Intelligence within BAOR and NATO's Northern Army Group

During the Cold War the UK's principal military role was its commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) through the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), together with wartime command of NATO's Northern Army Group. The possibility of a surprise attack by the numerically superior Warsaw Pact forces ensured that great importance was attached to intelligence, warning and rapid mobilisation. As yet we know very little about the intelligence dimension of BAOR and its interface with NATO allies. This article attempts to address these neglected issues, ending with the impact of the 1973 Yom Kippur War upon NATO thinking about warning and surprise in the mid-1970s. It concludes that the arrangements made by Whitehall for support to BAOR from national assets during crisis or transition to war were - at best - improbable. Accordingly, over the years, BAOR developed its own unique assets in the realm of both intelligence collection and special operations in order to prepare for the possible outbreak of conflict

Destroying Hitler’s Berghof: The Bomber Command Raid of 25 April 1945

This paper examines the Royal Air Force raid on Adolf Hitler’s Berghof on the Obersalzberg in April 1945. Arthur Harris, the head of Bomber Command, wanted to emphasize the air power’s decisive role in the defeat of Nazism. However, Winston Churchill and Bernard Montgomery, among others, questioned the usefulness of destroying Berchtesgaden so late in the war. Unlike traditional explanations that focus on post–Dresden guilt, this article contends that British politicians grew increasingly concerned with the economic state of postwar Germany and the potential costs of the upcoming occupation. The continuation of area bombing at this late stage of the war reinforced the fears and consequences of “overkill.” Harris’s disconnect with postwar civil–military concerns negatively influenced the postwar image of Bomber Command

The Balance Sheet: The Costs and the Gains of the Bombing Campaign

Critics of the bomber offensive frequently argue that the material and human cost of the campaign far overshadowed the gains, and that the resources dedicated to it could have been more effectively utilized elsewhere. They have argued that the combat manpower could have been better used in the other fighting services, especially the army, and industry could have been used to produce more weapons for these fighting services. However, proponents of this line of thought assume that the weight of effort expended on the bombing campaign was inordinately high. Richard Overy maintains that it was actually rather modest. “Measured against the totals for the entire war effort (production and fighting), bombing absorbed 7 percent, rising to 12 percent in 1944–45. Since at least a proportion of bomber production went to other theatres of war, the aggregate figures for the direct bombing of Germany were certainly smaller than this. Seven percent of Britain’s war effort can hardly be regarded as an unreasonable allocation of resources.” Further, although some significant infantry shortages were experienced in 1944, they never reached an extremely critical overall level and were eventually rectified. With respect to materiel, none of the services was conspicuously wanting for anything by 1943, and the British effort was thereafter bolstered by substantial North American war production

Canadian Armour in Normandy: Operation “Totalize” and the Quest for Operational Manoeuvre

The Allied record in Normandy is irritating simply because we could have done better. The extensive casualty rates to infantry and armour nearly exhausted American arms and created a political crisis in Canada. The dazzling success of American armour during “Cobra’s” pursuit eclipsed the Canadian armoured battles of August, despite the fact that the vast majority of Allied tank casualties from direct gunfire engagements occurred in II Canadian Corps. The exultation of operation manoeuvre, the closing of the Falaise Gap and the liberation of Paris obfuscated the reality of tactical deficiency. It required three bloody months and seven major operations to drive the Germans out of Normandy. This occurred despite total air supremacy and a strategical numerical advantage. The reasons for tactical frustration are technical, geographical, and primarily, doctrinal. Second Canadian Corps has long been deprived of critical operational analysis. This is perhaps because the technical complexities of armoured warfare at the tactical and operational level generally are not well understood. Canadian armour fought tank battles throughout Operations “Spring,” “Totalize,” and “Tractable,” but it did not maneuver. Canadian armour’s greatest opportunity for strategic victory occurred in Normandy. It is appropriate that an armoured officer review these matters, pick up the thrown gauntlet and attempt to explain the armoured battlefield as it related to Operation “Totalize.

