Authors: Ben Macintyre
Tags: #General, #Psychology, #Europe, #History, #Great Britain, #20th Century, #Political Freedom & Security, #Intelligence, #Political Freedom & Security - Intelligence, #Political Science, #Espionage, #Modern, #World War, #1939-1945, #Military, #Italy, #Naval, #World War II, #Secret service, #Sicily (Italy), #Deception, #Military - World War II, #War, #History - Military, #Military - Naval, #Military - 20th century, #World War; 1939-1945, #Deception - Spain - Atlantic Coast - History - 20th century, #Naval History - World War II, #Ewen, #Military - Intelligence, #World War; 1939-1945 - Secret service - Great Britain, #Sicily (Italy) - History; Military - 20th century, #1939-1945 - Secret service - Great Britain, #Atlantic Coast (Spain), #1939-1945 - Spain - Atlantic Coast, #1939-1945 - Campaigns - Italy - Sicily, #Intelligence Operations, #Deception - Great Britain - History - 20th century, #Atlantic Coast (Spain) - History, #Montagu, #Atlantic Coast (Spain) - History; Military - 20th century, #Sicily (Italy) - History, #World War; 1939-1945 - Campaigns - Italy - Sicily, #Operation Mincemeat, #Montagu; Ewen, #World War; 1939-1945 - Spain - Atlantic Coast
Despite the misgivings of some at FHW, and Kühlenthal’s blustering excuses for the gaps and contradictions in the story, the lie had by now firmly embedded itself in German strategic thinking and was beginning to metastasize, spreading out through the veins of Axis intelligence. Important and exciting information, whether true or false, develops its own momentum. So far from being questioned, the expected attacks in Greece and Sardinia were fast becoming accepted wisdom.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Hitler Loses Sleep
F
OUR DAYS AFTER
von Roenne’s initial analysis, one Captain Ullrich, an officer on the German General Staff, offered a fresh assessment of the intelligence. This report, dated May 14, “consisted of comments
1
for the perusal of Admiral Doenitz;” Ullrich was, if anything, even more wildly enthusiastic about the Mincemeat information than von Roenne.
“No further doubts remain
2
regarding the reliability of the captured documents,” Ullrich wrote. “Examination as to whether they were intentionally put into our hands shows that this is most unlikely.” It is not clear what examination, if any, had been made in order to clear up “remaining doubts.” No new evidence had been found, and no formal investigation had been undertaken. Yet the impetus of wishful thinking was unstoppable.
Captain Ullrich next addressed the question of “whether the enemy
3
is aware of the interception by us of these documents or whether he is only aware of the loss of a plane over the sea.” The analyst was confident that Germany now had the upper hand. “It is possible that the enemy knows nothing of the capture of these documents but it is certain that he will know they have not reached their destination. Whether the enemy intend to alter the operations they have planned or accelerate the timing is not known but remains improbable.” The letter from Nye to Alexander was “urgent;”
4
Alexander had been asked to “reply immediately
5
‘since we cannot postpone the matter any longer.’” On the other hand, there had been sufficient time to send the letter by air courier, rather than by wireless, and to await a response. “It is the opinion
6
of the German General Staff that sufficient time remains for alteration in the planning of both the Eastern and Western Mediterranean operations.”
