenyon
eloquently states: ‘Unlike Bletchley, which went to great lengths to filter and
rationalize its intelligence product, the Abwehr took the opposite
approach and bombarded its customers with a deluge of unfiltered material –
proof that too much intelligence is as unhelpful as too little’ [244]. Even if
the intelligence was actionable, it was frequently lost in the midst of the raw
data that the Abwehr provided. This was also a story about collaboration. Kenyon does a good
job of teasing out the relationship that the British and American intelligence
communities forged. By the spring of 1944, American cryptanalysts, intelligence
officers, and staff were fully integrated into the Bletchley Park organization.
They had their own space and bombes, and there was an agreement upon sharing of
intelligence information by both parties. Once on the continent, Special
Communications Units (SCUs) were embedded in field headquarters and ‘tasked
with the reception of ULTRA messages from Bletchley Park’ [xxiv]. While some
commanders remained hesitant to avail themselves completely of what the SCU had
to offer, others, such as General George S. Patton, welcomed the intelligence
that they provided. What made parts of the book more engaging were the vignettes
and the voices of Bletchley actors whom Kenyon included in the book. More of
those vignettes and voices would have enhanced the work, and a broader audience
would have found the narrative more accessible. In all likelihood, however,
doing so would have taken the narrative down a different path from that which
the author intended. While some readers might get bogged down in the details
that Kenyon included, those interested in the process end (codebreaking,
encryption, decryption, and the early Bombe and Colossus computers) will find
much to capture their attention. It is clear from Kenyon’s book that the work at Bletchley
Park was much more complicated than previous narratives and first-hand accounts
have demonstrated. Both Ralph Bennett and Harry Hinsley worked at Bletchley but
were not privy to everything that went on there; therefore, their accounts are
incomplete, Kenyon suggests, and colored by their own experiences. As an
official historian, however, Hinsley had access to many more details about
Bletchley than Bennett did, and as a result he provided a richer history than
Bennett’s. Many of these books focused more on the codebreaking than on
analyzing the impact that the GC&CS had on the battlefield, i.e., planning and execution of
operations, in general. Kenyon took a more nuanced and targeted approach by
analyzing the Park’s effect on one major campaign – the Normandy invasion.
While some intelligence provided by Bletchley had an impact on tactical
operations, its more important contribution was on the big picture or strategic
level. As Kenyon aptly argues, ‘The idea that Bletchley Park’s job was only to
turn Enigma into ULTRA obscures the true picture of GC&CS as a fully
developed, multi-source intelligence agency, drawing on a much wider range of
sources and delivering a much wider range of products’ [241-242]. Bletchley
Park and D-Day makes an important contribution to the historiography of
World War II intelligence history in general and, more specifically, of
Bletchley Park and to a broader understanding of the Bletchley players, who,
Kenyon notes, have not received the attention that others who played a role in
the successful Normandy invasion have.
Cercles © 2020 All rights are reserved and no reproduction from this site for whatever purpose is permitted without the permission of the copyright owner. Please contact us before using any material on this website.
|
|
|
