The Ottoman Military Intelligence Department and Naval Intelligence, 1914–1918

Military intelligence constitutes one of the “blank spots” in modern Russian history to which historians have devoted increasing attention since the collapse of the Soviet Union. After 1991, a thirst for “the truth” about lesser-known aspects of Russian preparation for war benefited from accessibility to once forbidden materials, spawning a number of studies on Russian and Soviet military intelligence. With the centenary of 1904–05 now upon us, intelligence preparation for the Russo-Japanese War has increasingly figured in various studies. And, indeed the Russo-Japanese War presents special problems for students of military intelligence. This chapter provides fresh insight into the above-mentioned fundamental problems on the basis of archival-based research and a mixture of traditional and new materials. The thesis holds that the overall quality of Russian military and naval intelligence about the Japanese was uneven, but probably better than might have been expected, especially with regard to the Japanese navy. Keywords: Japanese army; Japanese navy; Military intelligence; Russian intelligence; Russian military; Russo-Japanese War; Soviet Union

Upon the establishment of the Union Defence Force in 1912, no provision was made for a military intelligence capability. During the First World War various so-called intelligence units were raised and a Military Intelligence function was established within the General Staff section. After the war, this function went into gradual decline. By 1937, a renewed interest in intelligence resulted in the part-time appointment of Lieutenant Colonel B.W.Thwaites as head of Military Intelligence. After the declaration of war in 1939, Military Intelligence experienced a rapid growth. Intelligence officers were trained as such and agents were recruited. The Military Intelligence organization was divided into two upon the appointment of a Director Intelligence (Civilian Security) and a Deputy Director Military Intelligence. After initial organizational problems, an Intelligence Clearance Bureau was established. The Intelligence Directorate was disbanded and only the Military Intelligence Sub-directorate continued to exist. An Intelligence Corps was developed for the Mobile Field Force (MFF), from a shadow structure named Section Ix within Military Intelligence. In 1943, Military Intelligence was upgraded to a full directorate and was responsible for information, intelligence, security and censorship.

A British military observer of the Russo-Japanese War argued that both sides ‘owed their knowledge of each other far more to their secret service systems than to actual military reconnaissances’ and derived much greater insight into each other’s strategies from ‘the higher realms of intelligence’.1 These observations were made in 1909 when decisions on Britain’s secret services and comparisons with other countries were made.2 The intention was to create a clear hierarchy of intelligence with ‘secret service’ separated more clearly from the ‘reconnaissances’ of the Directorate of Military Operations (DMO) in the War Office, the Naval Intelligence Division (NID), consular and diplomatic services and relevant structures in the dominions, colonies and dependencies covered by the Cabinet’s Committee of Imperial Defence (CID). Until then directors of military and naval intelligence had authority over foreign intelligence, mobilization and war operations and the Admiralty overseas trade protection. Service intelligence directors were given full responsibility for the negotiation of military and naval co-operation with Japan under the 1902 Anglo-Japanese Alliance, its later amendments and renewal. Representatives of both armed forces met in London in 1902 and 1907 and signed the military and naval agreements. In 1902, an agreement was signed by the British heads of service intelligence and the Japanese head of military intelligence, who signed on behalf of the Japanese Army. The role of military and naval intelligence was therefore clearly central to the implementation of the alliance.

The work of GCCS at BP has received much attention in recent years. Concentration, however, has been on the capture of Sigint by the interception services and the problems of decryption of messages in Enigma. Less attention has been placed on the documentation of the decrypts and the intelligence held by the factual indexes maintained by the Air, Military and Naval Sections. Lying behind these were the highly specialized devices which facilitated the translation and analysis of decrypted messages by providing the expansions of abbreviations common in all Sigint and the ‘equivalents’ of German and other terms. This paper describes the work of two specialist units, serving Hut 3 (Air and Military intelligence) and Hut 4 (Naval intelligence), engaged in the creation and maintenance of such devices.