The Joint Intelligence Committee and the German Question, 1947-61

PhDThis thesis analyses the contribution that the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIQ made to British policy concerning Germany (both West and East) during the early Cold War. The question of control over war-ravaged, but strategically significant Germany was critical to the security of Europe. As such, Germany and Berlin in particular, became the most important Cold War battleground in Europe. By combining recently released JIC archives with both existing research on intelligence, foreign and defence policy and records from the other government departments, this research adds to the understanding of one of the central themes of the Cold War. It reveals how ministers, senior officials and military officers made use of the assessmentps roduced by the JIC in formulating their policies towards Germany and the developing threat from the Soviet Union and its allies. This research takes a chronological approach, in order to trace both the development of policy and of the role of the JIC within central government. It explores the major crises of the period: the Soviet blockade of Berlin in 1948, the riots in East Berlin of June 1953 and the 1958-61 Berlin Crisis. Away from these crises, the thesis examines the picture that the JIC painted of Soviet intentions and capabilities in Eastern Germany and of the development of the two German nations. It also looks at the JIC's contribution to British attitudes towards German rearmament. The developing role of the intelligence apparatus, both within central government and in Germany is a major theme running through the thesis. By improving its sources, its product and its administration,, the JIC ensured that it became an essential tool for successive governments, and within Whitehall, became the interface between intelligence and policy

Australia, the U.S., and the strategic balance: some comments on the joint facilities

The author traces the history of Australia's increasing involvement with the strategic and intelligence systems of the major Western powers since the realignment of the world balance after World War II

Conceiving and Executing Operation Gauntlet: The Canadian-Led Raid on Spitzbergen, 1941

In August and September 1941, Canadian Brigadier Arthur Potts led a successful but little known combined operation by a small task force of Canadian, British, and Norwegian troops in the Spitzbergen (Svalbard) archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. After extensive planning and political conversations between Allied civil and military authorities, the operation was re-scaled so that a small, mixed task force would destroy mining and communications infrastructure on this remote cluster of islands, repatriate Russian miners and their families to Russia, and evacuate Norwegian residents to Britain. While a modest non-combat mission, Operation Gauntlet represented Canada’s first expeditionary operation in the Arctic, yielding general lessons about the value of specialized training and representation from appropriate functional trades, unity of command, operational secrecy, and deception, ultimately providing a boost to Canadian morale. Interactions also demonstrated the complexities of coalition warfare as well as the challenges associated with civil-military interaction in the theatre of operations

Seeking comradeship in the "Ogre's Den:" Winston Churchill's quest for a warrior alliance and his mission to Stalin, August 1942

On 12 August 1942, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrived in Moscow to meet Soviet leader Josef Stalin, for the first time, a mission that Churchill’s wife, Clementine, had described to him as a “visit to the Ogre in his Den.” Churchill had, by his own account, attempted to strangle the Bolshevik state at birth, by supporting British intervention on the side of the White Russian counter-revolutionaries in 1918-19. His arrival in Moscow was a dramatic illustration of the way the actions of Adolf Hitler had altered international politics. However, in histories of the coalition of Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union that came together to defeat Hitler, this mission of Churchill plays a small and insignificant part. Indeed it is often barely mentioned, though for its historic symbolism, one might rank Churchill’s meeting with Stalin as on a par with U.S. President Richard Nixon’s meeting with Chairman Mao Zedong in Beijing in 1972. It will be shown here that Churchill’s mission should not be dismissed so lightly when examining the early development of that strange coalition commonly called the “Big Three.” Churchill’s meetings with Stalin established, despite great setbacks in the middle period of the mission, that this alliance could function as a viable entity, so long as all parties agreed tacitly to certain rules of engagement. It is often suggested that the third member of the Big Three, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, was largely responsible for establishing this pragmatic approach, but this article will show that Churchill and Stalin became alive to the wisdom of managing their interactions in this manner independently of Roosevelt, and indeed some way in advance of his active involvement in Big Three politics