Captains Without Eyes

Intelligence Failures In World War Ii

Lyman B Kirkpatrick Jr

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429713101
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Written by a former Inspector General and Executive Director of the CIA. It describes the role of the failure in gathering and analyzing intelligence behind Barbarossa (German attack on Russia), Pearl Harbor, the 1942 Allied landing at Dieppe, France, the "Market Garden" assault on Arnhem ("A Bridge Too Far"), and the Battle of the Bulge.

1.
The Problems of Foresight

ONCE A BATTLE is fought it immediately becomes the subject of study. After-action reports are written by the staffs. Military academies analyze the action for possible use as a case study. Historians relate its importance to the course of human events. And it becomes a name and a date in the chronicle of time.

The attention the battle may receive will depend on its relative importance in the course of the war. If it is of any consequence, military historians will review all of the plans for the battle, the action and after-action reports of the participating units, and interview the survivors. Books and articles will be written, and the name of the battle will be perpetuated: Cannae, Thermopylae, Waterloo, Gettysburg, the Marne, Dunkirk and many others.

In all of the studies of battle one aspect looms large. Why was it fought? And why at that time and place? But this is one of the most elusive aspects of all battles, unless the commanders on both sides record in detail their reasoning. It is elusive because it also involves the least accurately recorded of all military activity: the information or intelligence on the enemy that was considered before opening the battle.

It is intelligence that provides the foresight, that gives the captains their vision. If the captain is provided with complete and accurate intelligence on the enemy and uses it properly, it can lead to victory. If the captain is not given adequate intelligence on the enemy, or disregards what intelligence is provided, it can lead to disaster.

It is intelligence that is the principal subject of this study. What intelligence was available to the captains who directed the forces in these battles?

This is the story of five battles from World War II—battles that ranged in size from a few thousand men on each side to seven million men. Two of the battles, the German attack on the Soviet Union and the Japanese attack on the United States, were of a decisive nature in that they brought into the conflict the world’s two largest industrial powers, and because the attackers failed in their objective of a quick death blow it meant their own ultimate defeat. Two of the battles, the Allied airdrop at Arnhem and the German offensive in the Ardennes, both in the fall of 1944, could have had decisive results had the attacks succeeded, but both failed. And one battle, the nine-hour British-Canadian raid on the German-held port of Dieppe on the French coast, while a disaster, was to have an important effect on the future course of the war.

The five battles all had certain common military characteristics, but many differences. The German attack on Russia on June 22, 1941, was a massive air and ground assault along a 1,800-mile front. Its objective was to destroy the Russian military forces and topple the Communist government. It was designed to catch the Red armies by surprise and every effort was made to blind the Russian intelligence service and to mislead the Soviet leaders.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, was also a surprise attack without a declaration of war and had as its objective the destruction of the United States Pacific fleet. It was an attack by carrier-borne aircraft on a fleet at anchor. This, the Japanese hoped, would give them the time to conquer Asia.

The British-Canadian assault on Dieppe on August 19, 1942—described by some as too big for a raid and too small for an invasion—tested German defenses and provided invaluable information for the operations to liberate Europe from German occupation. It was an amphibious attack on a strongly defended port city carried out by commando, marine and ground troops supported by tanks and naval gunfire, with strong air support designed to entice the Germans into an air battle, which the R.A.F. expected to win decisively.

The British airdrop at Arnhem on September 17, 1944—part of the larger Market Garden operation to seize the bridges across the Rhine and Waal—was to open a corridor across Holland to the Zuider Zee, to help liberate the country and to provide a base for a quick armored thrust to the heart of Germany in order to end the war before the Nazis could recover from their staggering defeats in France. Market Garden was an airborne assault by three divisions supported by a ground attack by three corps.

The German offensive into the Ardennes Forest in Belgium on December 16, 1944, aimed at cutting through the American First Army to reach the Channel Coast and split the armies of the western Allies. Hitler’s tanks had knifed through the Ardennes in 1940 and had been a vital factor in the quick and decisive defeat of France. The battle in the Ardennes in 1944 was initially almost exclusively a ground battle, with the exception of a few parachutists put behind the American lines for harassment purposes. Air power played an important role when the weather cleared after the first eight days of the battle.

These battles were selected for analysis not so much for their differing characteristics, or for the varying mixture of forces used, but for the one important common characteristic. In each instance there was a vital intelligence failure on one or, in some cases, on both sides. In every case there were certainly intelligence gaps. It is very rare for any nation to have perfect intelligence coverage of another nation, and in wartime, intelligence coverage is invariably less precise, generally ranging from fair to non-existent. In each of these battles the intelligence on the side of either the attacker or defender, or both, was of such a quality that it is not unfair to say that the leaders were truly captains without eyes.

Intelligence is a difficult profession and an imperfect science at best. It should be noted that there were other factors that affected the vision of the leaders before blaming intelligence for the failure.

There are no absolutes and few precise means of measuring the intelligence available to the military leaders on the opposing sides in these battles. In no instance was there total blindness—no attacks through unknown territory, or against a people whose hostility was in doubt, nor were they fought against military forces of undetermined strength.