China and Germany cooperated closely in military and economic matters during the 1930s; but, following Japan's invasion of China and the change of Hitler's policy toward China, the relationship between the two became muggy. Then, due to the outbreak of World War II, each of the belligerents put all of their forces into establishing informant nets in third countries and reinforcing their intelligence activities in military, politics and economy. To German intelligence, China-the centre of East Asia and the focus of the Western political and economic powers-not only possessed fine conditions for development, it provided an ideal area for intelligence activities. This article aims to explore the development and the espionage activity of German military intelligence in the framework of its national strategy during the world war in China, especially the espionage work conducted in the Japan-occupied China after 1941. Even though in 1941 Germany acknowledged that the puppet government of Wang Chin-Wei had caused the break of diplomatic relations with the Kuomintang regime, but not until Nationalist China's declaration of war on Germany in December of the same year effectively put their economic relationship at an end. However, the German military authorities saw China's strategic geographic position and unique status as one of the few countries that kept high level contact with England, United States, and Soviet Union. Germany thus used China as the base for its espionage activity in the Far East, especially for the gathering of military intelligence on the war in its Far East theater.

Spies in Uniform: British Military and Naval Intelligence on the Eve of the First World War By Matthew S. Seligmann

Spies in Uniform: British Military and Naval Intelligence on the Eve of the First World War

Book Review: Spies in Uniform: British Military and Naval Intelligence on the Eve of the First World War

A Review of: “Matthew S. Seligmann, Spies in Uniform: British Military and Naval Intelligence on the Eve of the First World War”

In the December 1920 issue of The Menorah Journal, Nathan Isaacs launched a trenchant refutation of the image of the perilous and pernicious "International Jew" then circulating widely across America. Although this image had been gradually emerging since the end of World War I, the idea of international Jews fomenting insurrection, upheaval, and revolution received a tremendous publicity boost in 1920 with the appearance of Boris Brasol's Protocols and World Revolution and Henry Ford's International Jew—The World's Foremost Problem. Isaacs, a professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh, also identified himself as a former captain in the Military Intelligence Division (MID) of the U.S. Army. Isaacs' credentials as an officer recently engaged in secret intelligence work inside the General Staff in Washington, D. C., was important for the veracity and authoritativeness of his key arguments, for the promoters of the Protocols and the notion of the "International Jew" claimed to have found a receptive audience within "the secret departments" of the U.S. Government. 1 Isaacs implied intimate knowledge of such internal government affairs. Throughout late 1918 and 1919 he had tried to counteract reports about Jewish conspiracies that MID received from secret agents at home and abroad. Among these were as yet unpublished versions of the Protocols and Brasol's "Judaism and Bolshevism," an alarmist document claiming Bolshevism was a worldwide conspiracy of Jews. Isaacs apparently left MID confident that he had clearly discredited such bogus antisemitic intelligence within that organization. The support of certain fellow intelligence officers reinforced Isaacs' false sense of accomplishment and security. Captains Edwin P. Grosvenor and Carlton J. H. Hayes, noncareer officers serving in MID during the war, had joined Isaacs in condemning such reports not only as worthless antisemitic tirades but emanating from "a fanatical if not disordered brain." 2 Like Hayes, the well-known progressive historian from Columbia University, [End Page 411] Isaacs held a tremendous faith in the progressive, democratic traditions, people, and institutions of the United States. Both men believed that American governmental institutions staffed by rational, well-educated individuals would surely be resistant to infection by such vicious conspiratorial antisemitism imported from Europe. Certainly, one would expect no less from the military institution in which they served. Thus Isaacs could assure Jewish readers that "all this agitation by imported Russian methods" of the antisemitic Russian émigré Brasol had definitely failed to penetrate the institutions of government. Isaacs' dismissal of any prospects that these "European propagandists" might meet with success bordered on ridicule. The entire campaign was a "Search for a Fool," and Americans were not "fools." Moreover, the American government did not have any "secret departments" comparable to those in the ubiquitous Czarist state. "We have no secret police spying on the civilian population." Even the offices of Military and Naval Intelligence "were concerned solely with such intelligence as had to do with the military and naval efficiency of the United States." Isaacs conceded that perhaps, now and then, propaganda like the Protocols did penetrate such institutions and poison the mind of the occasional "clerk." But the worst consequences he envisioned would be "an injustice done to this or that Jew by withholding a promotion, a passport, an appointment." The overall campaign was doomed to failure because "men trained in the common law system of testing allegations and administering justice" would surely ignore such conspiratorial nonsense. 3 In reality, it was Isaacs who worked under a serious misapprehension. He clearly had a much higher opinion of army officers than the officers had of Jews. Though he perceived himself to be an insider, many of them considered him, as well as other Jews, as so existentially different that they would never earn the confidence or acceptance of the inner circle reserved for true Americans. While having served in MID, there was much he did not know, and he apparently failed to fully appreciate those indications of antisemitism...

