The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [221]
By the end of 1942 SIS had endured a very testing sequence of trials by both battle and bureaucracy. The Service got its share of blame for the series of British setbacks, especially during 1940, which to a greater or lesser extent were suffered by all the armed forces. Above all, it was sharply criticised for not adequately meeting urgent and understandable demands for timely operational intelligence. The perceived need for action of some - any - sort, moreover, inspired the proponents of special operations and fuelled the growth of SOE, which became a sort of cuckoo in the clandestine agency nest. While Menzies was well aware of the importance of intelligence-gathering, and strove hard himself to defend it, he had fought in the trenches during the First World War and was also well aware that of itself intelligence is valueless. He made this clear in a Service circular of 10 November 1942 highlighting ‘the real reasons for the existence of S.I.S.’. In wartime, he wrote, ‘all Intelligence about the enemy, whether collected by secret means, or by open field Intelligence, should be based on the old dictum that “Intelligence is the mainspring of Action”’. It followed, therefore, ‘that S.I.S.’s prime function is to obtain information by secret means which may admit of or promote action . . . Information on which no action can be taken may be of interest, it may be useful for records or for the future, but it is of secondary importance.’ Remarking that ‘a definition of what constitutes “action” should not be necessary’, he nevertheless provided one: ‘It must in the ultimate resort spell a movement of operations which result in the death of one or more of enemy nationals, or the defeat of some of his projects.’ He concluded this manifesto with a reminder of the last war, about which there was some belief that it ended ‘because the enemy was defeated by means of the spoken, written word, or some other ancillary war activity’. This was not the case: ‘Germany was defeated because the German Armies were beaten,’ and it was clear that SIS would have failed in its primary function if it did not materially contribute to the defeat of German arms in this war in which they were currently engaged.
11
The European theatre
The work of SIS in Northern and Western Europe during the first half of the war falls naturally into two parts. First, there was the period of the so-called Phoney War from September 1939 until April-May 1940 when, after the conquest of Poland (where the spoils were divided between Germany and the Soviet Union), there was a kind of armed standoff between the Allies - Britain (along with the empire) and France - and Germany. Over these six months or so SIS sought to develop and extend its coverage of German intentions and capabilities from a ring of stations in neighbouring countries, all of which were themselves anxious to remain neutral and were therefore especially sensitive about foreign intelligence agencies operating on their soil. The second period began after the German onslaught in the spring of 1940 which resulted in the occupation of Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries and France. This disrupted (and in some cases completely extinguished) SIS operations, which were further hampered by Italy’s entry into the war alongside Germany in June 1940. The Service now faced the formidable problem of re-establishing itself in German-occupied territory. At the same time there were efforts to mobilise resources in the remaining neutral countries - Sweden, Switzerland and Iberia - both to target Germany itself and to attack the Germans