Decipher

Africa and the Levant. In September and October 1942 a mixture of camouflaged vehicles, dummy pipelines and bogus w/t traffic persuaded Rommel that Montgomery threatened his right flank, before Montgomery attacked his left flank at El Alamein. As the Eighth Army marched westwards, Clarke kept up notional Ninth and Tenth Armies in the Near and Middle East, threatening the Balkans, where many Axis divisions were pinned.

J H Bevan headed the London Controlling Section, a small highly secret staff. They floated a body ashore on the Spanish coast, carrying documents which persuaded the Germans that the Allies’ next targets after Tunis would be Sardinia and Greece instead of Sicily (see Ewan Montagu, The Man Who Never Was, 1953). With much help from decipher, Bevan supervised Operation “Fortitude”. This persuaded Hitler that the Normandy invasion was itself a feint, intended to draw German troops away from the beaches south of Boulogne. On those beaches, which provided the shortest route from England to the Ruhr, the German general staff had always expected the main blow to fall; and Hitler kept his reserves away from Normandy until too late. In addition, he kept over 300,000 troops pinned in Norway to meet a nonexistent threat from Gen Thorne’s notional Fourth Army in Scotland.

Since 1945, deception has been used with exceptional skill by Soviet Russia; partly to exaggerate the Soviet Union’s prosperity and achievements, partly to sow discord among capitalist states and secret services by spreading rumous about moles. MF.

Decipher. Long a vital source of military and political intelligence. The British set up in Room 40, Old Building at the Admiralty in 1914 a staff which, with the help of captured code books, was able for most of the war to read most of the traffic of the High Seas Fleet, and made vital incursions into diplomatic traffic also (see Zimmerman telegram). Parallel army units flourished on the Western Front, 1914-18, and in north and south Russia, 1919-20. Between the wars, decipher was concentrated in the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park from 1939. The operation, renamed Government Communications Headquarters, later moved to Cheltenham, where it forms the main British base of a world network of intercept and decipher stations to which the US, British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand governments belong.

The Americans first set up a decipher service in 1915; it was disbanded in 1929, and restarted in 1940. Led by William F Friedmann, they broke several important Japanese ciphers, securing some glimpses (although not enough) of the impending attack on Pearl Harbor, reading all the dispatches from the Japanese ambassador in Berlin to Tokyo, and orchestrating several naval victories such as Midway. During the Cold War, they financed the network mentioned above, and now bear the brunt of anti-Soviet interception and decipher.

German decipher enabled Hitler to read most of his putative opponents’ diplomatic traffic in the 1930s, and provided useful land and air tactical intelligence. At sea, Ddnitz read until June 1943 most British routeing orders to convoys and the Admiralty’s daily summary of U-boat activity; thereafter British used unbroken ciphers.

French decipher, active in 191418 with good tactical results in France, made a few early inroads into “Enigma” with the help of a spy in the SS, but was then overtaken by France’s defeat in 1940. Polish decipher had unravelled “Enigma” as early as 1932. Small teams of Poles were useful at Bletchley Park, and Polish ciphers were so secure that the Poles, alone of the governments in exile in London, were allowed to use their own ciphers in the run-up to Operation “Overlord” in 1944. MF.

Decorations. Awards for exceptionally gallant and distinguished service, as opposed to grades of orders of chivalry or merit, campaign medals, or awards for particular skills and proficiencies. The Victoria Cross (vc) (inst. 1856) is Britain’s highest decoration. It was augmented in 1940 by the George Cross (gc), awarded for comparable deeds not necessarily in the face of the enemy. Many nations have to various extents correspondingly exclusive awards, many with long histories; Frederick the Great instituted the Pour le Merite for his Prussian army and this remained the highest German award until 1918. After Hitler’s rise to power, the Iron Cross, with progressive grades culminating in the Knight’s Cross with Diamonds, became the State’s main award for valorous service. The Medal of Honor, awarded by the President of the United States in the name of Congress for “... conduct above and beyond the call of duty” was instituted by President Lincoln in 1861 and remains the highest American award. The highest Soviet award for gallantry is the Gold Star bestowed on “Heroes of the Soviet Union”. MH.

“Defense and Space” Talks. The

American term for the third of the arms control negotiations begun under a common “umbrella” in Geneva in 1985 between the USA and the USSR - for the other two

See INTERMEDIATE NUCLEAR FORCES

And START. The USSR calls this third group the “Space Weapons” talks. The negotiations concern the deployment of weapons in space. The USA wants to obtain Soviet agreement to deployment of a space-based anti-ballistic missile system while the USSR wishes to prevent the deployment of any weapons in outer space. The USSR has made a start agreement conditional on agreement in this area. EJG.

Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships (DEMS). In both world wars, merchantmen were armed for defence against raiders, the armament consisting of one medium-size gun on the stern (plus anti-aircraft guns in World War II). DEMS was the British term and organization for this. Gun crews could be either naval or mercantile personnel and, in 1939-45, the Maritime Regiment of the Royal Artillery.