In most instances the nature of the terrain to be crossed by the attacking forces was well known: the progress made in aerial photography between World Wars I and II had assisted in this problem. But despite this there were still some unpleasant geographical surprises awaiting the attackers: the use of the headlands flanking Dieppe harbor for gun emplacements had not been anticipated; the difficulties of moving across the canal country of south Holland plagued the Allied armor racing toward Arnhem; and even that student of Napoleonic campaigns, Adolf Hitler, failed to appreciate the extent of the natural obstacles in Russia.

In four of the battles described there was little question about the attitude of the peoples in the area of battle. In one, the German attack on Russia, it could have been a factor that might have affected the outcome of the war, but the attitude of the Russian people was not even considered in German intelligence estimates because Adolf Hitler did not want it considered. If the local populace did not interfere with the German forces they could become servile serfs; if they did interfere they were to be exterminated. The possibility that the peoples of Russia might be turned against the Soviet regime—and might contribute to German victory—was ignored. Hitler was invincible: intelligence was useful only if it was in accord with his own beliefs.

Military intelligence must assess more than the disposition of enemy forces, the location of fortifications and defenses, or even the probable war plans of the other country. It must assess what the enemy will do under various circumstances. If we attack in the north, will the enemy fiercely resist in that area, counterattack in the south, try to turn our flank or fall back to reserve positions? If we try to take the enemy’s principal cities, will those be defended in strength? Should our major effort be to destroy the enemy’s armed forces, to capture or destroy his industrial facilities and transportation or to seize the political center of the country?

Thus in many respects military intelligence becomes a war game in which each player is trying to anticipate the other’s move and in which the personality, experience and characteristics of the opposing leader or leaders become an important—and often an elusive—factor, as well as one too frequently neglected or dealt with superficially by intelligence.

There is more to preparing for battle—or war—than just having the information on the enemy available (even if that were complete, which it never is). There must be organization—a term frequently brought into disrepute by those who equate it with cumbersome procedures and inefficiency. But wars cannot be fought and certainly are seldom won without organization.

An organization to provide intelligence for a war or a battle must be developed well in advance. Such an organization must have information on everything that could conceivably affect the course of the battle. It must make sure that the information available on the enemy gets to the men who must fight the battle. And it must do what it can to make sure that the commanders know how to use that information.

Occasionally the organization will exist, but the captains will not use it; or they will use it but ignore its advice; or they will reshape it to their own will, thereby compounding their own errors rather than compensating for or correcting them. Adolf Hitler did exactly that when he assumed Supreme Command of the German armed forces in 1940. He failed to use the OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht) as a joint military staff but made it his personal secretariat. He browbeat his senior commanders to such a degree that few dared differ with him, and those who did were dismissed or ignored. Hitler, who came to power in Germany as an admirer of the military, lost a great deal of that admiration before the war because his boldness brought success and the military were timid and ineffective. He mistreated the military intelligence service primarily because he suspected it of treason.^* Adolf Hitler was a man blinded by his own obsessions and ignorance.

But it is not the personality of the captain alone which becomes a factor in preparing for a battle. Wars are fought by men with strong convictions and determinations, and, usually, the higher the rank the more pronounced these traits. Thus the man who makes the ultimate decision is not alone in affecting the outcome. All too frequently the information he receives will have been influenced by the prejudices of subordinates. If the information is about the enemy, it is even more susceptible to the capricious factor of human evaluation, because knowledge about the enemy in wartime is an almost monopolistic possession of the intelligence corps.

The intelligence service of any nation is a unique collection of individuals, attracted to or recruited for that work because of individual interest, qualification or capability. Some are scholars selected solely for their analytical ability. There are those who are attracted to intelligence work because of its presumed conspiratorial nature. And there are the regular military personnel, too often viewing an intelligence assignment with disdain, preferring operations or command and regarding information about the enemy as a not too vital factor in the battle in which “there can be no question about victory.”

Every intelligence officer can have some effect on the battle—by what he believes or does not believe; by what action he takes or neglects to take. The espionage agent operating alone and in great danger may decide in haste or ignorance which document to take from a safe and quickly photograph, or which conversation to report and which to ignore. His “case officer,” whether meeting with him periodically to pick up reports and to give guidance as to additional information needed, or dealing with him by radio from thousands of miles away, can vitally affect the flow of information in both directions. The “desk analyst” in headquarters, the first person to receive the raw intelligence regardless of the source, has a life-or-death role in deciding whether the information should be filed and forgotten or should be passed on up the command ladder, and if the latter, with what comment, “Probably true.” “From a highly reliable source.” “From an unknown source.” or “Highly suspect, probably an enemy fabrication or deception.”? Each individual who must pass on the information until it ultimately reaches the Commander in Chief, the Fuehrer, the Premier or the President can have a pronounced effect on the information.

In each of the five battles studied the influence of non-scientific factors such as human prejudice, inefficiency and poor organization had an important effect in blinding the captains.

In the German attack on Russia there were few in that atmosphere of euphoria brought about by Hitler’s unbroken string of victories who dared tell the Fuehrer that he was gravely underestimating Russian strength, and on the other side, Stalin refused to believe some of the most precise information ever presented to a head of state about an impending assault by another nation. Stalin’s personal conviction that Germany would make impossible demands on Russia for territory before attacking contributed to his blindness.