Miks demokraatia Soomet ei päästnud? Ühendkuningriigi-Soome sõda ja demokraatliku rahu teooria [Why did democracy not save Finland? The war between the United Kingdom and Finland, and the democratic peace proposition

Ted Rose & Jon Clatworthy reply: We warmly welcome Albert Ludford's addition to knowledge of many of the ISTD geologists listed and illustrated in our paper, for these personal details add context helpful to assessment of the pioneering achievements of the Geological Section ISTD. Moreover, we can now extend knowledge even further in four respects. First, we record that yet another geologist contributed to work that laid the foundation for ISTD: William Elgin Swinton (1900–1994). According to Geological Society of London records, ‘Bill’ Swinton, a ‘first class’ graduate of the University of Glasgow, was elected to fellowship of the Society in 1925 whilst employed as a curator at the Natural History Museum, London (then known as the British Museum, Natural History). However, in 1938 as the Second World War loomed, he was commissioned into the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (the RNVR) (McGowan & McConnell 2004), was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant (Special Branch) on 1 January 1940 according to the contemporary Navy List , and served during the war in Naval Intelligence, ‘his closest friend there being the author Ian Fleming’ (Cocks 1995, p. 21). Fleming, as a Lieutenant-Commander assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence, Rear-Admiral (later Vice-Admiral) J. H. Godfrey, helped to found Naval Intelligence Division 5: teams of geographers at Oxford and Cambridge that compiled handbooks for service use, in total 58 volumes covering 31 countries or country groups (see reports and minutes bound with Bassett & Wells 1946). More famously, Fleming later created the fictional hero James Bond. ISTD was initially constituted (on 27 May 1940) as a companion organization, Naval Intelligence Division 6, after the German invasion …

Reviews of Books

The 1942-43 naval campaign against German U-boats known as the Battle of the Atlantic was a major victory not only for Allied warships but also for naval intelligence. Thanks to the co-ordinated efforts of submarine tracking rooms in London, Washington and Ottawa, the antisubmarine forces' search-and-destroy missions helped preserve the safety of the seaways. Naval intelligence has been an aspect of World War II that has received scant attention. Now former naval intelligence officer Alan Harris Bath traces the co-ordination of Anglo-American efforts before and during the war, identifying the political, military, technological and human factors that aided and sometimes hindered co-operation. He compares the two nations' different and often conflicting styles of intelligence gathering and reveals ways in which interagency and interservice rivalries complicated an already complex process. Drawing on archives in the US, UK and British Commonwealth, Bath describes how co-operation took place at all levels of decision-making, in all theatres of war and at all points in the intelligence cycle, from gathering through analysis to dissemination. He tells how the US learned from Britain's longer experience in the war and how intelligence co-operation was always subordinated to Anglo-American political relations - and how in the final months of fighting intelligence co-operation was impeded by the governments' postwar agendas. Although victory in the Atlantic was the capstone of this co-operative endeavour, Bath also describes how intelligence relationships fared in the South Pacific, not only between the forces of Admiral Nimitz and General MacArthur but also with those of Australia and New Zealand. Throughout the book, he emphasizes the contributions of Australian, New Zealand and Canadian naval intelligence to this co-operative effort. As an in-depth study of the nature, evolution and impact of information sharing by Allied navies, Tracking the Axis Enemy aims to be informative reading for historians and buffs alike. By showing how the Anglo-American political and cultural bonds shaped intelligence operations and how those operations shaped campaigns, it contributes a new perspective on the Allied victory.

The two German spy networks in New York and Baltimore were not the only ones in the United States between 1914 and 1918. Abteilung IIIB, military intelligence, and Nachrichtenabteilung N, naval intelligence, both sent independent agents to the United States during this period and also recruited Americans to spy in Europe.