Loyalty and Secret Intelligence: Anglo‒Dutch Cooperation during World War II

Eleni Braat

doi:10.17645/pag.v6i4.1556

Abstract

Secrecy and informal organisation produce, sustain, and reinforce feelings of loyalty within intelligence and security services. This article demonstrates that loyalty is needed for cooperation between intelligence partners as well as within and between services. Under many circumstances, loyalty plays a larger role in the level of internal and external collaboration than formal work processes along hierarchical lines. These findings are empirically based on the case study of Anglo‒Dutch intelligence cooperation during World War II. By demonstrating that ‘loyalty’ critically affects the work of intelligence communities, this article contributes to current and future research that integrates history, intelligence studies, and research on emotions.

Highlights

Secret intelligence is the missing dimension in the history of international relations, as Christopher Andrew and David Dilks argued (Andrew, 1998; Andrew & Dilks, 1984, p. 1)
Together with Eric Hazelhoff Roelfzema, Euan Rabagliati, and Queen Wilhelmina, he was in his native element in informal organisational forms
Loyalty was a major determinant in the level of collaboration within the Dutch intelligence community and between the Dutch and British intelligence communities

Summary

Introduction

Secret intelligence is the missing dimension in the history of international relations, as Christopher Andrew and David Dilks argued (Andrew, 1998; Andrew & Dilks, 1984, p. 1). I argue that secrecy and informal organization produce, sustain and reinforce feelings of loyalty in the socio-cultural structure of intelligence and se-. In order to assess the role of loyalty in intelligence communities, I focus on the Dutch secret services-in exile in London and their British counterparts during World War II. A most valuable, detailed and colourful historical source to partly reconstruct the socio-cultural atmosphere of the Anglo–Dutch wartime intelligence community are the reports of the post-World War II Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Policy of the Wartime Government-in-Exile. I assess how secrecy and informal organization sustain and reinforce feelings of loyalty in intelligence communities, and I suggest ways to further integrate research of emotions into intelligence studies. The use of secrecy by governmental bureaucracies extends far beyond the functionally motivated secret (Weber, 2013, pp. 992–993, 1271), and may have a self-reinforcing effect: the socio-cultural and political benefits of secrecy incite more secrecy

Disentangling the Anglo–Dutch Intelligence Community during World War II

The Years of Crisis

De Bruyne’s fear to be bypassed is shown in his following correspondence

Conclusions