With Germanic precision, Ullrich laid out his conclusions: the attacks in the east and west would be simultaneous, “since only in this case
7
would Sicily be unsuitable as cover for both;” the troops attacking Greece would probably leave from Tobruk, in northeastern Libya; Alexandria would not be used as an embarkation point, since it would be “absurd”
8
to pretend that such forces could reach Sicily, in conformity with the cover plan. (“This shows how wrong a staff
9
can be, as Sicily was invaded from Alexandria,” Montagu remarked when Captain Ullrich’s report was eventually recovered.) It was possible, thought Ullrich, that the Fifth and Fifty-sixth Divisions would “comprise the whole of
10
the assault forces” in the Peloponnese. As for the decoy attack on Sicily, this might be a brief commando-style assault followed by an immediate retreat but could also “be continued after the
11
launching of the actual operation.” The report concluded by stressing that the German defensive focus should shift, emphatically, to Greece. “It must be especially
12
emphasised that this document indicated extensive preparations in the Eastern Mediterranean. This is especially important because from that area, on account of the geographical situation, there has, up to this time, been considerably less news about preparations than from the area of Algiers.” There was, of course, another very good reason why the Germans had less evidence of an attack in the east: the Allies, in reality, had no plans to launch one. Once again, when the truth did not fit, the Germans willingly maneuvered the facts in favor of the deception.
Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, who had been made commander in chief of the German navy three months earlier, undoubtedly read Captain Ullrich’s analysis, since he wrote on it. Among the documents seized at Tambach by Ian Fleming’s Red Indians in 1945 was Ullrich’s original report: in the margin, Dönitz’s “personal squiggle”
13
is clearly visible, the initials indicating that he had read it and absorbed its contents. Dönitz was one of Hitler’s most trusted decision makers and would become his heir: his influence was critical.
Benito Mussolini had long believed that the next Allied attack would be aimed at Sicily, the key strategic point for a full-scale assault on Italy. His German allies now set about convincing him otherwise. Dönitz returned from Rome and sent a report of his meeting with Mussolini to Hitler. In his official war diary for May 14, the German admiral noted, “The Führer does not agree
14
with the Duce that the most likely invasion point is Sicily. Furthermore, he agrees that the discovered Anglo-Saxon order confirms the assumption that the planned attack will be directed mainly against Sardinia and the Peloponnesus.” A few days later, Hitler wrote to Mussolini: “It is also clear from documents
15
which have been found that they intend to invade the Peloponnese and will in fact do so. … If the British attempts are to be prevented, as they must be at all costs, this can only be done by a German division.” Hitler’s faith in his Italian ally was fading fast, and Italian troops could not be relied on to do the job. “Within the next few days
16
or weeks, a large number of German divisions must be sent immediately to the Peloponnese.” With regard to the Balkan threat, the Nye letter had not changed Hitler’s mind; it had merely bolstered what he already, wrongly, believed. As the intelligence historian Michael Handel writes in his assessment of Operation Mincemeat: “It is very unusual and very difficult
17
for deception to create new concepts for an enemy. It is much easier and more effective to reinforce those which already exist.”
Corroborative tidbits flooded in from all sides as Mincemeat’s false information spread through German sources official and unofficial. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, chief of the RSHA—the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or Reich Security Main Office (the organization formed by Himmler’s combining the Security Service and the Gestapo)—told the foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, that his spies in the British and American embassies in Madrid confirmed that “targets of enemy operation
18
[are] Italy and her islands as well as Greece.” The Turkish embassies in London and Washington picked up the news and reported to Germany that “the Allies wanted to advance
19
into the Balkans via Greece.” General Jodl was overheard on the telephone telling German commanders in Rome: “You can forget Sicily,
20
we know it’s Greece.”
Additional Ultra intercepts showed that the German Abwehr station in Rhodes, citing the Italian high command as its source, reported “that the Allied attack
21
would be directed against Cape Araxos and Kalamata” and added a little embroidery of its own: “Allied submarines had received
22
orders to assemble at an unknown assembly-point for massed operations.” The warning was passed from Athens to German commanders in the Aegean and on Crete, the army commander in southern Greece, and the Abwehr in Salonika, which “forwarded it to Belgrade and Sofia.”
23
The deception was reinforcing itself, to London’s delight: “The reports coming from
24
opposite quarters seemed to confirm each other and have evidently, for the time being at least, been accepted as true.”
The information had all originated in the same place, but having trickled out in the form of gossip, rumor, and information passed from source to source, it now filtered back to Germany, confirming itself like an echo growing ever louder.