Before Pearl Harbor, less than six months later, the leaders of the United States were well aware of the highly critical relations with Japan; they too had been alerted to the possibility of an attack on Pearl Harbor, but they relied on intelligence organizations, uncoordinated and independent, which dissipated the effectiveness of a relatively recently revived emphasis on intelligence by the U.S. government.

The Dieppe raid of August 1942 was gravely affected by many human considerations. The Royal Navy did not want to risk heavy ships close to an enemy-held coast where they would be under attack by aircraft—the loss of the Prince of Wales and Repulse off the coast of Malaya to Japanese aircraft was all too fresh a memory—and thus deprived the landing troops of fire support which might have neutralized the devastating guns in the cliffs and the shore pillboxes, the threat of which had not been covered adequately by intelligence.

At Arnhem in September 1944 the First British Parachute Division landed practically on top of two German S. S. panzer (armored) divisions whose presence had been suspected; even more serious was the underestimation of the recuperative ability of the Germans after the disaster in France.

Finally, in the Ardennes in December 1944—less than three months after Arnhem—a German counteroffensive caught the Americans by surprise. Many believed a German counterblow possible, if not probable, but American headquarters had few hard facts about the preparations for the attack.

In all of these battles the ability of the captains to achieve victory was affected by something which obscured their vision. While it should be assumed that in each instance the leaders did everything to insure that their knowledge about the enemy was complete, in at least the case of Adolf Hitler this was not true. He was so convinced of his own infallibility and Germany’s invincibility that he was disdainful of most enemies—potential or actual.

Assuming however that the captains wanted the clearest vision for decision, what should the World War II intelligence system have been ideally?

Intelligence requirements differ at various levels of command. A chief of state, a Hitler, a Roosevelt or a Stalin must be aware of everything which could affect the security of his nation. A battle commander should be aware of every enemy potentiality which could affect the outcome of the battle in which the forces under his command are engaged.

Only in rare instances are these objectives achieved, for there are two major aspects of an enemy which must be known. In the first instance the enemy’s capabilities must be known in complete detail. Capabilities include the total capacity of the enemy to wage war. This includes not only the strength of the armies, navies and air forces, but also the industrial might and the will of the people, vital in an age of total war. Failure to appreciate the capability of the Germans to recover from the defeat in France led to the Allied defeat at Arnhem.

The second aspect—enemy intentions—is perhaps more important than the first, and nearly always more difficult to obtain. Will he resort to war to obtain his national objective? Will he declare war? Use a surprise attack? Engage in subversion? Or, once on the battlefield, will the enemy fight to defend his present position? Fall back to new defensive positions? Fight to the last man? Surrender after certain losses? Or will he resort to unorthodox warfare or secret weapons?

Intentions constitute the most closely guarded of national or battlefield secrets. Often they reside in the mind of one man alone—a Hitler in Nazi Germany—or are shared by only a few top leaders. To discover national intentions a foreign intelligence service may literally have to discover what is in the minds of certain men, and still more difficult, what they would do under a variety of different circumstances.

Concealment of true intentions is sometimes a major objective in the complex interchanges of international relations. Hitler went to great lengths to conceal his intention of attacking the Soviet Union in 1941. There are other times when it may be very important that actual intentions are clearly understood by all other nations concerned, especially a potential adversary. During the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 the United States made no effort to conceal from the Russians the military build-up being readied to move into Cuba and destroy the rocket sites. It was vital that the Soviet Union understand that President John F. Kennedy intended to remove the missiles if Nikita Khrushchev did not. In this instance, Soviet knowledge of American intentions may have helped avoid war.

Nearly every major power in the world had its intelligence services at work in the 1930’s to learn the capabilities and intentions of potential enemies. The Russian services were by far the largest and covered most effectively the key areas of the world. The British, French and Japanese intelligence services concentrated on key targets of interest to their countries. The United States, “isolated” behind the presumed safety of two vast oceans, was a poor sixth among the major powers in the effort devoted to intelligence.

What these nations had to forewarn them on national danger was not just one omniscient organization, but several different departments and agencies all collecting bits and pieces of information which presumably was collated and analyzed before being presented to the top policy makers of the government. In no country was there what might be called the ideal intelligence organization. In several the collectors were feuding bitterly; in most instances the coordination was faulty; and in nearly all the quality of analysis left much to be desired.

The State Department or Foreign Ministry was the organization holding primary responsibility for knowledge of world affairs. The officially accredite...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Maps
• PREFACE
• 1. The Problems of Foresight
• 2. Case Barbarossa: The German Attack on Russia, June 22, 1941
• 3. Pearl Harbor: A Lost Battle v. A National Disaster, December 7, 1941
• 4. Dieppe: Prelude to D-Day, August 19, 1942
• 5. Arnhem: A Viper in the Market, September 17, 1944
• 6. The Bulge in the Ardennes: Hitler’s Last Threat, December 16, 1944
• 7. The Brilliance of Hindsight
• REFERENCES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX