Intelligence INSTERBURG-KÖNIGSBERG OFFENSIVE OPERATION ( JANUARY 13–24, 1945) Soviet 3rd Belorussian Front attacked German 3rd Panzer Army in the Insterburg corridor Insterburg itself fell on January 22 Forward elements of the Red Army reached the outskirts of Königsberg five days later See also Vistula-Oder operation INTELLIGENCE Accurate military and political intelligence is a “force multiplier” that may be worth many divisions and even whole armies and fleets during wartime That was certainly the case for all the major Allies during World War II, whose intelligence successes were a vital ingredient of success against the armed forces of Germany, Italy, and Japan It remains unknown how far Soviet political intelligence penetrated German communications, but Soviet military intelligence and counterintelligence regularly outwitted the German Abwehr The story of Western Allied intelligence is better known, though still not fully revealed Western leaders and commanders probably knew more in real time about their enemies’ secret plans and intentions, and field and sea dispositions and operations, than any foe in the history of warfare Britain and the United States made enormous use of superior intelligence to trick, manipulate, and misdirect the Axis powers in Europe and Asia, most notably during the vital Battle of the Atlantic (1939–1945) The Western Allies also conducted extensive deception operations that concealed the true landing sites of the TORCH assaults in North Africa in 1942, the HUSKY invasion of Sicily in 1943, and the OVERLORD invasion of France in 1944 However, things did not always go the way of the Western powers During the 1930s French intelligence deliberately overestimated the size of the Wehrmacht in reports to the French government, to sustain a public campaign for budget increases for rearmament But the tactic backfired by helping weaken national confidence and deepen, in certain political quarters, an already baleful mood that is sometimes called the “Maginot Spirit.” American intelligence also began badly In mid-1940 U.S diplomatic codes were compromised globally by their betrayal to an Italian spy ring by a clerk in the London Embassy That may have made the codes available to Germans as well The United States was also heavily penetrated during the war by agents working for the Soviet Union, including after the two countries became allies in December 1942 Soviet penetration of the Manhattan Project, code name for the Allied nuclear weapons program, was especially damaging to long-term U.S interests Germany’s B-Dienst organization broke the Western Allied convoy escort code, enabling U-boats to vector in on forward waypoints The Germans may have had other successes, but many captured German intelligence fi les still remain closed to protect procedures and spycraft, and possibly also reputations Best known are several German code-breaking failures, including catastrophic failure to detect that their own naval codes were violated Such mistakes appear to have resulted not simply from technical problems, but from a systematic failure of German intelligence that arose from the essential sycophancy of Nazi political culture, along with a cultural inability of German officers and agents to self-examine and critique their own operations The problem flowed from the top, as Adolf Hitler was only ever interested in tactical conclusions from his spies, not 569