Intelligence

Intelligence is information about other nations that has been carefully winnowed and analyzed for use by military and political leaders. The existence of permanent state institutions devoted to the collection and analysis of information on other nations, such as the Soviet Union’s KGB or the American Central Intelligence Agency, is a recent phenomenon dating from World War II. Before then, nations operated intelligence agencies only in wartime, and such agencies tended to be small military-affiliated ad hoc groups. Also beginning in World War II, the collection of information by technical means—for example, code breaking and intercepting communications—has far outweighed information gathered by human spies.

The United States greatly expanded its intelligence apparatus after 1941, having learned valuable lessons from the military disasters at Pearl Harbor and in the Philippines. The major American intelligence organizations were affiliated with the military and included the U. S. Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and the War Department Military Intelligence Division (WDGS/MID or G-2). The War Department also created a Counter Intelligence Corps to ferret out spies in cooperation with the Federal Bureau Of Investigation, as well as a Special Branch in the Military Intelligence Service to conduct decoding operations, similar to the U. S. Navy’s Communications Security Unit. Both army and navy groups excelled at code breaking, giving a significant strategic and tactical military advantage to Allied leaders. The United States also created the OfflCE Of Strategic Services (OSS) in June 1942, under the U. S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, to gather foreign intelligence. Although terminated in 1945, the OSS provided the basis for creating the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947.

In Great Britain, intelligence agencies were centralized in the military, were identified by the initials MI, and eventually numbered 19 organizations covering the full gamut of intelligence, counterintelligence, and ESPIONAGE operations. The two most famous included MI-5, the security service, and MI-6, the special or secret intelligence service, which were expanded during the war, although both had existed since 1909. MI-6 contained the Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park, as well as the Radio Security Service.

The Soviet Union had two successful intelligence organizations during the war, the Red Army intelligence and ESPIONAGE organization known as the GRU, and the Communist Party internal security apparatus known as the NKVD, which evolved into the postwar KGB. The GRU had important success with its espionage efforts in the American Manhattan Project that produced the atomic bomb.

Japan alone among the major belligerents had a long history of organized intelligence operations, dating back to the Sino-Japanese War of 1895 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. In addition to the navy and army Special Service Organizations, Japan operated a secret state police force, the Kempei, which handled internal security and counterintelligence, as well as an intelligence service associated with the diplomatic service abroad. Surprisingly, considering Japan’s long experience and extensive organizations, tactical intelligence gathering by military forces during World War II was exceptionally poor.

Nazi Germany suffered from a diffusion of intelligence efforts. Several state, Nazi Party, and military intelligence organizations existed during the Nazi era, although each tended to work in isolation and rarely shared information, a common handicap afflicting intelligence agencies in totalitarian states. The SS contained the Nazi Party intelligence service, the Sicherheitsdienst, or SD, which ran foreign and domestic intelligence branches. Germany had a Research Department prior to 1933, linked to the state of Prussia, that had intelligence gathering and analytical functions, as well as a secret state police, or Gestapo, for purposes of internal security. The primary military intelligence agency was the Abwehr, which provided assistance to German field units, and which coexisted with a separate military office for signals intelligence. The navy and air force had similar, smaller offices, focusing on tactical intelligence.

Further reading: Donald P. Steury, The Intelligence War (New York: Metro, 2000).

—Clayton D. Laurie