Intelligence Co-operation between Poland and Great Britain during World War II. Volume I: The Report of the Anglo-Polish Historical Committee by Tessa Stirling Daria Nalecz Tadeusz Dubicki (review)

Abstract

362 SEER, 84, 2, 2006 Ylikangas got on to this theme (and admittedly in a much wider way), Peltovuori recounted how Hermann Goring tried to send messages to the Finns indicating that the Nazi-Soviet 'marriage',which had so blighted the Finns'prospects,reallywas just a temporaryconvenience. University of Turku GEORGE MAUDE Finland Stirling, Tessa, Nalecz, Daria and Dubicki, Tadeusz (eds). Intelligence Co-Operation Between PolandandGreat Britain DuringWorldWarII. Volume I: The Reportof the Anglo-Polish HistoricalCommittee. Vallentine Mitchell, London and Portland OR, 2005. xxiii + 586 pp. Glossary.Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Index. ?55.oo. 'THE Second World War was, to a greaterextent than any previous conflict, an intelligence war. At a series of critical points in both the Western and Pacifictheatres,intelligencedemonstrateda remarkablecapacityto operate as a force multiplierand, in so doing, hastened the defeat of both Germany and Japan. Largelyfor that reason, the war produced an unprecedenteddegree of allied intelligence collaboration'(ChristopherAndrew, p. 55). 'Unprecedented' indeed was the contributionmade by Polish intelligence to the Allied war effort, especially against Germany, and was consistently acknowledged as such by its British and American recipients. Some aspects of that story Polish intelligence was vital in breakingthe German Eni'gma cipher codes and in warning London of the German V-i flying bomb and V-2 rocketprogrammes- are well known, if not in minute detail at least in broad outline. However, as understood by former Polish intelligence and Home Army officersworkingon their memoirs from the 1970S onwards,and subsequently by Polish historiansworking in the freer post-Communist environment after I989, before more definitive detail of that vital Polish contribution could emerge it was necessary to establish more precisely the fate and location of thatwartimePolishintelligence.ConsistentPolisheffortsover time finallybore fruit on 2I December I999. A specialjoint meeting of the Sejm and Senate Foreign AffairsCommittees in Warsaw suggestedthat the Britishand Polish governments 'establisha joint committee of Britishand Polish archivistsand historians to search for any existing documents demonstratingthe wartime co-operation of the two allies' (p. 26). Such a committee was establishedin 2000, it being agreed that its Polish members should undertakeresearchin open archivesin Europe and America to find, if possible, the recipient forms of wartime Polish intelligence reports communicated to the BritishSecret IntelligenceService (SIS)for onwardsdistribution to Britain'spolitical and military authorities. For the committee's British investigations, the unique and indeed unprecedented - task of investigatingthe permanentlyclosed files of SIS was allotted to Gill Bennett, the Chief Historian of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 1995 to 2005. REVIEWS 363 This presentvolume is the resultof its members'painstakingdetectivework in Britishand American national archivesand Polish institutesin Britainand America. It therefore propels the study of wartime Anglo-Polish intelligence cooperation onto a differentplane for many reasons.Followingthe five chapters of the Introductionwhich contain important up-to-date accounts of the fate and present whereabouts of Polish intelligence documents and materials of the time -much of it as transmittedonwards by the British SIS there are invaluableaccounts in PartsOne and Two of the structureand nature of the Polish and Britishintelligence servicesduring the war. The four chapters of Part Three cover the subject of Anglo-Polish co-operation during the war, whilst the twenty-four contributions to Part Four detail the work and achievementsof Polish intelligencefield stationsacrossGerman-occupiedand free Europe, and in other parts of the world. Part Four, therefore, publishes important and extensive detail, much of it undoubtedly unknown before (certainlyin English), of the pan-European nature of Poland'sintelligencewar againstNazi Germany from 1939 through to I945, itself an inevitable by-product of the Third Reich's occupation and slavelabourpolicieswhich ensuredthe total enmity of Poles in theirhomeland and whereverthey were in Europe. That detail substantiatesto the full Christopher Andrews' assessment of its importance whilst, usefully, many of the accountsin PartFourare balancedby individualchaptersby Gill Bennettwho sets out the Britishside of whateversubjectis being discussed.PartFive of the volume detailsthe intelligenceactivitiesof the Polish Home Army responsible for intelligencegatheringin Poland,while the finalsection of the volume, Part Six, consistsof summariesand conclusionsto the whole. However, as Gill Bennett confirmstime and again throughoutthis volume, the wartime SIS acted as a kind of 'post office' for the receipt and further distributionof the intelligence it received from Polish sources. Consequently, an SIS 'archive'of this material as such simply does...