On May 19, Hitler held a military conference in which he referred to the expected assault on Greece and the thrust up through the Balkans. The Führer’s “congenital obsession about the Balkans,”
25
stoked by the Mincemeat letters, was keeping him awake. “In the last few days,
26
and particularly last night, I have again been giving much thought to the consequences which would follow if we lost the Balkans, and there is no doubt that the results must be very serious.” The ravenous German war machine could not survive without raw materials from the Balkans and Romania, the source of half its oil, all its chrome, and three fifths of its bauxite. German commanders had emphasized the threat of an Allied offensive in Greece since the previous winter, and discussions between the Axis allies in February had concluded that Greece was vulnerable. The documents had crystalized Hitler’s preexisting anxieties (“the danger is that they will establish
27
themselves in the Peloponnese”); he now proposed “as a precaution to take a further
28
preventive measure against an eventual attack on the Peloponnese.” Partisan activity was increasing in the German-held Balkans, and from Hitler’s perspective the area seemed, in his own words, the “natural”
29
target. Greece was the thin end of an exceedingly sharp wedge: “If a landing takes place
30
in the Balkans, let us say the Peloponnese, then in a foreseeable time Crete will go,” he told his generals at the conference on May 19. “I have therefore decided
31
whatever happens to transfer one armoured division to the Peloponnese.”
While the fake letter from General Nye concentrated Hitler’s mind on Greece, Montagu’s joke about sardines focused German attention on Sardinia. “Sardinia is particularly threatened,”
32
observed General Walter Warlimont, deputy chief of the operations staff. “In the event of the loss
33
of Sardinia, the threat to Northern Italy is extremely acute. This is the key point for the whole of Italy.” German fears about the vulnerability of Greece and the Balkans were mirrored by Hitler’s anxiety over Sardinia: “He foresaw that from Sardinia
34
the enemy could threaten Rome and the main ports of Genoa and Leghorn, strike simultaneously through upper Italy and at Southern France, and strike at the heart of the European fortress.”
A British spy within Italian government circles, meanwhile, reported that the Mincemeat information had reached Rome “through the Spaniards and not directly
35
through the Germans”—confirmation that the Spanish General Staff had made its own copies of the documents and passed these on to the Italians. “The Italian High Command
36
have the details of the letter and have accepted it as genuine.” The Italian ambassador in Madrid told the Germans that he had obtained “information from an absolutely
37
unimpeachable source that the enemy intend landing operations in Greece in the very near future.” The German ambassador in Rome passed on the news, now no longer new, to Berlin. It is an intriguing comment on the state of the Axis alliance that the Italians delivered this high-grade information to the Germans, but the Germans, who had known it for considerably longer, felt no such obligation to share intelligence with their Italian allies.
Fragments of corroborative information were swirling around the diplomatic world. British intelligence discovered that the German ambassador in Ankara had informed the Turkish minister in Budapest that the German army would soon be reinforcing its military stance in Greece but that it had no hostile intentions toward neutral Turkey: “There would be troop and transport
38
movements towards the south which will affect Greece but that the Turkish Government should not be worried in any way as these were not aimed against Turkey.” As always with whispers of gossip, the information tended to get mangled in transition. From Madrid, Hillgarth reported wryly: “German circles here have a story
39
that they have obtained warning of our plans through papers found on a British officer in Tunis.” Soon after, Hillgarth received the report from Agent Andros describing, in minute detail, how the documents had reached German hands. “The degree of Spanish complicity”
40
was laid bare: “This exchange of information with the Germans in fact took place at the highest levels in Madrid.” Andros confirmed that Leissner and Kühlenthal, the two most senior Abwehr officers, had been directly involved in obtaining the documents from the Spaniards, and the entire episode, as Montagu wrote to “C,” was “adding to our knowledge of German
41
intrigues in Spain.”