Defiant, Boulton Paul P82 (Br, WWII). Two-seat fighter. Prototype flew August 11 1937; first production aircraft July 30 1939; equipment of first squadron (No. 264) began December 1939; first operation May 12 1940. Unsuccessful as day fighter; transferred to night operations (13 squadrons); briefly on air-sea rescue; finally target-tug and training duties. Production 1,075. One l,030hp Rolls-Royce Merlin III engine; max. speed 304mph (489kph); four turret-mounted 0.303in machine guns.

De Gaulle, Gen Charles (18901970). Fr. During World War I, de Gaulle fought at Verdun, where he was wounded and taken prisoner. After service in 1919—20 with the French Military Mission in Poland he developed a reputation as a theoretician, criticizing postwar French army doctrines in a series of lectures and books. In opposition to the prevailing faith in defensive strategy, he advocated a form of mechanized and armoured warfare that had much in common with the concepts of Guderian, Fuller and Liddell Hart. His outspokenness affected his career prospects and at the outbreak of World War II, de Gaulle was merely commander of the Fifth Army’s tank units. During the German invasion, he led the 4th Armoured Division and.

Uneasy allies: de Gaulle and Churchill

Although it was far from ready for battle, it performed well. On June 5 1940 he was appointed Undersecretary of State for National Defence, but the collapse of Reynaud’s government and the French request for an armistice persuaded him to continue the fight from Britain. Although at first with few adherents, de Gaulle established the Free French movement in London. His attempt to seize Dakar in September 1940 was an abject failure and support only gradually rallied to him. Fiercely aware of his and France’s dignity, de Gaulle was often at odds with the Allies and his own

French political rivals. But, with the liberation of French North Africa and the recognition of his primacy in the French Committee of National Liberation, his position was assured. He returned to France in June 1944 and triumphantly entered Paris on August 26. However, he continued to baulk at his treatment by the Allies and he resented their rejection of his claims to an equal status at the major conferences. In France’s immediate postwar political battles, de Gaulle failed to secure sufficient support and resigned in January 1946. He returned to office in 1958 at the height of the Algerian crisis and maintained a personalized and autocratic Presidency until his final resignation in 1969. MS.

Degaussing see magnetic mines.

De Guingand, Maj Gen Sir Francis (1900—1979). Br. An infantryman, he became, in 1939, military Assistant to the controversial Secretary of State for War, Leslie Hore-Belisha, gaining invaluable experience of the politico-military interface in Whitehall. Later, as Director of Military Intelligence Middle East, he was selected (1942) by Montgomery to be his cos in Eighth Army. He remained with Montgomery after the North African and Italian campaigns and was cos 21st Army Group, a post he held to the end of the war in Europe. De Guingand was a very different man from his austere teetotal master, but nonetheless they made an ideal pair. Whenever Montgomery upset his American allies (frequently, as it happened) it was de Guingand’s diplomacy and evident professional competence which to some extent put things right. MH.

De La Rey, Gen Jacobus Hercules (“Koos”) (1847-1914). South African. One of the ablest Boer commanders in both conventional and guerrilla operations, De La Rey served first under Cronje: his advocacy of entrenchment for flat trajectory fire, rather than occupation of the high ground in the traditional Boer manner, was largely responsible for the victories at Modder river and Magers-fontein. His guerrilla campaign in the Transvaal reached its climax at Tweebosch on March 6-7 1902, when, with 1,200 men, he ambushed a column of about equal strength led by Methuen. De La Rey’s burghers broke the column with a mounted charge. British losses were 68 killed, 121 wounded and 600 captured, among them the wounded Methuen, whom De La Rey released. Opposing South Africa’s participation in World War I, De La Rey was shot dead in a police ambush, allegedly while en route to lead a pro-German revolt in the Transvaal, on September 15 1914. RO’N.

De Lattre Line. In spring 1951 the French commander in Indochina, Gen Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, responded to communist offensives along Vietnam’s border with China and in the Red River delta by constructing a chain of defensive positions along the delta’s outer edge. The “De Lattre” Line was supposed to defend the plain against stronger attacks expected to result from the increase of Chinese supplies to Vietnamese forces. However, the line tied down French resources and failed to halt infiltration of the delta.

Delville wood. Wood in the German second position on the Somme, bitterly contested between July 15 and August 27 1916. The South African Brigade suffered particularly heavy casualties here.

Demilitarized Zone. The Demilitarized Zone was created by the armistice agreement which ended the Korean War to separate the military forces of the belligerents and “prevent the occurrence of incidents which might lead to a resumption of hostilities”. It was 2.5 miles (4km) wide, with the line of military contact as the median. The area to the south of this line was to be the responsibility of the UN commander and the area to the north of the supreme commander of the NKPA and the commander of the Chinese People’s Volunteers. Supervision of the provisions of the armistice within the zone was to be the responsibility of the Military Armistice Commission and its joint observer teams. CM. See also

MILITARY ARMISTICE COMMISSIO. N; NEUTRAL NATIONS REPATRIATION

Commission; neutral nations supervisory COMMISSION.