What role did military intelligence play in World War II?
What role did military intelligence play in World War II?
Joseph Reeder
It is undeniable the principal role, military intelligence occupied in both the successes and failures of the main events that transpired in World War II, ranging from the breaking of the enigma code at Bletchley Park, to the D Day landings that arguably determined the outcome of the whole war. Military intelligence in the war encompasses not only spies and counterintelligence but also radar, signal, weather and mapping intelligence. Having preemptive knowledge via military intelligence, enabled both the Axis and Allies to preplan their attacks with maximum efficiency; reducing casualties and achieving …show more content…
It is an example of how technical and vital military history is, and if not used correctly can single handedly determine the outcome of a battle. Hughes- Wilson's perspective of the event is radical in that he believes the failure to fend off the Japanese on this occasion implanted America firmly in the war in the Pacific, eventually leading to the horror that was Hiroshima and to "the new dominance of the USA confirmed four years later". Thus speculation reappears about how military intelligence shaped the world in contemporary times. The reasoning behind the failure at Pearl Harbour is simple; the USA was isolationist before the war and had minimal experience spying on foreigners or gathering international information. After the great depression, the USA was in a state of economic recovery and looking into other countries affairs was not their main concern. In fact, unlike Britain with her SIS or Germany's Abwehr, the USA completely lacked a national intelligence service. Hughes-Wilson parallels American code breaking of Japanese's most secret cyphers to Bletchley Park yet also denotes how even though Japanese traffic was readable, the intelligence organizations were divided and information wasn't shared competently within a solidified command structure; "allow their sigint units to grow in a fragmented and uncoordinated fashion and so weaken their …show more content…
But, replicating the debacle at Pearl Harbour, Russia was invaded by Germany, and Operation Barbarossa forced the Russians to retreat to Moscow. This intelligence shambles was not because of conflicting commands but instead, due to the errors of Stalin. He disregarded the notion that Germany would invade even with clear evidence of such an attack presented before him; "no less than ninety separate, unequivocal warnings of an impending attack on the Soviet Union were passed to Stalin." A vast web of spies and informants within an intelligence community is useless without a directive that acknowledges the information and reacts to it accordingly. These events transpired because of the blindness of power; where the authoritarian has to have everyone comply with his standards and when everything suits him. Under delusions of grandeur they assume nobody is capable of tricking them. A stable and structured hierarchy is necessary in military intelligence if it is to sustain and achieve its desired objectives. Disregard in this instance not only has territorial consequences but lack of mobilization of the army costs copious amounts of lives; "Stalin's fatal misinterpretation and denial of the clear intelligence he was given was to cost the Soviet Union 20 million dead, 70,000 cities, towns and villages laid waste, and changed the map of the world
What role did military intelligence play in World War II?
Joseph Reeder
It is undeniable the principal role, military intelligence occupied in both the successes and failures of the main events that transpired in World War II, ranging from the breaking of the enigma code at Bletchley Park, to the D Day landings that arguably determined the outcome of the whole war. Military intelligence in the war encompasses not only spies and counterintelligence but also radar, signal, weather and mapping intelligence. Having preemptive knowledge via military intelligence, enabled both the Axis and Allies to preplan their attacks with maximum efficiency; reducing casualties and achieving …show more content…
It is an example of how technical and vital military history is, and if not used correctly can single handedly determine the outcome of a battle. Hughes- Wilson's perspective of the event is radical in that he believes the failure to fend off the Japanese on this occasion implanted America firmly in the war in the Pacific, eventually leading to the horror that was Hiroshima and to "the new dominance of the USA confirmed four years later". Thus speculation reappears about how military intelligence shaped the world in contemporary times. The reasoning behind the failure at Pearl Harbour is simple; the USA was isolationist before the war and had minimal experience spying on foreigners or gathering international information. After the great depression, the USA was in a state of economic recovery and looking into other countries affairs was not their main concern. In fact, unlike Britain with her SIS or Germany's Abwehr, the USA completely lacked a national intelligence service. Hughes-Wilson parallels American code breaking of Japanese's most secret cyphers to Bletchley Park yet also denotes how even though Japanese traffic was readable, the intelligence organizations were divided and information wasn't shared competently within a solidified command structure; "allow their sigint units to grow in a fragmented and uncoordinated fashion and so weaken their …show more content…
But, replicating the debacle at Pearl Harbour, Russia was invaded by Germany, and Operation Barbarossa forced the Russians to retreat to Moscow. This intelligence shambles was not because of conflicting commands but instead, due to the errors of Stalin. He disregarded the notion that Germany would invade even with clear evidence of such an attack presented before him; "no less than ninety separate, unequivocal warnings of an impending attack on the Soviet Union were passed to Stalin." A vast web of spies and informants within an intelligence community is useless without a directive that acknowledges the information and reacts to it accordingly. These events transpired because of the blindness of power; where the authoritarian has to have everyone comply with his standards and when everything suits him. Under delusions of grandeur they assume nobody is capable of tricking them. A stable and structured hierarchy is necessary in military intelligence if it is to sustain and achieve its desired objectives. Disregard in this instance not only has territorial consequences but lack of mobilization of the army costs copious amounts of lives; "Stalin's fatal misinterpretation and denial of the clear intelligence he was given was to cost the Soviet Union 20 million dead, 70,000 cities, towns and villages laid waste, and changed the map of the world